"The world's leading alien hunter" -- New York Times Magazine From acclaimed Harvard astrophysicist and bestselling author of Extraterrestrial comes a mind-expanding new book explaining why becoming an interstellar species is imperative for humanity's survival and detailing a game plan for how we can settle among the stars. In the New York Times bestseller Extraterrestrial, Avi Loeb, the longest serving Chair of Harvard's Astronomy Department, presented a theory that shook the scientific community: our solar system, Loeb claimed, had likely been visited by a piece of advanced alien technology from a distant star. This provocative and persuasive argument opened millions of minds internationally to the vast possibilities of our universe and the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth. But a crucial question remained: now that we are aware of the existence of extraterrestrial life, what do we do next? How do we prepare ourselves for interaction with interstellar extraterrestrial civilization? How can our species become interstellar? Now Loeb tackles these questions in a revelatory, powerful call to arms that reimagines the idea of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. Dismantling our science-fiction fueled visions of a human and alien life encounter, Interstellar provides a realistic and practical blueprint for how such an interaction might actually occur, resetting our cultural understanding and expectation of what it means to identify an extraterrestrial object. From awe-inspiring searches for extraterrestrial technology, to the heated debate of the existence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, Loeb provides a thrilling, front-row view of the monumental progress in science and technology currently preparing us for contact. He also lays out the profound implications of becoming--or not becoming--interstellar; in an urgent, eloquent appeal for more proactive engagement with the world beyond ours, he powerfully contends why we must seek out other life forms, and in the process, choose who and what we are within the universe. Combining cutting edge science, physics, and philosophy, Interstellar revolutionizes the approach to our search for extraterrestrial life and our preparation for its discovery. In this eye-opening, necessary look at our future, Avi Loeb artfully and expertly raises some of the most important questions facing us as humans, and proves, once again, that scientific curiosity is the key to our survival.

"People like myself, who truly feel at home in several countries, are not strictly at home anywhere," writes Abraham Pais, one of the world's leading theoretical physicists, near the beginning of this engrossing chronicle of his life on two continents. The author of an immensely popular biography of Einstein, Subtle Is the Lord, Pais writes engagingly for a general audience. His "tale" describes his period of hiding in Nazi-occupied Holland (he ended the war in a Gestapo prison) and his life in America, particularly at the newly organized Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, then directed by the brilliant and controversial physicist Robert Oppenheimer. Pais tells fascinating stories about Oppenheimer, Einstein, Bohr, Sakharov, Dirac, Heisenberg, and von Neumann, as well as about nonscientists like Chaim Weizmann, George Kennan, Erwin Panofsky, and Pablo Casals. His enthusiasm about science and life in general pervades a book that is partly a memoir, partly a travel commentary, and partly a history of science. Pais's charming recollections of his years as a university student become somber with the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. He was presented with an unusual deadline for his graduate work: a German decree that July 14, 1941, would be the final date on which Dutch Jews could be granted a doctoral degree. Pais received the degree, only to be forced into hiding from the Nazis in 1943, practically next door to Anne Frank. After the war, he went to the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen to work with Niels Bohr. 1946 began his years at the Institute for Advanced Study, where he worked first as a Fellow and then as a Professor until his move to Rockefeller University in 1963. Combining his understanding of disparate social and political worlds, Pais comments just as insightfully on Oppenheimer's ordeals during the McCarthy era as he does on his own and his European colleagues' struggles during World War II. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.