[2] Aaronson has stated that he intends the book to be at the same level as Leonard Susskind's The Theoretical Minimum or Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality;[3] Physics Today compared it to George Gamow's One Two Three...

[7] In the Journal of the American Mathematical Society, Avi Wigderson considered it to have "much insight, wisdom, and fun", but conceded that it "is not for everyone".

Widgerson noted in particular that the book would have been easier to read if it had provided more background material, and that it had little in the way of references to prior literature.

[8] Reviewing the book for Physics Today, Francis Sullivan deemed it "stimulating", while saying that it "covers too much territory to be used as a textbook" and taking exception with Aaronson's attitude "that mathematicians like complication because it makes things more interesting".

[4] Frederic Green's enthusiastic review for SIGACT News also judged the book poorly suited for a classroom text, except possibly in "a seminar-style course with a fairly open structure".