Alan Lightman

Penguin Random House · 2025

Lightman and Rees pull back the curtain on the field of science, revealing that scientists are driven by the same sense of curiosity, wonder, and responsibility toward a future that shapes us all. They guide us through the fascinating lives and minds of scientists around the world and throughout time, and provide an inside peek at what makes scientists tick, their daily lives, passions, and concerns about the societies they live in.

Penguin Random House · 2024

Nature is capable of extraordinary phenomena. Standing in awe of those phenomena, we experience a feeling of connection to the cosmos. For Lightman, just as remarkable is that all of what we see around us - soap bubbles, scarlet ibises, shooting stars - are made out of the same material stuff and obey the same rules and laws. Pairing 36 full-color photos evoking some of nature's most awe-inspiring phenomena with personal essays, "The Miraculous from the Material" explores the fascinating science underlying the natural world.

Pantheon · 2023

Drawing on intellectual history and conversations with contemporary scientists, philosophers, and psychologists, Lightman asks a series of thought-provoking questions that illuminate our strange place between the world of particles and forces and the world of complex human experience.

Candlewick Press/MIT Kids Press · 2021

Lightman and Pastuchiv, with help from the Hubble Space Telescope, light up the night sky for children, bringing galaxies close in a picture-book tribute to the interconnectedness of the natural world. Layering images taken by the Hubble telescope into charming and expressive art, Chapman zooms in on one child's experiences.

Pantheon · 2021

From the acclaimed author of "Einstein's Dreams" comes a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities - and impossibilities - of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between.