The author equips the general reader with enough knowledge of physics to understand what happened after the "big bang". He then gives a slow-motion, cinematic presentation of the universe's first three minutes. During this time, out of a dense "soup" of matter and energy, the universe was moulded and exploded apart in an enormous convulsion, the traces of which can be discerned today. Steven Weinberg is one of those scientists who has created a synthesis between the physics of elementary particles and the history of the early universe.