A Brief History of Time

by Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history, wrote the modern classic A Brief History of Time to help non-scientists understand fundamental questions of physics and our existence: where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and much more.

Click the cover image to read a two page précis of A Brief History of Time by kind permission of the author

About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution

by Paul Davies
In this book Paul Davies provides a comprehensive, brilliant discussion of the nature of time. Beginning with Einstein's revolution which abolished the classical view of absolute time and space, Davies ranges widely into the scientific and philosophical ramifications of relativity.

Thief of Time

by Terry Pratchett
In the great stinking metropolis of Ankh Morpork, an obsessed clockmaker receives an unusual commission from an excessively beautiful woman whose feet do not touch the ground; strict school-teacher Susan finds herself summoned by her grandfather, Death, to do him a favour; the monks who manage the even distribution of Time find themselves with a recalcitrant novice; and dairyman Ronnie Soak muses on his glory days, when he was the Fifth Rider of the Apocalypse, the one who left before they got famous.

Faster: The Acceleration of Just about Everything

by James Gleick
Never in the history of the human race have so many had so much to do in so little time. That, anyway, is the impression most of us have of civilised life at the end of the millennium, and Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything only sharpens it.

The Story of Time

by Kristen Lippincott, et al
The press has been sniffy about the way the National Maritime Museum has "dumbed down" its galleries during the recent refurbishment - but there's no sign of such a strategy in this handsome companion to its international exhibition on Time. A perfect antidote to millennial tosh.

The End of Time

by Julian Barbour
The End of Time is a fascinating contribution to physics by a scholar and thinker who is taken seriously by physicists of the calibre of Wheeler and Smolin. But he has pursued a career outside the mainstream, living on a farm and refusing to get involved in traditional teaching and research.

The Clock of the Long Now

by Stewart Brand
"How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common," asks Stewart Brand, "instead of difficult and rare?" Or, to put it another way, how does one get people to develop a natural perspective of their present moment that extends beyond a few days in either direction?

Time: a Traveller's Guide

by Clifford A. Pickover
The thought that humans might one day be able to harness time, travelling freely from one age to another, has been a fixture of science fiction for years. Science fact is beginning to catch up to the long-held dream.

The River of Time

by Igor D. Novikov
Can we change the past? In this book, the author details the development of views on time from classical Greece to the modern day, presenting the figures who have contributed to the evolution of our knowledge as real people and placing them in the context of their own time.

Time

by Alexander Waugh
This work examines every aspect of time. It answers such questions as how seconds, minutes and hours were agreed, why there is no decimal time, how the various calendars were arrived at and why there are 12 months in a year.

The House on the Strand

by Daphne du Maurier
Dick Young is lent a house in Cornwall by his friend Professor Magnus Lane. During his stay he agrees to serve as a guinea pig for a new drug that Magnus has discovered in his biochemical researches. The effect of this drug is to temporarily transport Dick from the house at Kilmarth to the Cornwall of the 14th century...

The Time Traveller's Wife

by Audrey Niffenegger
This is the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry. Henry suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. In the face of this force they can neither prevent nor control, Henry and Clare's struggle to lead normal lives is both intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.

Time

by Stephen Baxter
A coded message from the future turns up amid the cosmic background noise of the Big Bang. What is discovered at the asteroid pinpointed by the message is nothing less than a revelation: the secret reason for our existence visible at last beneath the rippled surface of Time's river. Can this knowledge save the human race?