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The Ascent of Gravity

The Quest to Understand the Force That Explains Everything

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The Ascent of Gravity

By: Marcus Chown
Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
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About this listen

Gravity is the weakest force in the everyday world, yet it is the strongest force in the universe. It was the first force to be recognised and described, yet it is the least understood. It is a 'force' that keeps your feet on the ground, yet no such force actually exists. Gravity, to steal the words of Winston Churchill, is 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. And penetrating that enigma promises to answer the biggest questions in science: what is space? What is time? What is the universe? And where did it all come from?

Award-winning writer Marcus Chown takes us on an unforgettable journey from the recognition of the 'force' of gravity in 1666 to the discovery of gravitational waves in 2015. And as we stand on the brink of a seismic revolution in our worldview, he brings us up to speed on the greatest challenge ever to confront physics.

Read by Adjoa Andoh.

©2017 Marcus Chown (P)2017 Orion Publishing Group History History & Philosophy Physics Science Mathematics Black Hole Feel-Good Astronomy Cosmology Solar System

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All stars
Most relevant  
This is a well written introduction to historical and contemporary issues in physics, and requires no sophisticated understanding of math.

One extremely annoying this about the narrator's performance is her awful, flat, and comical rendition of an American accent. She sounds like she's doing an imitation of the late Duchess of Windsor. There's no reason to do any accents at all.

Interesting and graspable

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The analogues are well made, enabling clear and logical explanation of immensely complicated theories and ideas.

A fascinating and well rounded book

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Great material as ever, but appalling accents when quoting Einstein etc. Also please get narrators to check pronunciations they are not sure of (eg Feynman).

Why the accents ...

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Narration is everything with an audiobook (I have abandoned many due to poor narration .....dull, monotone being prime amongst the reasons) but Ashoka Andoh is brilliant. Great author (Chown is probably the best popular physics writer in the world right now) with a truly engaging "story". I can't recommend this book highly enough!

Brilliant and engaging!

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I thoroughly enjoyed this audio book, it bought a marvellous subject to life, well done!

Genius throughout!

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The narrator had a pleasant voice and style. But why did she decide to parody all the non-british scientists quoted by putting on a weird quasi racist stereotypical accent for the country they came from? It was really disturbing. And her idea of a Canadian accent sounded like a disney cartoon animal. As to Richard Feynman well she was so far off the mark it just played on my mind for ages. And did she really not know how to pronounce "integer"? She could have looked that one up at least.

good book

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The audio book the ascent of gravity is a very well rounded picture of everything we know about physics from the classic laws through to the cutting edge of theoretical physics

A book much bigger than it's title

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I would have given top marks for the narration except for the appalling cartoon accents that littered the performance. A few words were consistently mispronounced (e.g. vacuum and Feynman) which leads me to believe this wasn't edited by a native English speaker. The book was an otherwise decent summary of the current scientific understanding of gravity.

Cartoon accents were very distracting

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A great read and easily followed. The only slight criticism is the narrators bizarre pronunciation of Vacuum... listen and you’ll see what I mean.

Excellent and easily understandable

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Who made this poor lady do all those accents and impressions. Spoiled an otherwise good performance. To the producers: these embellishments were really not needed.

Questionable narration

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