Why are there morning people and night people? How come time flies when you’re having fun and three minutes can sometimes seem an eternity? Would time exist if we didn’t measure it – and why is there never enough of it?

Our modern lives are ruled by minutes and hours. We race from one thing to the next, all of us believing on some level that a mysterious cosmic force called ‘time’ is ticking on. And it’s always in short supply.

But is the time we live really like that? Could there in fact be another, alternative version, entwined with the official one? Here Stefan Klein explores the hidden dimensions of time, looking at everything from when the present becomes the past to the tribe that see the future backwards, from when sex is best to why the years seem to speed by as we age. And he reveals how we can learn to live in harmony with the secret clock within us, altering our perceptions to transform our lives.

To be enjoyed in the morning or the evening (depending on your body clock), this book will make you think the next time you check your watch – and maybe even slow down a little.

Stefan Klein was born in Munich. He studied physics and philosophy at the universities of Munich and Grenoble and completed his PhD in biophysics in Freiburg. He has written for all of the large German-language newspapers and magazines. He was science editor of Der Spiegel from 1996-1999, and on-staff writer with GEO from 1999-2000. He is now a freelance writer in Berlin. He is considered one of the most influential science writers in German- speaking Europe. In 1998 he won the prestigious Georg von Holtzbrinck Prize for Scientific Journalism. His much-acclaimed slim volume The Diaries of Creation was published in 2000. His work The Science of Happiness has sold more than 300 000 copies in German alone since its release in 2002 and was translated into 24 languages.