A brief history of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

I first encountered Stephen Hawking on the cover of the New York Times magazine. Inside, its pages told a story we all know today, but at the time it was a revelation: a Cambridge astrophysicist sought to solve the great mysteries of the universe, while he himself was trapped in a wheelchair by a progressive neurogenerative disease. I remember being struck by writer Timothy Ferris’s description of Professor’s Hawking’s shoes, their soles pristine, having never touched the ground. I tucked the article in my knapsack, and a few days later I finished reading it on my way to lunch with a literary agent.

In one of those remarkable moments of serendipity, during lunch I mentioned the article to agent Al Zuckerman, who told me he was already trying to reach Professor Hawking to see if he might be interested in writing a popular book. Some months later I received a submission from Al — a short manuscript and an invitation to participate in an auction for the publishing rights to A Brief History of Time.

At the time I was a senior editor at Bantam Books, which was an unlikely home for Prof Hawking’s book, given the number of prestigious, traditional publishing houses in the hunt to acquire it. However, Bantam’s experience selling popular paperbacks meant that its distribution went far beyond bookstores into drugstores, supermarkets, and airport shops. I sent a letter to Professor Hawking along with our financial offer, making the case that Bantam could get his book in the hands of the widest possible readership. It turned out that he was the rare academic who wanted just that — to bring his esoteric scholarly work to the attention of the masses. He chose us.

Source: theguardian