Isaac Asimov, a seminal figure in twentieth century science fiction, was also a brilliant popularizer of science, making clarity out of the chaos of complex concepts and formulas.

Could there be any more challenging concept than the creation of the universe? Early civilizations attributed it to gods or to one God. In Asimov’s In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis, the author attempts to reconcile the religious with the scientific, painting a picture of Creation, the beginning of time and the origin of life itself.

In his line-by-line annotation of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, Asimov carefully and even-handedly compares the two accounts, pointing out where they are similar and where they are different.

“There is no version of primeval history, preceding the discoveries of modern science, that is as rational and as inspiriting as that of the Book of Genesis,” Asimov says. However, human knowledge does increase, and if the Biblical writers, “had written those early chapters of Genesis knowing what we know today, we can be certain that they would have written it completely differently.”

Isaac Asimov brings to this fascinating subject his wide-ranging knowledge of science and history—and his award-winning ability to explain the complex with accuracy, clarity, and wit.