The Grand Design - Hardcover

When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? Is the apparent 'grand design' of our universe evidence for a benevolent creator who set things in motion? Or does science offer another explanation? In The Grand Design, the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe is presented in language marked by both brilliance and simplicity.

The Grand Design explains the latest thoughts about model-dependent realism (the idea that there is no one version of reality), and about the multiverse concept of reality in which there are many universes. There are new ideas about the top-down theory of cosmology (the idea that there is no one history of the universe, but that every possible history exists). It concludes with a riveting assessment of m-theory, and discusses whether it is the unified theory Einstein spent a lifetime searching for.

This is the first major work in nearly a decade by one of the world's greatest thinkers. A succinct, startling and lavishly illustrated guide to discoveries that are altering our understanding and threatening some of our most cherished belief systems, The Grand Design is a book that will inform - and provoke - like no other.

STEPHEN HAWKING held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, the chair held by Isaac Newton in 1663, for thirty years. Professor Hawking is now Director of Research for the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. He has over a dozen honorary degrees, and was awarded the Companion of Honour in 1989. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the US Natonal Academy of Science. His books include the bestselling A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, The Universe in a Nutshell and A Briefer History of Time. Stephen Hawking is regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Einstein. He lives in Cambridge.

Leonard Mlodinow is a physicist at Caltech University and the bestselling author of The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives, Euclid's Window: the Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace, and Feynman's Rainbow:A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life. He has also been a writer for Star Trek: the Next Generation. He lives in South Pasadena, California.