alt Hacker NewsThere was never a time when a book gave the public an overview of the universe. ABHOT was so popular for being a book no one actually read, theres even an index named after Hawking due to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_Index
Did _you_ read that book?
There however definitely was a piece of media that captured public minds and educated them about the cosmos. And that was the show Cosmos. The original of course. Not the NDT drivel.
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I did read the book, and know enough people who did. Now I may have weird interests, but that describes basically half the inhabitants of this site.
BTW, as non-USAian, I never saw Cosmos and never heard of NDT.
From that list I've read three books: "A Brief History of Time", "Thinking, Fast and Slow", and "Capital in XXI Century". First two I've read from start to end. The last I didn't read to the end, I think I've read ~50% of it. My numbers correlate with that list, the least "readable" book in the list is the book I didn't read through.
However I still doubt the methodology. It is not obvious for me that if a book was read in full, then highlights from it would be distributed uniformly all over the book.
Interesting. I've been gifted that book at just the right time in my life as a teenager. It captured me. I read it the to end many times. Not understanding everything or course. But it created a spark which laid the groundwork for my entire career.
I've never seen cosmos.
I did read it and I'm sure a whole generation of people also did, it is a very clear and readable book. Don't underestimate or minimize the impact of Hawking's book when it was released.
i will never forget learning about Eratosthenes when i was very young and should have been playing Excitebike or something
I am pretty certain this "hawking index" meme must be a new-ish thing. I read the book as teenager and know also others who did. It is a fairly easily readable book imo, so I don't think this characterisation is warranted by the qualities of the book itself.
I suspect that a popsci book becoming a bestseller creates a larger-than-the-usual-nerds audience, a big part of which lacks the motivation to actually finish it. I expect that in places like this you will find higher frequency of people who have actually read it.
Moreover, when i read the book i did not have easy access to pop-sci sources as a (practically pre-internet) teenager in a small town of a small country, like i would have had today. I got upon a booklet of a small publishing house with the titles of translated pop-sci books and would order them from a local bookstore. Maybe if I was already familiar enough with the topic through youtube videos etc I would not have finished either.