Popular science with witty anecdotes that lighten the intellectual load, integtrated with scientific ideas, and philosophical and religious contexts. From Aristotle to the Big Bang, from the music of the spheres to the unimaginable ancient light of a quasar, this is the story of man's long search for an understanding of cosmic space and time. He relates Kepler struggling to define the orbit of Mars, Galileo locked under house arrest for offending the Church, William Herschel plumbing deep in space in his study of galaxies, Murray Gell-Mann plotting the particles inside protons and neutrons. Written by a professional astronomer, he aims to be accessible to the general reader. He has also written The Red Limit and has received a number of awards for his work and teaches science writing and astronomy at the Univesity of Californai, Verkeley.