Time: A User's Guide

Oct 4, 2024 5:28 AM

Author:Stefan Klein

Why are there morning people and night people? How come time flies when you’re having fun and three minutes can sometimes seem an eternity? Would time exist if we didn’t measure it – and why is there never enough of it?

Our modern lives are ruled by minutes and hours. We race from one thing to the next, all of us believing on some level that a mysterious cosmic force called ‘time’ is ticking on. And it’s always in short supply.

But is the time we live really like that? Could there in fact be another, alternative version, entwined with the official one? Here Stefan Klein explores the hidden dimensions of time, looking at everything from when the present becomes the past to the tribe that see the future backwards, from when sex is best to why the years seem to speed by as we age. And he reveals how we can learn to live in harmony with the secret clock within us, altering our perceptions to transform our lives.

To be enjoyed in the morning or the evening (depending on your body clock), this book will make you think the next time you check your watch – and maybe even slow down a little.

Reviews

The prose is perfectly pitched: Sapolsky writes in a jocular, entertaining style without ever pandering to the presumed ignorance of his readers. And he expresses infectious enthusiasm, especially when he is reporting on new experiments performed by colleagues in his field

—— Steven Poole , Guardian

Sapolsky, who has a weakness for Martian jokes, is a bona fide boffin, but he looks beyond the lab for his case studies, assembling a cast that includes Sandra Bullock and a love-struck baboon named Jonathan. This highly readable book will both inform and enlarge your appreciation of the mystery of existence

—— Mail on Sunday

The author of Monkeyluv, an entertaining collection of essays about humans and animals, is also a luminary among that rare breed - the funny scientist. These essays on genetic wars between men and women, dreams, bad moods, ambiguity and stress are...a combination of Oliver Sacks and David Foster Wallace

—— Los Angeles Times

Sapolsky gives us these and many more intriguing gene factoids, but he also explains the elaborate nature/nurture interactions in which they are embedded...the book is a witty blend of anecdote and analysis

—— Rita Carter , Daily Mail

Fascinating

—— Sunday Times

Compelling. His spirit of intellectual adventuring is infectious

—— New Scientist

Cocker is a beautiful writer...the twilight and his beloved rooks bring out the poet in him...a loving observation of the wonders on the wing in everyday England

—— Ann Wroe , Daily Telegraph

The nation's most observant and intuitive of nature writers

—— Sunday Express

As obsessive a celebration of rook and jackdaw - and of human immersion in nature - as anyone could wish

—— Irish Times

A vivid example of the "new nature writing" it is a lyrical and intense evocation of the world of jackdaws and rook, and an elegy on watchfulness

—— Daily Telegraph

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