This is a non-fiction book about theories on the origin of the universe developed by Stephen Hawking and this book's author, who was one of Stephen's collaborators. The content of this book is neither here nor there, but the writing itself is so, so bad -- bordering on the worst-written pop science book I've ever read. Thomas Hertog should have just explained his ideas to a random high schooler and paid them to type out something better than this.

The author, I shit you not, repeats most sentences 10-20 times. He'll repeat entire paragraphs twice on the same page, only with slight variations in phrasing, then he'll repeat them a third time on the next page. Then he'll repeat them AGAIN in every following chapter. It's like being in a fever dream where you can't escape doing the same thing over and over again, no matter how hard you try.

Even if he cut out all the repeats of sentences (which would shave 200 pages off this 270 page book), each original sentence still lands with a thud. This man has no talent with words, a giga-STEMlord in that regard. His keyboard should be confiscated and given to the poor. I only stuck with this book to the end because it was for a research project, and it didn't even contribute much. No one else needs to bother reading it.