We are living in a golden age of cosmology, the science of the universe as a whole. What is said of the seventeenth century in the study of our solar system, or of the early twentieth century in quantum mechanics, will be said of cosmology in our own time – that never before in history was so much about one field of science learned so quickly by so few.   

Where Timothy Ferris’ bestseller Coming of Age in the Milky Way brilliantly told the story of Western man’s view of the universe from Plato and Aristotle to Einstein and Hawking, his new book, equally lucidly, accessibly and elegantly written, provides a fascinating report on the recent history and current state of cosmology.