[A] captivating narrative, starting from Max Planck's discovery that the electromagnetic radiation emitted by matter required that it was emitted or absorbed in bits, discrete units, or 'quanta, ' to the famous debate between Einstein and Bohr, always focusing on what quantum mechanics meant for our notion about what is real.--Heinrich Päs "Literary Hub"
Exhilarating...Reading [Quantum] is a bit like lifting the hood of your mind and moving the working parts around; it's challenging and trippy--as only the Dr. Seuss realm of the quantum can be.--Laura Miller "Salon"
Lively....Chock-full of colorful characters.--Graham Farmelo "New York Times Book Review"
Manjit Kumar's book is an exhaustive and brilliant account of decades of emotionally charged discovery and argument, friendship and rivalry spanning two world wars....but the real meat of the book is the explanations of science and philosophical interpretation, which are pitched with an ideal clarity for the general reader.--Steven Poole "Guardian"
[Kumar] leavens the mind-bending with sketches of the remarkable human beings involved in this godlike enterprise.--Sara Lippincott "Los Angeles Times"
A necessary, mesmerizing and meticulous volume.--Sam Coale "Providence Journal"
A super-collider of a book, shaking together an exotic cocktail of free-thinking physicists, tracing their chaotic interactions and seeing what God-particles and black holes fly up out of the maelstrom... Provides probably the most lucid and detailed intellectual history ever written of a body of theory that makes other scientific revolutions look limp-wristed by comparison.-- "The Independent [UK]"
Kumar brings lucidity and a sense of drama to what is usually considered by lay readers as an esoteric, bubble-chambered subject. He does this without sacrificing the 'science of it' at the altar of readability. The triumphs and the tribulations, the politics and the physics, the humanity and the genius of the protagonists all collide to produce the sort of energy that we usually expect in a Le Carre thriller.-- "The Hindustan Times"
Kumar is an accomplished writer who knows how to separate the excitement of the chase from the sometimes impenetrable mathematics.-- "Financial Times"
One of the best guides yet to the central conundrums of modern physics.--John Banville, author of The Sea