“Excellent.”—Steven Poole, The Wall Street Journal • “Terrific.”—Liz Else, New Scientist (Best Popular Science Books of 2025 So Far) • “A brilliant overview of the state of modern cosmology.”—Alex O'Connor, alexoconnor.com • “This will expand readers’ minds.”—Publishers Weekly • One of Smithsonian's Ten Best Scie...

By most popular accounts, the universe started with a bang some 13.8 billion years ago. But what happened before the Big Bang? And how do we know it happened at all? Here prominent cosmologist Niayesh Afshordi and science communicator Phil Halper offer a tour of the peculiar possibilities: bouncing and cyclic universes, time loops, creations from nothing, multiverses, black hole births, string theories, and holograms. Along the way, they offer both a call for new physics and a riveting sto...

The epic stories of our planet's 4.54-billion-year history are written in strata―ages-old remnants of ancient seafloors, desert dunes, and riverbeds striping landscapes around the world. In this brilliantly original debut work, science writer Laura Poppick decodes strata to lead us on a journey through four global transformations that made our lives on Earth possible: the first accumulations of oxygen in the atmosphere; the deep freezes of "Snowball Earth"; the rise of mud on land and acco...

Bloomsbury presents Island at the Edge of the World, written and read by Mike Pitts.'The true and fascinating story of Easter Island and its amazing statues' KEN FOLLETTWhere did they come from? How did they get there? Why did they carve the island’s colossal iconic statues – and how? What happened to the civilisation they created?These are just a few of the questions about Easter Island, or Rapa Nui

Bestselling author and acclaimed physicist Lawrence Krauss offers a paradigm-shifting view of how everything that exists came to be in the first place.“Where did the universe come from? What was there before it? What will the future bring? And finally, why is there something rather than nothing?”One of the few prominent scientists today to have crossed the chasm between science and popular culture, Krauss describes the staggeringly beautiful experimental ob...

A Nobel Prize–winning physicist's "funny, clever, entertaining" account of the history of particle physics and the hunt for a Higgs boson ( Library Journal).In this extraordinarily accessible and witty book, Leon Lederman—"the most engaging physicist since the late, much-missed Richard Feynman" ( San Francisco Examiner)—offers a fascinating tour that takes us from the Greeks' earliest scientific observations through Einstein and beyond in an inspi...

From award-winning physicist, public intellectual, and the bestselling author of A Universe from Nothing Lawrence Krauss, comes “a masterful blend of history, modern physics, and cosmic perspective that empowers the reader to not only embrace our understanding of the universe, but also revel in what remains to be discovered” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, American Museum of Natural History).In this grand poetic vision of the universe, Lawrence Krauss tells the dram...

Sunday Times Science Book of the Year 2011.We are poised on the edge of discovery in particle physics (the study of the smallest objects we know of) and cosmology (the study of the largest), and when these breakthroughs come, they will revolutionise what we think we know about the universe, and the modern world.Lisa Randall guides us through the latest ideas, charting the thrilling progress we have made in understanding the universe – from Galileo ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Thirteen extraordinary essays shed new light on the mystery of the universe—and on one of the most brilliant thinkers of our time.“[Hawking] sprinkles his explanations with a wry sense of humor and a keen awareness that the sciences today delve not only into the far reaches of the cosmos, but into the inner philosophical world as well.”—The New York Times Book ReviewIn his phenomenal bestseller ...

Winner of the prestigious 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books“A modern voyage of discovery.” —Frank Wilczek, Nobel Laureate, author of The Lightness of BeingThe Higgs boson is one of our era’s most fascinating scientific frontiers and the key to understanding why mass exists. The most recent book on the subject, The God Particle, was a bestseller. Now, Caltech physicist Sean Carroll documents the doorway that...

**Two world-renowned scientists present an audacious new vision of the cosmos that “steals the thunder from the Big Bang theory.” —**Wall Street JournalThe Big Bang theory—widely regarded as the leading explanation for the origin of the universe—posits that space and time sprang into being about 14 billion years ago in a hot, expanding fireball of nearly infinite density. Over the last three decades the theory has been repeatedly revised to address such is...

"One of the best popular accounts of how Einstein and his followers have been trying to explain the universe for decades" ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review).Physicists have been exploring, debating, and questioning the general theory of relativity ever since Albert Einstein first presented it in 1915. This has driven their work to unveil the universe's surprising secrets even further, and many believe more wonders remain hidden within the t...