The Order of Time

Carlo Rovelli author Erica Segre translator Simon Carnell translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd

Published:4th Apr '19

Should be back in stock very soon

The Order of Time cover

With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, art and philosophy, Carlo Rovelli unravels this mystery, inviting us to imagine a world where time is in us and we are not in time.

THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

One of TIME's Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade

'Captivating, fascinating, profoundly beautiful. . . Rovelli is a wonderfully humane, gentle and witty guide for he is as much philosopher and poet as he is a scientist' John Banville

'We are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come'

Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe.

With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, philosophy and art, Carlo Rovelli unravels this mystery. Enlightening and consoling, The Order of Time shows that to understand ourselves we need to reflect on time -- and to understand time we need to reflect on ourselves.

Translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre

Modern physics has found its poet. A captivating, fascinating, profoundly beautiful book. . . Rovelli is a wonderfully humane, gentle and witty guide for he is as much philosopher and poet as he is a scientist -- John Banville * Irish Times *
Wonderful. . . Time is something we think we know about instinctively; here he shows how profoundly strange it really is -- Philip Pullman * Guardian *

Full of staggering revelations... I could (and will) read and think about such things again and again until they begin to sink in

-- Maggie Nelson * New York Times *
This book has been a kind of bible for me. When life feels strange, Rovelli's books remind me that there is beauty in the strangeness. The Order of Time is one of those books that I will always go back to -- Johny Pitts
Extraordinary. . . you should read it -- Nick Hornby * Believer *
Brings the most difficult ideas alive in clear, appealing language. It is as close as I've come to a physics lesson that almost suggests the meaning of life -- Rory Stewart
Meet the new Stephen Hawking. . . I've never seen special relativity explained so well, never visualised it less fuzzily, never felt such a jolt of shock at what it implies -- James McConnachie * Sunday Times *
A dizzying, poetic work in which I found myself abandoning everything I thought I knew about time -- Charlotte Higgins * Guardian *
Enlightening... gives poetic voice to the common human experience of moving through time, while simultaneously leaving the reader much more equipped to understand how exactly that happens. . . A resounding affirmation of the humanity behind science * Time magazine, Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s *
I consider Carlo Rovelli to be a poet as much as a physicist. . . Everybody should read this book -- Es Devlin

ISBN: 9780141984964

Dimensions: 197mm x 128mm x 13mm

Weight: 169g

224 pages