The physicist explores his life and intellectual evolution. Hawking recounts his improbable journey from postwar London boyhood to his years of international acclaim and celebrity. A witty, and candid account which introduces readers to a Hawking rarely glimpsed in previous books: the inquisitive schoolboy whose classmates nicknamed him Einstein; the young husband and father struggling to gain a foothold in the world of physics and cosmology. Hawking opens up about the challenges that confronted him following his diagnosis of ALS, and explains how the prospect of an early death urged him onward through numerous intellectual breakthroughs.