A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes.

HAWKING, Stephen W.; Introduction by Carl Sagan.

$6,800.00

Item Number: 46009

London: Bantam Press, 1988.

First British edition and true first of Hawking’s groundbreaking work. Octavo, original cloth, illustrated by Ron Miller. Signed by Carl Sagan on the title page, who wrote the introduction. Additionally signed and inscribed by the illustrator Ron Miller, who has also added a drawing. Sagan tells the following story: Sagan was in London for a scientific conference in 1974, and between sessions he wandered into a different room, where a larger meeting was taking place. “I realized that I was watching an ancient ceremony: the investiture of new fellows into the Royal Society, one of the most ancient scholarly organizations on the planet. In the front row, a young man in a wheelchair was, very slowly, signing his name in a book that bore on its earliest pages the signature of Isaac Newton… Stephen Hawking was a legend even then.” In his introduction, Sagan goes on to add that Hawking is the “worthy successor” to Newton and Paul Dirac, both former Lucasian Professors of Mathematics. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket with light rubbing. Rare and desirable signed.

A landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking’s book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending—or are there boundaries? “[Hawking] can explain the complexities of cosmological physics with an engaging combination of clarity and wit. . . . His is a brain of extraordinary power" (The New York Review of Books).