Everything you didn’t realize you needed to know about lasers, the incredible technology that makes the modern world possible

Lasers are the quintessential technology of our wildest science-fictional dreams. In our collective imagination, they have waged battles in space, transported cows in tractor beams, and very nearly sliced James Bond in half. Meanwhile, off-screen, scientists have used real-life lasers to achieve even more ambitious goals, like global telecommunications, self-driving cars, quantum computing, and nuclear fusion.

The story of lasers is an account of both humanity’s impressive scientific ingenuity and our insatiable urge to mess around with technology we don’t really understand. Laser scientist Janelle Shane takes us on a wildly entertaining journey through an extraordinary swath of scientific history, contemporary and cutting-edge technology, and mind-exploding physics. With plenty of wit and delightful illustrations, she explains what lasers are, how they work, and their many amazing capabilities and applications.

By the end, you’ll learn just how much of our modern world relies on lasers, and how close many of their popular sci-fi uses are to becoming a reality. It’s all possible thanks to our obsessive quest to harness and manipulate the power of light.