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At the beginning of the 21st century, physics is being driven to very unfamiliar territory – the domain of the incredibly small and the incredibly heavy. The new world is a world in which both quantum mechanics and gravity are equally important. But mysteries remain. One of the biggest involved black holes. Famed physicist Stephen Hawking claimed that anything sucked in a black hole was lost forever. For three decades, Leonard Susskind and Hawking clashed over the answer to this problem. Finally, in 2004, Hawking conceded. The Black Hole War will explain the mind-blowing science that finally won out and the emergence of a new paradigm that argues that the world – your home, your breakfast, you – is actually a hologram projected from the edges of space.
Leonard Susskind has been the Felix Bloch Professor in theoretical physics at Stanford University since 1978. He is a member of the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of numerous prizes including the science writing prize of the American Institute of Physics for his Scientific American article on black holes.
"Entertaining [...] both lucid and enjoyable [...] Like the best teachers, Susskind makes it fun to learn. With a deft use of analogy and a flair for language, he tames the most ferocious concepts [...] He has come up with the best visual metaphor for the multidimensinality of string theory that I've yet come across, one that alone is worth the price of the book"
– Los Angeles Times
"Susskind is very down to earth, an easy-going and entertaining guide through the most exciting frontiers of theoretical physics"
– New Scientist
