Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation - Hardcover

Burdick, Alan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 141654027X ISBN 13: 9781416540274

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2017

Synopsis

"[Why Time Flies] captures us. Because it opens up a well of fascinating queries and gives us a glimpse of what has become an ever more deepening mystery for humans: the nature of time." --The New York Times Book Review

"Erudite and informative, a joy with many small treasures." --Science

"Time" is the most commonly used noun in the English language; it's always on our minds and it advances through every living moment. But what is time, exactly? Do children experience it the same way adults do? Why does it seem to slow down when we're bored and speed by as we get older? How and why does time fly?

In this witty and meditative exploration, award-winning author and New Yorker staff writer Alan Burdick takes readers on a personal quest to understand how time gets in us and why we perceive it the way we do. In the company of scientists, he visits the most accurate clock in the world (which exists only on paper); discovers that "now" actually happened a split-second ago; finds a twenty-fifth hour in the day; lives in the Arctic to lose all sense of time; and, for one fleeting moment in a neuroscientist's lab, even makes time go backward. Why Time Flies is an instant classic, a vivid and intimate examination of the clocks that tick inside us all.

About this title

Review

"Alan Burdick turns an obsession with the nature of time into a thrilling quest--one that brilliantly illuminates a subject that haunts us all. Time may fly by but at least while reading these pages it is never wasted."--David Grann, author of The Lost City of Z

"Burdick tours that unsettling passage of existence we call "time"--how our brains process it, how infants first grasp it, how our conversations encode it--and returns with a spellbinding, provocative book that will fill you with wonder."--Robert Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

"This book blew my mind."--Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit

"Alan Burdick offers a fascinating and searching account of how we perceive time's passage. It will change the way you think about the past, and also the present."--Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction

"In his lucid, thoughtful, and beautifully written inquiry about time--what is it, really? Did we invent it, or does it invent us?--Burdick offers nothing less than a new way of reconsidering what it means to be human."--Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life and The People in the Trees

"A marvelous meditation on the subtle mysteries of time."--Olivia Judson, author of Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation

"Burdick is like a charming and witty river guide, exploring the tributaries and side-streams along the river of consciousness--the science, the history, the literature, the deep and beautiful paradoxes that make us what we are. Why Time Flies will enhance your experience of what may be, in the end, the most intimate relationship of your liŽ--your connection with the passage of time."--Jonathan Weiner, author of Long for this World

"Burdick places his readers in the centers of their temporal universes."--Publishers Weekly

"[Why Time Flies] captures us . . . it opens up a well of fascinating queries and gives us a glimpse of what has become an ever more deepening mystery for humans: the nature of time. . . . Burdick is one of those praiseworthy journalists who have an acute sense of what is scientifically relevant, as well as an ability to translate the dry language of laboratory science into something that connects directly to our experience, emotions and daily questions. He presents scientific inquiry for what it really is . . . a vibrant lively adventure of discovery, where what we do not yet know is more interesting than what we know. And few topics touch us as directly as time. . . . The book is a wealth of stories and surprising facts, each page raising our curiosity and unveiling a novel aspect of our relation with temporality."--The New York Times Book Review

"An intellectual adventure that renders a hefty topic accessible to the general public. And what topic is more hefty than time itself -- how we perceive it, how we study it, and how we live with it? . . . Burdick draws on bright minds from philosophy, religion, neurobiology, psychology and other fields both ancient and cutting-edge. . . . we are thankful to have Burdick's life and insights as a guide."--Richmond Times-Dispatch

About the Author

Alan Burdick is a staff writer and former senior editor at The New Yorker and a frequent contributor to Elements, the magazine's science-and-tech blog. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, GQ, Discover, Best American Science and Nature Writing, and elsewhere. His first book, Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Overseas Press Club Award for environmental reporting.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 141654027X
• ISBN 13: 9781416540274
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 301