Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time spent 237 weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller list. That remarkable run helped establish the book as one of the most successful popular-science titles ever published.
The book was released in 1988 and explained subjects including the Big Bang, black holes, relativity, quantum mechanics and the nature of time for a general readership. Hawking’s editor, Peter Guzzardi, worked with him through many revisions to make the technical ideas accessible without turning the book into a conventional textbook.
The number 237 refers to weeks on the Sunday Times list, not weeks at the number-one position. The book’s success also extended internationally: it was translated into many languages and had sold an estimated nine million copies by 2009. Hawking later published The Illustrated A Brief History of Time and A Briefer History of Time, both intended to make the subject easier to follow.