SOURCE: "State of Mind," in New Republic, Vol. 207, No. 14, September 28, 1992, pp. 28, 30.

In the review below, Kauffmann praises A Reader's Companion and the film inspired by Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

Bantam has recently published A Reader's Companion to A Brief History of Time, edited by Stephen Hawking, and a companion it is—not to the book but to the documentary film of that title just released here. Hawking says in his foreword that "this is The Book of The Film of The Book. I don't know if they are planning a Film of The Book of The Film of The Book."

He can well be jocular: his joke is about a useful book about a completely fascinating film, itself occasioned by a book on theoretical physics that has sold five-and-a-half million copies in thirty languages, written—as many more millions know—by a shrunken and paralyzed Englishman...