âAn insightful meditation on the curious nature of timeâŚA highly illuminating intellectual investigationâ (Kirkus Reviews) explaining the sometimes contradictory ways we experience time.
âTimeâ is the most commonly used noun in the English language; itâs always on our minds and it advances through every living moment. But what is time, exactly? Do children experience it the same way adults do? Why does it seem to slow down when weâre bored and speed by as we get older? How and why does time fly?
âErudite and informative, a joy with many small treasuresâ (Science), this witty and meditative exploration by award-winning author and New Yorker staff writer Alan Burdickââone of the finest science writers at work today, with an uncanny ability to explain knotty topics, with humanity, and humorâ (Publishers Weekly, staff pick, best books of 2016)âtakes readers on a personal quest to understand how time gets in us and why we perceive it the way we do. In the company of scientists, he visits the most accurate clock in the world (which exists only on paper); discovers that ânowâ actually happened a split-second ago; finds a twenty-fifth hour in the day; lives in the Arctic to lose all sense of time; and, for one fleeting moment in a neuroscientistâs lab, even makes time go backward.
âWhy Time Flies captures us. Because it opens up a well of fascinating queries and gives us a glimpse of what has become an ever more deepening mystery for humans: the nature of timeâ (The New York Times Book Review). This âintellectual adventure renders a hefty topic accessible to the general publicâ (Richmond Times-Dispatch), is an instant classic, a vivid and intimate examination of the clocks that tick inside us all.