Okay, I confess: I didn’t understand everything in Leonard Susskind’s THE BLACK HOLE WAR: MY BATTLE WITH STEPHEN HAWKING TO MAKE THE WORLD SAFE FOR QUANTUM MECHANICS (Little, Brown, 2008). But Susskind delivers a convincing description of quantum mechanics, better than anything I’ve read before. Susskind provides plenty of illustrations and examples to help explain these mind-boggling concepts. Where Susskind lost me was in the intricacies of String Theory. However, if you’re interested in where contemporary physics is headed, THE BLACK HOLE WAR is the place to start.

Everybody knows who Albert Einstein is, but how many people would recognize the name Ernest Rutherford? Rutherford was the improbable, unlikely genius from rural New Zealand who figured out the structure of the atom. Richard Reeves, in his fascinating A FORCE OF NATURE, makes the convincing claim that Rutherford’s experiments in physics make him the equal of Einstein. You won’t get any argument from me.