This was a thought provoking book on what the Big Bang entails as well as the beginning of the universe.

This books was published recently in Spanish so I took the oportunity to review it for a magazine. What I said was: this is how scientific non-fictions books should be written. Clear, concise, interesting and accesible.

I requested this book for background reading for an editorial feature we were running. Our reviewer rated it 4-stars and both the review and "beyond the book" article were sent to chloe.texier-rose@fsgbooks.com in early May:

Review:
https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/pr272192

Beyond the Book: Creation Myths
https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/btb/index.cfm/ref/pr272192

Genesis by Guido Tonelli is a meaty meal for readers hungry to know about the Big Bang and what came next.

Popular science books represent an important niche in non-fiction. They build a bridge between academic journals that may only be accessible to readers with a PhD of their own and the layperson who is eager to know more but may not have the necessary background for it. By reading books like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens, we gain access to a world of scientific knowledge, condensed into digestible information for the everyday reader.

Genesis by Guido Tonelli provides its own bridge into the origins of the universe. Occasionally, it proves to be a little too intense for the person of average knowledge, presenting scientific and mathematical theories without a useful metaphor to guide us through the mire. Most of the time, however, Tonelli takes complex theories and observations, and offers them to us in a way that is at once fascinating and accessible.

Read the full review at BookBrowse.

Beautiful, lyrical, and profoundly human, this book tackles one of the oldest and most important questions—how did we get here? What happened at the moment of creation?

I'm an artist by profession, not a scientist, but I found the text accessible and enjoyable. In addition to the facts, the author brought surprising perspectives, putting the discoveries of particle physics in context. I'll have to read it again to really understand it, but I look forward to that. It's worth a second read.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Particle physicist Guido Tonelli uses ye olde seven days of biblical creation as a metaphor for the beginnings of the universe, life, and humanity in Genesis. A star player in the discovery of the Higgs Boson, Tonelli is uniquely positioned to tell the epic history that ranges from the Void to the iPhone. As I soon discovered, a background in physics would have been a huge boon in reading this as I was frequently lost in some of the more theoretical musings. However, Tonelli writes with a poetic flair and a zeal sufficient to keep the layman interested throughout. Of particular note are Tonelli’s description of black holes and dark matter, two hard to conceive of but consistently intriguing topics in the field.

Tonelli waxes romantic multiple times about just how ridiculous it is that any of this exists when the variables are considered. One of my favorite bits was the description of the collision between Earth and another heavenly body that formed the moon, and the moon’s subsequent role in allowing life to form on Earth. Guess what? No collision, no moon; no moon, no you or me! While this book won’t make a physicist out of you, it might make you appreciate your place in this light show a bit more so it comes recommended.

*I was given a copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.**

Writing too ponderous for enjoyment

I found the writing in this book to be too ponderous. More of my reading time was spent trying to decipher the writing than in assimilating new information. While some of the analogies used to explain the science were excellent, these were buried under layers of poetic text that obscured any of the science. I was not getting what I wanted out of the book and stopped reading about a quarter of the way through. Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advance reader copy.

The word genesis alludes to the origin or cause of something, in this context that is the purpose of the book, to explain how life was created on earth but of course with a physical approach oriented to the universe and matter.

Equations might lack the evocative power of poetry, but the concepts of modern cosmology – a universe that was born from a fluctuation in the quantum void, or from cosmic inflation – can still take our breath away.

The book uses as an analogy the seven days of creation that come in the Bible to explain how the universe was formed. The book is very structured and the reading is quite fluid, I liked that the author didn't need mathematical formulas to explain different phenomena that are complex.

With this, I would like to emphasize that a degree of knowledge of physics, quantum mechanics, and transport phenomena is needed to understand the book since some basic concepts are not explained. For example, various terms of thermodynamics are related in some instances or basic laws of physics.

Personally, the first chapters were boring and repetitive, in the same way, many parts of the book felt unnecessary, although it was interesting how it related art, culture, and myths with physical concepts.

