Mirror Mirror - Mark Pendergast

This book took a long time for me to read. Somehow, work, inter-city travel and some more work kept digging potholes and constructing road blocks to stop me from getting through the book. But I fought it all and kept going. And it was worth every bit of it.
Non-fiction books will always be a tricky affair. I don’t think someone who doesn’t read books could have got through a book like this, or for that matter any science history book. But for any bibliophile, this book would be immensely pleasurable. If you are an astronomer then too, this book will serve up a history of your subject in an entirely different perspective.
The book is essentially a history of mirrors. And what a fascinating history it is! The author explores the topic beautifully, right from the BC era to the 21st century, the journey of the mirror from being an extremely rare, expensive and a prized possession when mirror makers were imprisoned to keep their talents within Vienna, to something extremely commonplace; from being a simple reflector of Roman orgies to a devastating weapon. And along the journey, the evolution of human interaction with mirrors in various stages is equally fascinating. The impact of mirrors in painting, literature, astronomy, optical sciences, communications, psychology is astounding. Legend has it that Archimedes burnt enemy ships using a concave reflecting mirror by focusing sun rays to an enemy. It’s not exactly proven whether mirror was used as a weapon then, but now, lasers are quite a popular in weapon sciences. Telescopes have got bigger, better, and are equipped to capture more than just visible light from million of light years away, or light emitted as early as the big bang. And lastly people have changed the way they look at mirrors. From being a simple polished metal, to a scrying for psychic knowledge, to an inseparable fashion accessory, and finally to a ‘true mirror’ which reflects us as we are seen by others is a long journey indeed.
The book charts all these territories and more. The heroes and villains of the story are enumerated exceptionally well. And there are too many of them to mention here. But various people have contributed to the development of mirror, be it in terms of manufacturing them with various materials, or giving them a particular shape, to their applications in earth and space, in various wavelengths of emissions.
Last word is that it is a truly fascinating book about something so commonplace that you hardly think about it. Imagine, there are ‘true mirrors’ which are available which actually do not show a reversed image when you stand in front of it. So that, it shows you how you would appear to other people. That is so extremely against the intuition as far as gazing into a mirror is concerned, and at the same time so novel an experience! I wish I could see myself in a true mirror! The book is an excellent product of some tremendous research and great writing style. Without adequate research the book would have ended up being a hodge-podge mixture of arbitrary information about mirrors. And without great writing style, it could have been reduced to a boring, soporific history text-book. It has all the necessary elements to make a fun read for anyone with a curious mind.

The Theory of Everything - Stephen Hawking

The theory of everything is an interesting concept in itself. I always was intrigued by the idea of origin of universe and its growth. Apparently a lot of people have been interested in it other than me. And their interest has been a lot more active than mine. As it turns out everything that happens can be expressed as mathematical equations. Or at least people have been trying to. I knew “A brief history of time by Stephen Hawking” dwells on the subject too. I just chose to read this book because it had lesser number of pages. And I wanted a summary of the history of time and could do without the technicalities.

But then, even this smaller book is quite dense. You need to have a healthy amount of curiosity to be able to get through this book. In the end, it doesn’t answer any specific question you might have on the universe. In fact, Stephen Hawking is blissfully diplomatic about most things. And there are just so many things in the book that are confusing… obfuscating even. (I forget that character who talked like that)

The topics discussed in this book cover origin of universe and several arguments and theories about it, its growth till the present state, black holes, time and its direction and the concluding chapter on the quest for theory of everything. The good thing is that the book is in English. And even though a lot of concepts are brought in which I didn’t fully understand, the partial understanding of the theme was good enough for me to read this book.

Stephen Hawking mixes philosophy with science very well. And surprisingly, exhibits quite a sense of subtle humor in this science laden book. He puts forth a point that science was once a branch under philosophy. It was when science just got too complicated for the philosophers that it needed specialized studies. The idea is to read this book like a philosopher, and if you have some amount of interest in astronomy. If you don’t, don’t bother going through this one. You will probably get a headache in the first 2 pages.

To end it, the book does not actually give the theory which encompasses everything. It ends with a note that a grand unifying theory will probably emerge from a chain of theories which will sprout over time. And once the “how” of the world is answered… we can go about asking “why”. As I said, deeply philosophical