Books like The search for infinity by Gordon Fraser

George Gamow’s classic guide demystifies the links between mathematics and physical reality, covering quantum theory, relativity, and pure math in clear, accessible language for newcomers.

The Big Bang theory--the leading explanation for the origin of the universe--posits that space and time sprang into being about 14 billion years ago in a hot, expanding fireball of nearly infinite density. Over the last three decades, the theory has repeatedly had to be revised to address such issues as how galaxies and stars first formed and why the expansion of the universe is speeding up--let alone what caused the Big Bang in the first place. This book presents a bold new cosmology: Steinhardt and Turok recount remarkable developments in astronomy, particle physics, and superstring theory that together form the basis of their groundbreaking "Cyclic Universe" theory. According to this picture, the Big Bang was not the beginning of time, but the bridge to a past filled with endlessly repeating cycles, each accompanied by the creation of new matter and the formation of new galaxies, stars, and planets.--From publisher description.

Few questions grip the mind more forcefully than those about the creation of the universe, and since the discoveries of the 1920s it has been a primary goal of physicists to trace the history of the universe back to "where it all came from" the moment of creation in the Big Ban. This is the up-to-date story of the enormous growth in knowledge of the early universe and the important discoveries about that titanic explosion that took place 15 billion years ago.

A compact collection of Isaac Asimov’s popular‑science essays on astronomy, mathematics, and related topics, originally published in the late 1970s.