I bought this book, not necessarily to learn more about black holes, but rather to have a clearer idea about what brought Hooft and Susskind design the holographic principle and the assumption of the holographic universe (Maldacena has helped them). Always brilliant and creative, Leonard Susskind fish a little by the lack of continuity in the demonstration. But this book is that even very useful to understand this completely innovative idea of a hologram Universe !! And it is very interesting that Stephen Hawking, that most of the media in their naive ignorance, are at the level of Einstein and Newton, which is far from the case, finally agreed to his defeat and s be mistaken, arguing (in the late 70s) that black end one day disappear evaporate never making all information about himself or what might engulf q'u'il has throughout its "Life" flagrant violation of the second law of thermodynamics. This is what led Susskind, among others, who did not accept this violation, to imagine how the information was kept by a kind of replication on the surface of the horizon of the black hole, which as Q.bits the dimensions are those of the Planck length, and spread over the entire surface of the horizon of the black hole events, Planck area portions. Hence the idea that one can describe and reconstruct a black hole and he could swallow, for what happens on the surface "flat" 2D of its Horizon, similar to the way which can restore a 3-dimensional object with a hologram. He had only to plunge, introducing this fabulous concept of holographic principle to the universe, which is a closed system, such as black holes and possessing a cosmic horizon, or all past events present and future would be registered on a "flat" 2D area !! In fact all that exists, the galaxies, the stars, the earth, ourselves, seriont registered in 2 dimensions, form of scrambled information Q.bits quantified (quantum bits) on a flat surface located far on the border of the universe and that would be returned, as in a hologram, has the inside in what physicists call the Bulk, as a 3-dimensional objects, that is to say, earth, galaxies, etc. Fantastic is not it ?? !!! Yet it Holographic Principle, no longer a mere hypothesis ets, but begins to become one of the most solid pillars of physics. It remains to prove it experimentally, which seems to you it would be possible in the near future !!!
So an excellent book to find out (despite some lack of continuity in the demonstration), virtually in real time, a new vision of the universe that could revolutionize designs that seemed set for decades about the Universe "event as important that the Copernican revolution has his day !!!!