Viewing the universe as a 15-billion-year-old youth with a projected lifetime that seems endless, The Five Ages of the Universe narrates the biography of the cosmos from the first gasp of inflation right after the Big Bang and the birth of stars, to the fading of all light. The book vividly describes the death of our own sun, tremendous fiery supernova explosions, dramatic collisions of galaxies, the evaporation of black holes, and the possibility for life when there are no planets, stars, or black holes left. The result is an awesome cosmic drama -- a brilliant work of popular science that is to astronomy what Stephen Hawking's great bestseller A Brief History of Time is to theoretical physics.