NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Thirteen extraordinary essays shed new light on the mystery of the universe—and on one of the most brilliant thinkers of our time.

“[Hawking] sprinkles his explanations with a wry sense of humor and a keen awareness that the sciences today delve not only into the far reaches of the cosmos, but into the inner philosophical world as well.”—The New York Times Book...

"Readers learn about one of the most celebrated and inspiring physicists of all time, delving into Hawking's life story, cosmological discoveries, and disability activism"--

Before Isaac Newton became the father of physics, an accomplished mathematician, or a leader of the scientific revolution, he was a boy living in an apothecary's house, observing and experimenting, recording his observations of the world in a tiny notebook. As a young genius living in a time before science as we know it existed, Isaac studied the few books he could get his hands on, built handmade machines, and experimented with alchemy--a process...

Paul Dirac was among the great scientific geniuses of the modern age. One of the discoverers of quantum mechanics, one of Einstein's most admired colleagues, Dirac was in 1933 the youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel Prize in physics. Based on previously undiscovered archives, this biography reveals the many facets of Dirac's brilliantly original mind as well as the spectacularly exciting era of scientific discovery in which he lived.

Stephen Hawking tells the story of this key scientific figure - covering his whole journey from his shocking diagnosis at age 21, through to his career at Cambridge, to his ground-breaking work on black holes and his amazing legacy to science today.

A biography of the famous seventeenth-century English physicist, Sir Isaac Newton, who formulated the laws of gravity, force, and motion.

"Stephen Hawking has been an iconic figure in physics for the last half a century, making many groundbreaking discoveries on the nature of the universe. Yet while his mind roams to the farthest corners of reality, his body has become increasingly trapped by the advance of Lou Gehrig's disease, which has bound him to a wheelchair, without speech or movement except for a few facial muscles. Told in his youth that he would not live past his 20s, Hawking...

The film features exclusive access to Hawking's life story, told largely in his own words. It includes dramatic accounts of his life from childhood through university, intimate footage of Hawking today, including his home routine and his work life at the University of Cambridge, archival footage and candid insights from family members, friends and colleagues.