About Time Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang

Now in paperback, "a phenomenal blend of science and cultural history" ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review), About Time gives readers a peek into the cutting edge of cosmology, showing how it is intimately wedded to the texture of our daily lives. In About Time, Adam Frank explains how the texture of our lives changes along with our understanding of the universe's origin. Since we awoke to self-consciousness 50,000 years ago, our lived experience of timefrom hunting and gathering to the development of agriculture to the industrial revolution to the invention of Outlook calendarshas been transformed and rebuilt many times. But the latest theories in cosmologytime with no beginning, parallel universes, eternal inflationare about to send us in a new direction. Frank tells the story of humanity's deepest questionwhen and how did everything begin?alongside the story of how human beings have experienced time. He looks at the way our engagement with the worldour inventions, our habits, and morehas allowed us to discover the nature of the universe and how those discoveries, in turn, inform our daily experience. This astounding book changes the way we think about time and how it affects our lives.

Adam Frank is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and a regular contributor to Discover and Astronomy magazines. The cofounder of NPR's 13:7 Cosmos and Culture blog, his work has been featured in Best American Science and Nature Writing, and he has been the recipient of an American Astronomical Society prize for scientific writing.