I have to admit that due to lacking knowledge in this area (and very limited knowledge in cosmology, physics and mathematics in general), I couldn’t really follow all ideas and models proposed in the popular new cosmology book “Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang” by Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok. So don’t ask me whether I favor one over the other model – I simply can’t judge them, not even from a theoretical point of view. For me as a layman, it’s an interesting reading though already for the fact that the idea of a cyclic universe challenges the very popular, widely believed and almost taken-as-a-fact view of an inflationary universe.
For a next book about this topic though I would prefer one that puts more emphasis on mathematical formulae and derivations rather than prose as I would like to be able to better understand the proposed models and logical consequences. I’d be fine if I was presented a solution to highly complex mathematical equations I couldn’t solve myself (even with the help of Mathematica) as long as I get to know the underlying mathematical formulae and the confidence that others can verify the statements. With prose only in (popular) scientific books I always feel a bit “cheated”. And often, 200 pages of prose equal 10 pages of formulae, so I prefer the latter.
It would be great if the scientific community could find some experimental evidence for or against one or another model in the next couple of years, but that might be the even bigger challenge than the theoretical one, according to this blogpost on Not Even Wrong.