The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
Brian Greene
2005, 592 pages

Brian Greene has a knack for making physics theory accessible. He doesn't over-simplify or cut any corners (as far as I can tell, anyway) - instead, he goes over each topic thoroughly before moving on, refers to early chapters when they apply to something new, and uses plenty of pop culture references (the chapter on quantum entanglement is essentially an extremely geeky X-Files fic). I've now read both this and his earlier book, The Elegant Universe, and have been very happy with both. If anything, this was an easier read than The Elegant Universe. Possibly because I was constantly applying it to Fringe, Doctor Who, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Fandom: The Ultimate Retention Aid.

Before reading, my knowledge of everything past basic quantum mechanics was pretty patchy - I didn't know anything about the Higgs mechanism, the details of M-Theory, or Brane Cosmology, and now I do! Greene's a big proponent of string theory so I still don't know much about loop quantum gravity (an alternate contender for the Theory Of Everything), but I suppose that's what the Internet's for.

The only downside is that the book was published in 2005 and, while there haven't been any major breakthroughs since, the information's still six years out of date (I didn't notice until Greene started talking about the construction of the Large Hadron Collider as a future event). Again, Internet, it's for porn research. Already it's told me Greene put a new book out earlier this year, which I'll have to pick up once it drops in price a little.

There wasn't as much discussion of time travel/extra-dimensional travel/etc as I was hoping (for scifi_fest purposes), but it gave me a good place to start from.