Someone recently asked for a recommendation on a good book on modern cosmology. That's easy - unless you have an understanding of differential geometry and general relatively, Alan Guth's The Inflationary Universe is simply the best book on the subject.
What makes this book remarkable is that Guth describes the motivation and development for the theory. His style, unlike many of his peers, is engaging and lucid. A bright tenth grader can understand the book and gain some insight into the world of modern physics.
The version I have is a few years old (1998) and much has taken place in the years since that support inflation (actually new inflation). There are still a huge number of questions - in fact many more questions than there were twenty years ago - but that is the sign of really good science.
Read it - anyone who hopes to follow scientific developments of the past few decades owes it to themselves.
Here is a short interview with Alan...
http://www.edge.org/documents/day/day_guth.html
Stephen Hawking's latest book, The Universe in a Nutshell, is also worth noting. It is clearly worth reading, but lacks detail on the important topic of inflation.
An good undergrad level introduction to the subject (assuming the undergrad has a strong math background) lurks on the web.
http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Watson/Watson_contents.html
Of course there are more than a few cranks on the Net. Here is a recent example of pseudoscience and paranoia at its best
http://www.prep2003.com/index.html
And of course there is recent evidence that Florida is marching back to medieval times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/23/opinion/23KRIS.html
5:38:18 AM 
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