Alan P. Lightman

After a mysterious personal tragedy, the narrator of this story has lost his faith in all things and lives "hung like a dried fly", empty and haunted by his past. He awakes one morning revitalized and begins a Dante-like journey to find something to believe in, exploring science, philosophy, religion, and human life. A novel in verse.

"While rushing to his office one warm summer morning, Bill Chalmers, a junior executive, realizes that he cannot remember where he is going or even who he is. All he remembers is the motto of his company: The maximum information in the minimum time.". "When Bill's memory returns, "his head pounding, remembering too much," a strange numbness afflicts him, beginning as a tingling in his hands and gradually spreading over the rest of his body. As he attempts to find a diagnosis of his illness, he descends into a nightmare, enduring a blizzard of medical tests and specialists without conclusive results, the manic frenzy of his company, and a desperate wife who decides that he must be imagining his deteriorating condition."--BOOK JACKET.

A fictional work in which a twenty-six-year-old Albert Einstein, working in a patent office in Switzerland, imagines possible worlds in which time works differently as he formulates his theory of relativity.

For anyone how wants a basic understanding of the physical processes that define the universe, Lightman provides the perfect introduction. In addition to explaining physics, he introduces relevant passages from philosophy and literature to demonstrate how these great ideas have impacted the world of thought. What does it mean to say that time and space are relative? How can an electron be in two places at once? For anyone who wants a basic understanding of the physical processes that define the universe, Lightman provides the perfect introduction in Great Ideas in Physics. In addition to explaining physics, he brings in relevant passages from philosophy and literature to demonstrate how these great ideas have impacted the world of thought.

From the author of the best-selling Einstein's Dreams comes a wonderfully original, deeply moving, and wryly funny novel about the clash between the absolutes of science and the vagaries of human experience. Bennett always knew he would live a life of science. From the homemade rockets and experiments of his childhood to the complex equations he solved as a professor of physics, his vision has transformed the uncertainty and frailty of life into an order and beauty that he inhabits with deep satisfaction. But his vision betrays him, revealing a profound incompleteness, an inadequacy to confront the contradictions of his life: the black maid who raises him and loves him but cannot welcome him into her own house, the mentally absent father who wishes he'd died a hero in World War II, the self-destructive wife who invites Bennett's cruelty. As Bennett struggles between reason and intuition, he slowly learns to allow the imperfections of daily life - the chaos he has worked so hard to control - to broaden his understanding of the world and his place in it. Written with lyrical sparseness, hilarity mixed with sadness, the story of Bennett's struggle becomes both a beautifully rendered portrait of the emotional life of a scientist and a resonant tale of the disillusionment that haunts us all.

Bored with his existence in the shimmering Void with his bickering Uncle Deva and Aunt Penelope, Mr g wakes up from a nap one day and decides to create the universe only to be challenged by intellectual rival Belhor--Novelist.

The facts are public knowledge: five people have been murdered. Each has died from a blow to the head. And the media-dubbed Prince Charming killer has left a "calling card" with each victim. A single thornless rose.But there's another fact...one that the police haven't made public. Something no one, except the killer and the police, should know. But Gabriel Donner does—and he can't figure out why. All he knows is that he's begun hearing voices, sleepwalking and dreaming vividly of the murders...as they happen.He can't go to the police, but there is someone who can help him. Laura Dane, a psychic who's worked on cases like his before, is the only person he can trust with his terrible truths. But as her suspicion about Gabriel's innocence grows, so does the evidence that points to his guilt. Because Gabriel knows more than any innocent man should.

"In today's frenzied and wired world, we are obsessed with the idea of not "wasting time." But have we lost the silences and solitude so essential to our inner lives? A great deal of evidence suggests the value in wasting time, of letting the mind lie fallow for some periods, of letting minutes and hours go by without scheduled activities or intended tasks, of unplugging from the grid. In this vital investigation of the rush and heave of the modern world, Alan Lightman explores the technological and cultural origins of our time-driven lives. More importantly, he reveals the many values of "wasting time", for replenishing the mind, for creative thought, and for finding and solidifying the inner self. Lightman urges us, as both individuals and as a society, to break free of the idea that not a second is to be wasted and to discover that sometimes the best thing to do is to do nothing at all."--Dust jacket flap.