THE GRAND DESIGN

In the last thirty years of his life Albert Einstein searched for aunified theory - a theory which could describe all the forces of nature ina single framework. But the time was not right for such a discovery inEinstein's day. Neither was the time right when, in 1988, Professor StephenHawking wrote A Brief History of Time in which he took us on a journeythrough classical physics, Einstein's theory of relativity, quantum physicsand string theory in order to explain the universe that we live in. Heconcluded, like Einstein, that science may soon arrive at the long soughtafter 'Theory of Everything'. In this ground-breaking new work, ProfessorHawking and renowned science writer Leonard Mlodinow have drawn on fortyyears of Hawking's own research and a recent series of extraordinaryastronomical observations and theoretical breakthroughs to reveal anoriginal and controversial theory. They convincingly argue that scientificobsession with formulating a single new model may be misplaced, and that,instead, by synthesising existing theories we may discover the key tofinally understanding the universe's deepest mysteries. Written with theclarity and lively style for which Hawking is famous, The Grand Design isan account of Hawking's quest to fuse these different strands of scientifictheory. It examines the differences between past and future, explains thenature of reality and asks an all-important question: How far can we go inour search for understanding and knowledge?