Wasn’t in a hurry, but also wasn’t smart enough. It doesn't take long to realize that NDT gets in the weeds and assumes the reader is proficient in the prerequisites of physics and chemistry. He skips a lot of the basics to discuss complex topics like dark matter and dark energy, presenting more questions than answers.

I appreciate any attempt to make difficult subjects more accessible. But after looking up scientific terms every other page and glossing over sentences like "If you take the matter-energy density of the universe and divide it by the matter-energy density required to just barely halt the expansion (known as the “critical” density), you get omega”, I felt like NDT wasn’t really writing for the uninitiated reader. And that’s ok, except that the book's title and description make it seem much more accessible.

I thought Hawking’s “The Universe in a Nutshell” was much more organized and easier to understand, which is saying a lot. NDT’s Cosmos series was great—having something to visualize probably helps. There’s a lot here, but my comprehension and retention rate was very low.

Some highlights of words used casually without explanation, to give an idea of expected proficiency:
transmogrifications
cyanogen
phrenological
flotsam
coagulate
neutrinos
corona
exobiologists
crystal lattice
cyclotron
radioisotope thermoelectric generators
sesquipedalian
* extremophiles