Albert Einstein's Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (1920) is a cornerstone of modern physics. Einstein intended this book for "those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus." Indeed, within the vast literature on the philosophy of space and time, Einstein'sRelativity shall remain an illuminable and intelligible exposition,...

"From the world-renowned physicist, co-founder of the World Science Festival, and best-selling author of The Elegant Universe comes this utterly captivating exploration of deep time and humanity's search for purpose. Brian Greene takes readers on a breathtaking journey from the big bang to the end of time and invites us to ponder meaning in the face of this unimaginable expanse. He shows us how, from its original orderly state the universe has been...

A mind-bending, relentlessly paced science-fiction thriller, in which an ordinary man is kidnapped, knocked unconscious--and awakens in a world inexplicably different from the reality he thought he knew. One night after an evening out, Jason Dessen, forty-year-old physics professor living with his wife and son in Chicago, is kidnapped at gunpoint by a masked man, driven to an abandoned industrial site and injected with a powerful drug. As he wakes,...

"Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions: What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there wasa robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? What if everyone only had one soulmate? What would happen if the moon went away? In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves...

"Michio Kaku, renowned theoretical physicist and author of Hyperspace and The Future of Humanity, tells the story of the greatest quest in science. When Newton discovered the laws of motion and gravity, he unified the rules of heaven and earth. From then on, physicists have been discovering new forces and incorporating them into ever-greater theories. But the major breakthroughs of the 20th century--relativity and quantum mechanics--are incompatible,...

A theoretical astrophysicist explores the ideas that transformed our knowledge of the universe over the past century.
 
The cosmos, once understood as a stagnant place, filled with the ordinary, is now a universe that is expanding at an accelerating pace, propelled by dark energy and structured by dark matter. Priyamvada Natarajan, our guide to these ideas, is someone at the forefront of the research—an astrophysicist...

"A contrarian scientist wrestles with the big questions that modern physics raises, and what physics says about the human condition Not only can we not currently explain the origin of the universe, it is questionable we will ever be able to explain it. The notion that there are universes within particles, or that particles are conscious, is ascientific, as is the hypothesis that our universe is a computer simulation. On the other hand, the idea that...

"At the start of the twentieth century, our knowledge of science appeared complete and it seemed that the laws of nature were almost all discovered, but then we woke a sleeping giant--we discovered quantum mechanics. In the quantum realm, objects can be in two places at once. It's a place where time travel is not only possible, but necessary. It's a place where cause and effect can happen in reverse and observing something changes its state. From...

The first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. Biographer Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk--a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate--became the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe. His success came from questioning conventional...

The Authorized Albert Einstein Archives Edition: A fascinating collection of Einstein's observations about life, religion, nationalism, and a host of personal topics that engaged the genius's intellect. In the aftermath of the First World War, Albert Einstein writes about his hopes for the League of Nations, his feelings as a German citizen about the growing anti-Semitism and nationalism of his country, and his myriad opinions about the current affairs...