NATIONAL BESTSELLER Stephen Hawking has dazzled readers worldwide with a string of bestsellers
exploring the mysteries of the universe. Now for the first time perhaps the most brilliant
cosmologist of our age turns his gaze inward for a revealing look at his own life and
intellectual evolution. My Brief History recounts Stephen Hawking's improbable journey from
his postwar London boyhood to his years of international acclaim and celebrity. Lavishly
illustrated with rarely seen photographs this concise witty and candid account introduces
readers to a Hawking rarely glimpsed in previous books: the inquisitive schoolboy whose
classmates nicknamed him Einstein the jokester who once placed a bet with a colleague over the
existence of a particular black hole and the young husband and father struggling to gain a
foothold in the world of physics and cosmology. Writing with characteristic humility and humor
Hawking opens up about the challenges that confronted him following his diagnosis of ALS at age
twenty-one. Tracing his development as a thinker he explains how the prospect of an early
death urged him onward through numerous intellectual breakthroughs and talks about the genesis
of his masterpiece A Brief History of Time-one of the iconic books of the twentieth century.
Clear-eyed intimate and wise My Brief History opens a window for the rest of us into
Hawking's personal cosmos.
