In his new widely anticipated new book, Brian Greene, one of the world's foremost string theorists and the best-selling author of The Elegant Universe, reveals the strange and stunning layers of reality modern physics has discovered lying just beneath the surface of the everyday world.

Greene examines space--fromNewton's unchanging, realm, through Einstein's fusion of space and time, to recent breakthroughs suggesting that ours may be one of many island universes floating in a grand, multidimensional spatial expanse. We encounter the peculiar world of quantum physics, in which space and time are buffeted to and fro by the turbulence of quantum uncertainty. We see the paradoxical nature of time, which, according to the laws of physics, does not necessarily need to run in any particular direction. And Greene shows us how the tantalizing world of string and M-theory may unltimately provide us with the elusive unified theory of the universe. In a book infused with his characteristic wit and humor, deftly making use of analogy and characters from popular culture, Brian Greene takes us all, regardless of our scientific background, on an exhilarating journey toward understanding the physical relaity of the world we live in.