"The Big Bang is dead! It is no longer the beginning of time. Allowing us a peek into the cutting edge of cosmology, astrophysicist Adam Frank explains how this change in our origins will affect every aspect of our lives"--

From Stonehenge to Mayan observatories to the atomic clock in Washington, a timely, informative, and entertaining account of humankind's varied attempts to count the days and years follows the historical forces that have produced our calendar. Reprint.

The author explores the dearth of "long-term" thinking in the Western world and proposes a plan to make future planning a regular feature of human consciousness.

J.W. Dunne (1866-1949) was an accomplished English aeronautical engineer and a designer of Britian's early military aircraft. His An Experiment with Time, first published in 1927, sparked a great deal of scientific interest in--and controversy about--his new model of multidimensional time. A series of strange, troubling precognitive dreams (including a vision of the then future catastrophic eruption of Mt. Pelee on the island of Martininque in 1902) led Dunne to re-evaluate the meaning and significance of dreams. Could dreams be a blend of memories of past and future events? What was most upsetting about his dreams was that they contradicted the accepted model of time as a series of events flowing only one way: into the future. What if time wasn't like that at all? All of this prompted Dunne to think about time in an entirely new way. To do this, Dunne made, as he put it,"an extremely cautious" investigation in a "rather novel direction." He wanted to outline a provable way of accounting for multiple dimensions and precognition, that is, seeing events before they happen. The result was a challenging scientific theory of the "Infinite Regress," in which time, consciousness, and the universe are seen as serial, existing in four dimensions. Astonishingly, Dunne's proposed model of time accounts for many of life's mysteries: the nature and purpose of dreams, how prophecy works, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of the all-seeing "general observer," the "Witness" behind consciousness (what is now commonly called the Higher Self). Here in print again is the book English playwright and novelist J.B. Priestley called "one of the most fascinating, most curious, and perhaps the most important books of this age."

Presents a study of the human fascination with time from a psychological, biological, and cultural perspective, tracing the development of measuring time and exploring ways in which we try to stretch our allotted time.

An expert explores the riddle of subjective time, from why time speeds up as we grow older to the connection between time and consciousness. We have widely varying perceptions of time. Children have trouble waiting for anything. ("Are we there yet?") Boredom is often connected to our sense of time passing (or not passing). As people grow older, time seems to speed up, the years flitting by without a pause. How does our sense of time come about? In Felt Time, Marc Wittmann explores the riddle of subjective time, explaining our perception of time -- whether moment by moment, or in terms of life as a whole. Drawing on the latest insights from psychology and neuroscience, Wittmann offers a new answer to the question of how we experience time. Wittmann explains, among other things, how we choose between savoring the moment and deferring gratification; why impulsive people are bored easily, and why their boredom is often a matter of time; whether each person possesses a personal speed, a particular brain rhythm distinguishing quick people from slow people; and why the feeling of duration can serve as an "error signal," letting us know when it is taking too long for dinner to be ready or for the bus to come. He considers the practice of mindfulness, and whether it can reduce the speed of life and help us gain more time, and he describes how, as we grow older, subjective time accelerates as routine increases; a fulfilled and varied life is a long life. Evidence shows that bodily processes -- especially the heartbeat -- underlie our feeling of time and act as an internal clock for our sense of time. And Wittmann points to recent research that connects time to consciousness; ongoing studies of time consciousness, he tells us, will help us to understand the conscious self.

A comically surreal, bitingly ironic account of the Civil War as seen by three runaway slaves illuminates the political consciences of both blacks and whites through a mixture of history, fantasy, and today's political realities. Reprint.

For centuries, scientists have strived to predict the future. But to what extent have they succeeded? Can past events-Hurricane Katrina, the Internet stock bubble, the SARS outbreak-help us understand what will happen next? Will scientists ever really be able to forecast catastrophes, or will we always be at the mercy of Mother Nature, waiting for the next storm, epidemic, or economic crash to thunder through our lives? In The Future of Everything, David Orrell looks back at the history of forecasting, from the time of the oracle at Delphi to the rise of astrology to the advent of the TV weather report, showing us how scientists (and some charlatans) predicted the future. How can today’s scientists claim to anticipate future weather events when even thee-day forecasts prove a serious challenge? How can we predict and control epidemics? Can we accurately foresee our financial future? Or will we only find out about tomorrow when tomorrow arrives?

A group of leading physicists--Stephen Hawking, Kip S. Thorne, Igor Novikov, Timothy Ferris, and Alan Lightman--paints a vivid portrait of the possible future of black holes, gravity holes, and time travel in six readable essays that explore the deepest mysteries of the universe. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

God's Clockmaker is a biography of England's greatest medieval scientist, a man who solved major practical and theoretical problems to build an extraordinary and pioneering astronomical and astrological clock. Richard of Wallingford (1292-1336), the son of a blacksmith, was a brilliant mathematician with a genius for the practical solution of technical problems. Trained at Oxford, he became a monk and then abbot of the great abbey of St. Albans, where he designed his clock. His achievement is a striking example of the sophistication of medieval science, based on knowledge handed down from the Greeks and the Arabs.