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Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

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Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

By: Carlo Rovelli, Erica Segre - translator, Simon Carnell - translator
Narrated by: Carlo Rovelli
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Summary

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics written and read by Carlo Rovelli.

These seven "short lessons" guide us, with admirable clarity, through the scientific revolution that shook physics in the twentieth century and still continues to shake us today. In this short, playful, entertaining and mind-bending introduction to modern physics, Rovelli explains Einstein's theory of general relativity, quantum mechanics, black holes, the complex architecture of the universe, elementary particles, gravity, and the nature of the mind. In under one hundred pages, readers will understand the most transformative scientific discoveries of the twentieth century. Not since Richard Feynman's celebrated best-seller Six Easy Pieces has physics been so vividly, intelligently and entertainingly revealed.

Carlo Rovelli is an eminent physicist with an extraordinary ability to write about complex topics in a lucid, clear prose. His book was top of the bestseller charts in Italy for months and has sold over 200,000 copies since publication in November. He is the head of the Équipe de Gravité Quantique at the Theoretical Physics Department of Aix-Marseille University. It has sold in over a dozen languages.

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Critic Reviews

Intense and extremely beautiful
Scientists are poets and their theories appear to capture the meaning of everything
All stars
Most relevant
Perfectly to the core of reality. Wonderful and enlightening. A singular genius, both in physics but also in perspective.

Can't wait for more.

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A great little physics lesson, well written and well narrated, I think it really adds substance having it read by the author since he knows exactly what he is trying to express

short and sweet

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Signore Rovelli takes on the small task of explaining… well, everything that has occurred in physics in the 20th century - and the Q&A it has sparked. In Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, he strolls through general relativity, quanta, the cosmos, particles, “grains of space,” black holes, and finally pauses to ask, with admirable calm, “so where does this leave us?” - a question readers may also find themselves muttering somewhere around lesson three.
This isn’t a book you finish with the smug certainty of having “mastered physics.” If anything, you finish it with better questions, a mild sense of cosmic vertigo, and the suspicion that the universe is far more elegant (and far stranger) than your high school teacher let on. Nor is it aimed at seasoned physicists, who presumably already have enough existential crises to manage. It’s written for the rest of us - the curious laypeople - on the generous assumption that everyone deserves a glimpse behind the curtain of reality.
For me, the experience was equal parts fascination, awe, and gratitude - like reading poetry, if poetry occasionally bent spacetime. Carlo Rovelli writes with a playful lightness, a sharp awareness of his audience, and deep respect for the scientific giants whose shoulders he cheerfully stands on.
If you’ve encountered his other works - Anaximander, Reality Is Not What It Seems, Helgoland, or especially The Order of Time - you’ll recognize his uncanny knack for making the incomprehensible feel briefly, tantalizingly within reach. He guides us from the murky depths of the past to the equally mysterious edges of the future, all in under a hundred pages - no small feat.
In short: I loved it. I didn’t understand all of it - but I suspect that’s partly the point.

A brilliantly brainy Signore Rovelli delivers

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That was a beautiful experience. Content, flow, and narration. A very enjoyable few hours. Thank you

Beautiful

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I thoroughly enjoyed this, never thought Physics could be so poetic! it was great to hear the writer read his own work too.

Beautifully written

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