I so thoroughly enjoyed Greene’s “The Elegant Universe” that I was excited to pick up this book when I saw it came out in trade paperback. I think this is an even better book than its predecessor, and Greene’s lucid explanations of our current understanding of space and time are both passionate and entertaining. I found this book to be immensely satisfying, and it didn’t suffer from the “tough slogging” feeling that gave the previous book its rough spots.

This book takes a slightly different direction than Elegant Universe and focuses instead on the “texture of reality” as the title suggests. What are space and time? Are they fundamental? What are they made of? Does time exist? Does it have an “arrow”, as our common experiences would have us believe? Or are they illusory, or indicative of a deeper reality?

Greene uses both thematic and historical organization, so in typical “history of science” we see the development of ideas, and the changing, yet increasingly precise answers to these fundamental questions as our notions of the constituents and elementary properties of our universe have evolved. Greene has an amazing ability to construct vivid metaphors and illustrations of terribly abstract and mathematical ideas. He’s also fond (as I am) of the Simpsons, so we are treated to accounts of wormholes at the Kwik-e-Mart and Bart and Lisa’s relativistic adventures.

What’s great about really good science writing is the ability of the author to create a real sense of an unfolding story. Science isn’t about known facts and dry ideas, but a living enterprise that is constantly changing, a human story always unfolding. Science is as much about the people who do it as the knowledge and new ideas they uncover.

This kind of science writing really gets me excited about science, and I hope that Greene is turning on a new generation of readers to the excitement of one of humankind’s most interesting pasttimes.