Masters of Time: Cosmology at the End of Innocence

Science reporter Boslough ( Stephen Hawking's Universe ) takes the reader on the cosmology roller coaster--with Hawking, Richard Feynman, Alan Guth and other physicists--in search of the Theory of Everything. Boslough's journalistic overview serves his subject better than any single-theory approach would; indeed, his thesis is that no single existing theory stands up by itself. The subtitle telegraphs his eventual conclusion that the rapidly accumulating data about our universe reveals foremost how little about its origins we know. Boslough charges his book with the spirit of the continuing search for a Grand Theory. While Eric Lerner's 1991 book The Big Bang Never Happened offered more hard theory, this is a comprehensive review of the twists and recursions of cosmology in the last part of the century. (June)