Stephen Hawking’s new book

When Stephen Hawkings’ first book on popular science, A Brief History of Time, was published on 1988, I remember I acquired it by mail order from the Good Book Guide. No apologies given, I am a nerd and I love mathematics and physics. (Call me names if you want). It was an idiot’s guide to stuff like black holes, the Big Bang and light cones. Still, it was for very clever idiots who already had some grounding on some of the theory. It reportedly sold nine million copies, though it is questionable if all those who bought it read the book from cover to cover. It also made it to several best seller lists. Nice way to impress chicks, though. (I think it was after that that science books became popular, including Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.)

A new book by Hawking (coauthored by Leonard Mlodinow), The Grand Design, is scheduled for release in September by Bantam Dell, and is reported to be on the "the ultimate mysteries of the universe." I will probably preorder it. The authors say, 'we are very close to understanding not just of the workings of our universe, but of its very beginnings’ as they work their way toward the unified theory, the one theory that explains it all, the holy grail of all science.

As for the battle between religion and science, Hawkings had this to say in an interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer in June of this year, "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."

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