What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson.

But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.

While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.

The Grand Design is a marvelously concise book that provides new answers to the ultimate questions of life. When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? These fundamental questions, once the province of philosophy, are now explored through the lens of science.

In this groundbreaking work, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow present the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe, using nontechnical language marked by both brilliance and simplicity. According to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence or history, but rather every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously. This challenges the very notion of cause and effect.

The authors explore the "top-down" approach to cosmology, suggesting that the past takes no definite form and that we create history by observing it. They further explain that we are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe and introduce the concept of the "multiverse"—the idea that our universe is just one of many that appeared spontaneously, each with different laws of nature.

Hawking and Mlodinow question conventional concepts of reality, proposing a "model-dependent" theory of reality as the best we can hope to find. They conclude with a riveting assessment of M-theory, the only viable candidate for a complete "theory of everything," potentially the unified theory that Einstein was seeking.

This succinct, startling, and lavishly illustrated guide to discoveries is altering our understanding and challenging some of our most cherished belief systems. The Grand Design is a book that will inform—and provoke—like no other.

A landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking’s book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending—or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends?

Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,” of the big bang and a bigger God—where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.