You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe - Hardcover

Potter, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061137863 ISBN 13: 9780061137860

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2009

Synopsis

"You Are Here is not just physics for poets, but as close to poetry or music as science is ever likely to get. Christopher Potter's narrative is as imaginative, ingenious, and elegantly concise as it is user-friendly." -- Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind

"A personal, brilliant, and often amusing account . . . . An idiosyncratic, encyclopedic blitzkrieg of a book." --The Boston Globe

"The Verdict: Read." -- Time

Christopher Potter's You Are Here is a lively and accessible biography of the universe--how it fits together and how we fit into it--in the style of science writers like Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, and Richard Feynman, as seen through the lens of today's most cutting-edge scientific thinking.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

You Are Here is a dazzling exploration of the universe and our relationship to it, as seen through the lens of today's most cutting-edge scientific thinking. Christopher Potter brilliantly parses the meaning of what we call the universe. He tells the story of how something evolved from nothing and how something became everything. What does a material description of everything and nothing look like? What is it that science does when it describes a reality that is made out of something? In between nothing and everything is where we live.

Here, for the first time in a single span, is the life of the universe, from quarks to galaxy superclusters and from slime to Homo sapiens. The universe was once a moment of perfect symmetry and is now 13.7 billion years of history. Clouds of gas were woven into whatever complexity we find in the universe today: the hierarchies of stars or the brains of mammals. Potter writes entertainingly about the history and philosophy of science, and he shows that science advances by continually removing humankind from a position of primacy in the universe, but the universe responds by placing us back there again.

With wisdom and wonder, Potter traverses the cosmos from its conception to its eventual end--while exploring everything in between.

About the Author:

Christopher Potter is the former publisher and managing director of 4th Estate. He lives in London and New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0061137863
• ISBN 13: 9780061137860
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 294