Great Ideas in Physics

This is an interdisciplinary textbook in physics for non-science majors and is accessible to students with little science background. The text focuses on four ideas: the conservation of energy, the second law of thermodynamics, the relativity of time, and the wave-particle duality of nature. Each idea, occupying a separate chapter, is first discussed in its scientific terms. The treatment uses only pre-calculus mathematics. The new edition contains quantitative problems with solutions, though emphasis is placed on concepts, rathter than facts. Each idea is also discussed in terms of its direct impact on the humanities, using excerpts from science greats as well as famous authors and philosophers.

Alan Lightman

Science & Math

McGraw=Hill

Einstein's Dreams

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Sceptre

Diagnosis

Literary

Ballantine Books

Einstein's Dreams: A Novel

Thirty vignettes take the reader back in time to 1905, when a young patent clerk named Albert Einstein was putting the finishing touches on his theory of relativity. Reprint. 110,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo.

WARNER BOOKS

Einstein's Dreams (Bloomsbury Classic)

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

[This is the Audiobook CD Library Edition in vinyl case.] With echoes of Calvino, Rushdie, and Saramago, this is a stunningly imaginative work that celebrates the tragic and joyous nature of existence on the grandest possible scale. ''As I remember, I had just woken up from a nap when I decided to create the universe.'' - - So begins Alan Lightman's playful and profound new novel, Mr. g, the story of Creation as narrated by God. Bored with living in the shimmering Void with his bickering Uncle Deva and Aunt Penelope, Mr. g creates time, space, and matter--then moves on to stars, planets, consciousness, and finally intelligent beings with moral dilemmas. But even the best-laid plans can go awry, and Mr. g discovers that with his creation of space and time come unforeseen consequences--especially in the form of the mysterious Belhor, a clever and devious rival. An intellectual equal to Mr. g, Belhor delights in provocation: he demands an explanation for the inexplicable, requests that intelligent creatures not be subject to rational laws, and maintains the necessity of evil. As Mr. g watches his favorite universe grow into maturity, he begins to understand how the act of creation can change the Creator himself.

Mr G: A Novel about the Creation

United States

Blackstone Audiobooks

With echoes of Calvino, Rushdie, and Saramago, this is a stunningly imaginative work that celebrates the tragic and joyous nature of existence on the grandest possible scale. "As I remember, I had just woken up from a nap when I decided to create the universe." So begins Alan Lightman's playful and profound new novel, Mr. g, the story of Creation as narrated by God. Bored with living in the shimmering Void with his bickering Uncle Deva and Aunt Penelope, Mr. g creates time, space, and matter--then moves on to stars, planets, consciousness, and finally intelligent beings with moral dilemmas. But even the best-laid plans can go awry, and Mr. g discovers that with his creation of space and time come unforeseen consequences--especially in the form of the mysterious Belhor, a clever and devious rival. An intellectual equal to Mr. g, Belhor delights in provocation: he demands an explanation for the inexplicable, requests that intelligent creatures not be subject to rational laws, and maintains the necessity of evil. As Mr. g watches his favorite universe grow into maturity, he begins to understand how the act of creation can change the Creator himself.

Mr. G: A Novel about the Creation

[This is the MP3CD audiobook format.] With echoes of Calvino, Rushdie, and Saramago, this is a stunningly imaginative work that celebrates the tragic and joyous nature of existence on the grandest possible scale. ''As I remember, I had just woken up from a nap when I decided to create the universe.'' - - So begins Alan Lightman's playful and profound new novel, Mr. g, the story of Creation as narrated by God. Bored with living in the shimmering Void with his bickering Uncle Deva and Aunt Penelope, Mr. g creates time, space, and matter--then moves on to stars, planets, consciousness, and finally intelligent beings with moral dilemmas. But even the best-laid plans can go awry, and Mr. g discovers that with his creation of space and time come unforeseen consequences--especially in the form of the mysterious Belhor, a clever and devious rival. An intellectual equal to Mr. g, Belhor delights in provocation: he demands an explanation for the inexplicable, requests that intelligent creatures not be subject to rational laws, and maintains the necessity of evil. As Mr. g watches his favorite universe grow into maturity, he begins to understand how the act of creation can change the Creator himself.

In The Accidental Universe, physicist and novelist Alan Lightman explores the emotional and philosophical questions raised by discoveries in science, focusing most intently on the human condition and the needs of humankind.Here, in a collection of exhilarating essays, Lightman shows us our own universe from a series of fascinating and diverse perspectives. He takes on the difficult dialogue between science and religion; the conflict between our human desire for permanence and the impermanence of nature; the possibility that our universe is simply an accident; the manner in which modern technology has divorced us from enjoying a direct experience of the world; and our resistance to the view that our bodies and minds can be explained by scientific logic and laws alone.With his customary passion, precision, lyricism and imagination, in The Accidental Universe Alan Lightman leaves us with the suggestion - heady and humbling - that what we see and understand of the world and ourselves is only a tiny piece of the extraordinary, perhaps unfathomable whole.Praise for Alan Lightman:'...a gem of a novel that is strange witty erudite and alive with Lightman's playful genius.' Junot Diaz.'It would not seem possible for Alan Lightman to match his earlier tour de force, Einstein's Dreams, but in Mr g he has done so - with wit, imagination, and transcendent beauty.' Anita Desai.

The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew

Astronomy & Space Science

Corsair

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Books by Alan Lightman