STEPHEN W. HAWKING is widely believed to be one of the world’s greatest minds: a brilliant theoretical physicist whose work helped to reconfigure models of the universe and to redefine what’s in it. Imagine sitting in a room listening to Hawking discuss these achievements and place them in historical context. It would be like hearing Christopher Columbus tell of his journeys to the New World.

This book approaches that. In The Theory of Everything, Hawking presents a series of seven lectures in which he lays out, perhaps more clearly and concisely than ever, the history of the universe as we know it. These essays capture not only the brilliance of Hawking’s mind but his characteristic wit as well.

A great popularizer of science as well as a brilliant scientist, Hawking believes that advances in theoretical science should be "understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists." In this book, he offers, for all who would take it, a voyage of discovery about the cosmos and our place in it. It is a book for anyone who has ever gazed up at the night sky and wondered what was up there and how it came to be.