The Greatest Story Ever Told – So Far: Why Are We Here? Lawrence M. Krauss, Simon and Schuster, Inc., New York, 2017, 336 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1476777610

I first learned of Professor Krauss when he published The Physics of in 1996. I have read most of the books he has published since then. When Krauss was interviewed on Science Friday in March, I immediately pre-ordered my copy of this title.

This book is thought provoking. Its three divisions share titles with chapters of another book often referred to as “The Greatest Story Ever Told”: Genesis, Exodus and Revelation. The prologue describes why Krauss chose this particular title and then uses the rest of the book to provide evidence for the secular version of The Greatest Story Ever Told.

The book is actually a history of modern physics. Krauss follows the timeline through the discovery of the forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear and strong nuclear forces, and the theories that unify the forces, and the tools to validate the theories. The history ends with the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider and Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. The last chapter attempts to answer the title question from the secular and non-secular point of view. You will have to decide which you choose.

The author artfully chooses a quotation to open each chapter. I particularly liked the opening for the chapter titled “More Questions than Answers”: “A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion” – Proverbs 18:2.

Review by Joseph D. Ferrara, Ph.D. Deputy Director, X-ray Research Laboratory, Rigaku