The book is great, absolutely fascinating, and it really clarified some things about M-theory for me (no, I don’t claim to ‘understand’ it, but I can see around some of those strange edges…).

My problem with the book is the ideology – Dr. Susskind clearly has a problem with the way some people have interpreted the Anthropic Principle – which is well and good, since that’s central to the theme of the book. He makes a detour to attack Intelligent Design (which has NO relationship whatsoever), and repeatedly uses Darwinian analogies as though they were from the cutting edge of evolutionary theory… WTF? 19th Century biology to support 21st Century physics? Needless to say, he pays homage to Dawkins in there too, although at one point he admits that there is a lot of wishful thinking in the ‘science is the new Ghod’ camp.

The parts where he talks about physics, though, are well worth reading.