Something that I cannot put aside is the fact that it had no references, honestly, with that, I lowered my qualification. It would also have been interesting if some image of the phenomena described had been presented, in general, it's a good book.

‘Where does all this come from?’

Is this book for you?

Perfect for: Interested in the universe, physics, and science.
Do I recommend it? Yes.

My thanks to the author Guido Tonelli, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for the opportunity to get this ARC for an unbiased review.

As a PhD in physics, I read this book with eagerness and was intrigued with how Tonelli managed to put into words, without any formula or mathematical tool, the most complex descriptions of theoretical physics of the universe, from genesis to current evolution.
The understanding of the content is obviously differentiated according to the reader's specific level of scientific culture. For example, it is not for everyone to correlate symmetries and conservation principles or to intuit the mechanism of quantum fluctuation. As a physicist, I find that the fundamental concept transmitted to the reader is that of the Galilean method: among the various theories and mathematical models proposed, only the one capable of making predictions that are confirmed experimentally is the winner.
Definitely a book for everyone curious about how reality works.
I didn't really appreciate the "biblical" structure of the volume, but content is great.

Dedicated physicists professionally pursue the oldest question of humankind: Where did all of this--our world, galaxy, our universe--come from? How did it all begin? Guido Tonelli is the latest in the field to take up this question in "Genesis," a scholarly thought experiment that imagines in seven days' time how the entire universe was born and life as we know it today was made.

Written for astronomy buffs first, popular science enthusiasts second, and a general audience third, what makes Tonelli's new book feel fresh is the incorporation of the latest developments in cosmology and particle physics; a genuine attempt to fulfill a thought experiment throughout the bulk of the narrative; and a special focus on the context and early stages of the birth of the universe. While the density of the prose may remind some readers of college-level textbooks, every section is a chance to learn a new subject--from star formation to cosmological history--with thoroughness and lasting appeal.

"Genesis" is bookended by the humanistic purpose and appeal of continuing to study science, art, philosophy, and religion as the fundamental basis of culture. Having a creation story or myth is the first sign of an emerging culture, and this deeply human tradition is cosmological in nature. It often begins with what the Greeks called "thauma," a sense of wonder borne out of amazement and terror, something that the modernists would call the sublime. But in answering this unavoidable question of how everything began, we have found since the modern era that the scientific method is the most convincing, authoritative, and entertaining route of pursuit.

And so Tonelli begins his thought experiment of how the universe was born, from the emergence of "the void" and the crack of the Big Bang, to the inflation of the universe and the proliferation of dark matter, and lastly to the development of stars, galaxies, planets, and life on Earth.

The most compelling moments of the book for me were the moments that elapsed--less than 10^-21 seconds--between the initial disturbance of the void and the Big Bang itself. Tonelli persuasively argues for two key premises on the origins of the cosmos: the void was not a gaping nothingness ruled by chaos, as so many in the West believe, but a pure space of balance so compact and unbreakable that no quantum fluctuation could break its seal; and then, because something obviously did emerge and usher in the Big Bang, that the universe is not eternal but had a definite point of origin, a beginning that was indeed the very first moment of time. This is an area of popular science writing that is commonly glossed over and that Tonelli slowly and beautifully illustrates with clarity and expertise.

Having reached Day Three of his seven-day thought experiment, most of the material in the chapters that follow will be familiar to readers with a background or demonstrated interest in astronomy. Some of it--not unnecessarily--gets into the finer points of particle physics, leading to writing that less inspiring and reads more like an index of necessary terms. But even those familiar with the science behind stellar and galactic birth and death cycles will have their knowledge reinforced and their hearts moved by the vivid celestial sequences portrayed by the author.

No matter how many books I read on the topic of cosmology, I never fail to be intrigued by the latest publication, a distillation of advances in the subject. Discussing a topic that has proved to be of perennial interest to cultures around the world for millennia is always a valuable reminder of our human origins and collective history. Guido Tonelli has added to the celebrated humanist tradition with this new volume of insight into astronomical history, creating a compelling mental journey through the cosmos that will inspire readers to look out at the stars with wonder, terror, and amazement.