A book in a similar vein is "A Grand Unified Tour of Theoretical Physics", by Ian Lawrie. While I admire Penrose's book, I believe Lawrie's is written at a more consistent level and is probably more accessible to many (though not all) people.
the author of this comment and book recommendation is an accomplished professional physicist of no little reputation. Apparently he does not want to toot his own horn here on this site, so I'll do it for him.
It's staring at me from my book shelf, laughing that I won't get around to starting it.
start reading it tonight. it is an amazing book.
I'm sure. I read 'emperor's new mind' and loved it for the most part. I have quite a bit of a backlog of books that are earlier in the queue before I get to it.
Which reminds me, we should consider the semantics of starting a science/math/etc book club dedicated to important books and concepts.
I'm in the exact same situation. I've actually read a few dozen pages, but got sidetracked/intimidated...
I have that book but never got courage it read it. It is one of the books which you absolutely want to read but never have courage to do so.
I've got it, have tried to read parts of it, and have found it mostly too terse to follow. Maybe it's different if you're attempting to read it cover to cover. I bought it mostly as a quick-reference for the parts of physics I'd not had much exposure to.
Thank you. Just ordered.
I should probably read one of his books, seeing as he was at my graduation ceremony and got his honorary professorship. (from what I remember about his speech there wasn't much more than the usual "inspirational" stuff, though)
Another great book by the same: The Emperor's New Mind. Covers everything from Turing machines to the Mandelbrot set to Quantum Mechanics. An amazing read.
This one, I might add, is available on Google Books.