In Origins, the authors want to "uncover the story of how part of the Universe turned into ourselves". To do that, they need to explain the history of the Universe, and what it is made of: "fourteen billion years of cosmic evolution", as the subtitle says.

This is a huge topic, and Tyson and Goldsmith cover a vast field as they work their way from the surreal events in the three minutes after the Big Bang. During its first few billion years, the Universe expanded and cooled, as matter gravitated into galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. Eventually, an undistinguished star (the Sun) was born in an undistinguished region (the Orion arm) of an undistinguished galaxy (the Milky Way) in an undistinguished part of the Universe (the outskirts of the Virgo supercluster). Later, matter condensed and accreted out of the cloud of gas circling the Sun, and became the planets, asteroids and comets of our Solar System. The authors go on to look at the origins of life on Earth, and the possibility of our finding life elsewhere in the Universe - or of it finding us.

Origins is the companion book to a PBS T.V. series, and includes excellent colour illustrations.

However, it is by no means a coffee table book; the emphasis is scientific exposition for the general audience. Cosmology is complex, and Origins includes difficult issues like the physics of the Big Bang, dark matter and dark energy, and the shape and size of the Universe; but the explanations are unfailingly clear.

Tyson and Goldsmith have made some of science's most important and most challenging topics accessible even to readers without a strong background in science, while never talking down to their audience.