It’s All Relative isn’t your typical “here’s how the universe works” science book. It’s more like grabbing a late night drink with Lawrence M. Krauss while he casually rewires your brain. This all happens between stories about Nobel Prize winners, Hollywood filmmakers, Rock Stars, cosmic accidents, and the quiet complicated gravity of his relationship with his mother. A mother who fed his ambition and drove him nuts at the same time.

Beneath the physics, the Big Bang, and dark matter, all the stuff that sounds like it belongs on a chalkboard at Harvard, there’s something far more relatable going on. A kid trying to figure out who he is and where he belongs in the world. One minute you’re learning how the first few minutes after the universe began set the stage for everything. The next, you’re being locked up in Smith’s Field jail for vagrancy, or standing with your nose pressed against the front window while a guy wearing heavy gold chains around his neck and sporting a bracelet with the name Sid spelled out in diamonds, pulls up in a big shiny Cadillac and moves into the master bedroom.

This is a book about a celebrity scientist’s rise to fame, complete with pitfalls and friends your mother warned you about. It’s about inspiring personalities, and lessons learned about science and life. It’s full of big ideas told by Krauss in a voice that sounds like someone thinking out loud, a little restless, a little wounded, circling the truth until it slips out and hits you harder than expected.

His story is framed by the realization that the significance of each of our life journeys depends on one's vantage point and that there are many different vantage points yielding very different perspectives. Equal parts bar story, brain explosion, and emotional undercurrent, It’s All Relative is what happens when serious science collides with real life, and you realize the universe isn’t what you thought it was, it’s stranger, and a lot more interesting.