# The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose

3 Hacker News commenters recommended The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Praised as a broad, nonrigorous overview of physics and mathematics, though its first part is a long mathematical foundation. Critics say it is hard to learn from directly.

## Why people recommend it

- Broad nonrigorous overview of physics (2 comments): "Road to Reality is good to get a general overview of everything but I dont think you can actually learn the things he talks about" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46478325)) "For a nonrigorous introduction/overview:" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46478252))
- Called excellent by a reader (1 comments): "Road to Reality is excellent. Be warned the first 382 pages are just building the mathematical foundation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46478190))
- Useful history of mathematics (1 comments): "You could read a book about the history of mathematics, for example Roger Penrose's Road to Reality." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263306))

## What people warn about

- Hard to learn from directly (1 comments): "Road to Reality is good to get a general overview of everything but I dont think you can actually learn the things he talks about" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46478325))
- Only useful after learning it (1 comments): "it's only useful if you've already learned it once and forgotten it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46478333))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Feynman, Leighton and Sands](https://hackerapproved.com/p/feynman-lectures-on-physics.md): 34 recommend
- [Course of Theoretical Physics by Landau and Lifshitz](https://hackerapproved.com/p/course-of-theoretical-physics.md): 8 recommend
- [Computational Physics (2nd Edition) by Giordano and Nakanishi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/computational-physics.md): 7 recommend
- [General Relativity by Robert Wald](https://hackerapproved.com/p/general-relativity.md): 6 recommend
- [Engineering Thermodynamics](https://hackerapproved.com/p/free-textbook-on-engineering-thermodynamics.md): 6 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679776311?tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Bookshop.org](https://bookshop.org/a/130825/9780679776314) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose", https://hackerapproved.com/p/road-to-reality/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).