Time

Feeling stressed and overwhelmed? You are not alone. Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks, selects some of the best books on time management—including two classic how-to guides, plus several texts focused on helping you decide how you really want to spend your finite time on this planet.

If you could go back, or forward, in time — would you? Science journalist and sci-fi novelist Annalee Newitz recommends some of the best time travel books and talks us through the dangers and delights of the genre, which take us from the Ordovician period through to the present day.

Our experience of time is only weakly related to the fundamental realities of physics, says the physicist and best-selling author Carlo Rovelli. Here he selects five works for understanding the nature of time in its truer sense.

"Time is an illusion," wrote Douglas Adams. "Lunchtime, doubly so." It is certainly a subjective experience, agrees the psychologist and author Marc Wittmann—as any drug user or meditation expert can tell you. Here he picks five books that unpick our perception of the passage of time.

The Yale historian recommends some of the books of the past millennia that deal with the complicated concept of time and eternity.