Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine

As a physicist, Alan Lightman has always held a scientific view of the world. But one summer evening, while looking at the stars from a small boat at sea, Lightman was overcome by the overwhelming sensation that he was merging with something larger than himself—an eternal unity, something absolute and immaterial.

The result is an inspired, lyrical meditation from the acclaimed author of Einstein's Dreams that explores these seemingly contradictory impulses. Lightman draws on sources ranging from Saint Augustine's conception of absolute truth to Einstein's theory of relativity, and gives us a profound inquiry into the human desire for truth and meaning, and a journey along the different paths of religion and science that become part of that quest. This small but provocative book explores the tension between our yearning for certainty and permanence versus the modern scientific view that all things in the physical world are uncertain and impermanent.

• The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew
• Einstein's Dreams
• In Praise of Wasting Time (TED Books)
• A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit
• Figuring
• The Overstory: A Novel
• So Far So Good
• Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe
• Mr g: A Novel About the Creation (Vintage Contemporaries)
• How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals