The Edge of Knowledge...

You can now pre-order On Amazon and B&N, with a guarantee of getting the lowest price between now and release date of May 9th.

Forgive the commercial announcement, but I want to thank all those who helped comment on the cover design of my new book, and I am very excited to say that The Edge of Knowledge (with the new, final cover showing) is now available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites in the US and Canada.

There are advantages of a pre-order for both the buyer and the writer. By pre-ordering, you are guaranteed to get the lowest price advertised on each website between now and the release date, May 9, 2023. In addition, the more popular the book becomes on pre-orders, the lower the advertised price tends to become. For the writer, pre-orders are lumped into the first week’s sales for determining book sales rankings.

One of the reasons I am writing about this is because it is possible that there will be little or no review attention to the book in the US. I hope I am wrong, but The Physics of Climate Change was only reviewed in the UK and Europe, and didn’t get a single review in the US. This book returns to my more familiar territory, and therefore reviewers who are aware of my past books, including A Universe from Nothing, may choose to review it. Only by word of mouth, and by rankings on Amazon and Barnes & Noble might the book’s profile be increased enough reach a broader segment of the public, to convince local bookstores to carry it, and in the process to help educate and excite people about science.

I am quite excited about this book, which I view as a natural successor to A Universe from Nothing and The Greatest Story Ever Told…So Far, because it pushes these stories to the cutting edge of knowledge and beyond, to the realm of the unknown. My UK publishers, Head of Zeus, first commission this book, and it will appear in the UK as The Known Unknowns. The idea excited me from the very beginning, and I decided to explore all the truly fundamental questions in science, going beyond physics, to bring readers up to date on the current state of knowledge, and to point to the really important outstanding questions. The book is divided into 5 sections: Time, Space, Matter, Life, and Consciousness, and each section revolves around a series of questions listed at the beginning of that section.

As I say at the conclusion of the book:

“When I was a teenager, I remember reading a book by Richard Feynman called The Character of Physical Law. I had always been interested in science, but that book made it clear to me for the first time that the really interesting questions in physics had not all been answered yet. It was an invitation to me, and it presented a challenge and an opportunity to try to move on to the next step. I don’t presume that this book will have the same impact on some young person today, but I hope it does. Indeed, that is why I have written it.”

Here are early blurbs on the book:

Closer to publication date I will include an excerpt from the book on Critical Mass. Thanks for indulging my commercial announcement here…

Note: to answer questions asked after this was initially posted.. There will be an audio book that I narrate. Also, ebook will be published at same time as hardcover, and will go on presale about 2 months before pub date.