The promise, at least in the early reviews (and in the introduction), is for a comprehensive treatment of the sweep of mathematics and physics written for the serious lay person. Penrose promises not only to make the necessary math accessible to the serious non-mathematician, he promises to reveal the beauty of the mathematics while exploring the interplay between the world of thought and the world of experiment.<br><br>I'm afraid it isn't quite so. This is very tough going if you didn't get much past high school pre-calculus.  I'm more-or-less sticking with it, but this is not easy; nor should it be, I suppose. but one could complain that Penrose promises an easier path than he can deliver.<br><br>On the other hand, I suppose if you regularly scale Mount Everest, then climbing Mount McKinley seems easy to you).