And here you thought the holidays were over. Silly you. Today is the greatest holiday of all: Book Release Day!
That’s right — From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time is out today. That means you could head over to Amazon.com and buy the book right now:
Don’t worry, we’ll wait. Of course you could also buy it later, but there are benefits to having a great first day, and we’re aiming to get as many Amazon purchases as we can. So you might want to take Lee Billings’s advice:
Just drafted a micro-review of @seanmcarroll’s “From Eternity to Here”. It’s really quite good–I suggest you all buy several copies.
I’m excited, anyway. You can find various goodies on the web page, including a reprint of the prologue, an annotated table of contents, a list of upcoming events, links to blurbs and reviews and other commentary, and a collection of related articles. Heck, I even went out and made a video:
I don’t think Spielberg is checking his rear-view mirror, but my budget was a bit lower.
Looking back through my old emails, I was first talking seriously about writing a book on the arrow of time in August, 2006. The contract with Dutton was agreed upon in May, 2007. Worked on it on and off, and finally started working in earnest in mid/late-2008. I emailed the manuscript to the publisher at 2:42 a.m. on Friday, May 8, 2009. And now it’s released to the world.
Writing the book was actually a lot of fun. If you write a very long blog post or medium-length magazine article, you’re talking 3,000 words. This book is 180,000 words, including footnotes. Room to stretch a bit and explain things the right way! Part of the fun was learning new things — I dug into the history a bit, reading papers by Boltzmann and his contemporaries, and also looked into interesting topics like complexity and information theory. But perhaps even more enjoyable was the challenge of explaining really deep ideas in an understandable way. I have a whole chapter that tries to work through the ideas of determinism and reversibility from the ground up — something that most physics books just zoom right past. There are a lot of places where I really took care to explain something basic in a fresh and accessible way — or tried to, anyway. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting, so we’ll see what people think.
One thing I learned is that producing a book is very much a collaborative effort. I owe a lot to Stephen Morrow, Tala Oszkay, Katinka Matson, and John Brockman, who provided invaluable guidance and steered me in the right direction more than once. Jason Torchinsky contributed the charming illustrations. And of course to my wife Jennifer, for many reasons, but it doesn’t hurt to have an expert writer and editor right there in the house when you embark on a project like this. Many people were gracious enough to read through the book and point out where it could be improved — with embarrassing accuracy, I may add. (Special thanks to Scott Aaronson and George Musser, for their detailed and substantive critiques.) And I was fortunate enough get a dream team of physicist-writers to provide blurbs for the back of the book: Lisa Randall, Brian Greene, Kip Thorne, and Roger Penrose. I won’t reproduce them all here (that’s what the web page is for), but here’s Penrose:
Sean Carroll’s From Eternity to Here provides a wonderfully accessible account of some of the most profound mysteries of modern physics. While you may not agree with all his conclusions, you will find the discussion fascinating, and taken to much deeper levels than is normal in a work of popular science.
Of course everyone will agree with all my conclusions … eventually.
Enough of the folderol of writing and publishing the damn book — time to talk about the science! Next week I’ll post the schedule for a weekly book club right here at Cosmic Variance; the discussions will officially begin on January 19, and will continue every subsequent Tuesday. I’m going to try to participate as much as I can in the discussions — I want to hear how people react to the book, but I’m also expecting to learn a lot. Time and the origin of the universe — pretty big subjects, always room to understand more.
I just ordered my copy from Amazon.ca. Looking forward to reading it!
Man, really been looking forward to it. Hauled in half a dozen books for xmas, but the missus refused to buy me any that weren’t actually out, so I have to wait til February 1 when my e-rewards Borders bucks are active.
Borders is showing it as available on-line only and L.A.’s city and county libraries haven’t picked it up (Orange County) did. So it’s gonna be tough to get my hands on a copy until I can buy it.
I can at least try to rectify the the library situation. Requesting both purchase it.
Ordered my copy from amazon this morning. Trying to pick up a second copy from Barnes and Noble or Books a Million for this weekend but they don’t have them yet.
Congratulations Sean! Looking forward to reading the copy that I just bought.
Nice video. Did you make a script for the text? And after we’ve computed for some trillion years might it turn out The Last Question is also the first question? 😉
Congratulations. I’m sure we will be seeing you soon.
Congrats, Sean! Glad to see you’re coming to talk in NYC this spring.
Congratulations. I checked the Mobipocket site and your e-book is already available.
I’m excited, Sean. I’ll order it now.
That said, the crazy Amazon customer review is kind of hilarious. I’m not sure which is worse – that you’re the kind of physicist who drove Boltzmann to suicide, or the implication that you thought quoting Augustine would make you cool.
I ordered mine several weeks ago, together with David Albert’s “Time and Chance”.. I’m hoping it will arrive soon, just in time for my break from university in 2 weeks! 🙂
Great title, and the subtitle is good, too! It’s got to be the worst time of the year to release a book, though.
Wow. I just checked my Amazon account. I ordered the book April 20, 2009. I guess I learned an object lesson about time.
I can’t wait to get it.
Just got it over Whispernet (shhhhh!) and am reading it at work instead of working this afternoon. If I get fired, it’s the author’s fault.
Actually we intentionally released it in January rather than earlier. It’s true that many books are purchased for Christmas presents, but the competition is correspondingly more fierce. Given the economy, the publisher made the choice that books by new authors would do better after the holidays.
Congrats. You managed to get a negative review from Peter Woit _and_ Lubos Motl. How did you manage that? (OK, granted, pissing off Lubos is not difficult.)
Got it on Kindle this morning. Will start it this evening.
Ordered it from Amazon today – thanks for writing this, I’m really looking forward to it! I’ve been a fan since I googled “dark matter radiation” and found your paper 🙂
Rumor is that you wrote the title and the page numbers and the text was ghost-written by Jennifer… but, just a rumor.
I ordered my copy too! …but won’t be delivered until 13th Jan 🙁 …but Amazon “said” it was in stock.
Overwhelmed by orders!! Awesome!!!
Heh. And this is the first time I’ve ever seen a Teaching Company ad anywhere, despite owning something like 60 courses. I wonder if Sean should pump that up while he’s at it . . .
ARJ, I can neither confirm nor deny such scurrilous rumors.
I pounced on the Amazon offer for a used book. Seriously I will be buying one just as soon as it crosses your northern border. Too bad about the timing; would have made a dandy Christmas present.
Just ordered it. Turns out I’ve already read it later this month. Maybe it’s the same copy WhatMeWorry is getting.
By the way, Sean, have you tried searching for “From Eternity to Here” on Amazon’s book site? The top two matches make a rather odd couple. Maybe you should have thought a bit more about the choice of title. 🙂
I’m just relieved that the author of the other “From Eternity to Here” is not the All Star pitcher.
Congratulations! Copy purchased.