Taken together, the books make for perhaps 3-4 weekends worth of serious reading effort. What I learned from these two books is that first, it is not sound even in principle, and second, it is not even a theory at all - just a collection of mathematical clues to the existence of a potential theory. I suspect if you’ve been following physics through casual browsing and media reports like I have, you have probably formed an opinion along these lines: superstring theory is the only game in town, and is basically in good shape except that it cannot be experimentally verified because the energies involved are “too high.” That is, you probably thought it is a sound scientific theory in principle, just not verifiable in practice. It is starting to get seriously interesting again. If you, like me, have been distracted from the foundational problems of physics by the ongoing two-decade fascination with chaos and complexity in the popular literature, now is the time to get back to observing the “deep” stuff. Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit and The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin together triangulate the core of the trouble. Two recent popular science books provide a startling peek into the deep scientific and sociological troubles in the world of superstring theory.