Includes index.

Part one. Genesis -- From the armoire to the cave -- Seeing in the dark -- Through a glass, lightly -- There, and back again -- A stitch in time -- The shadows of reality -- A universe stranger than fiction -- A wrinkle in time -- Decay and rubble -- From here to eternity: shedding light on the sun -- Part two. Exodus -- Desperate times and desperate measure -- March of the titans -- Endless forms most beautiful: symmetry strikes back -- Cold, stark reality: breaking bad or beautiful? -- Living inside a superconductor -- The bearable heaviness of being: symmetry broken, physics fixed -- Part three. Revelation -- The wrong place at the right time -- The fog lifts -- Free at last -- Spanking the vacuum -- Gothic cathedrals of the twenty-first century -- More questions than answers -- From a beer party to the end of time -- Cosmic humility.