Book excerpt: Quantum physics is the most fundamental -- but also the most baffling -- branch of science. Allowing for dead-and-alive cats, teleportation, antimatter, and parallel universes, as well as underpinning all of our digital technology, it's as important as it is mind-bending. This clear and compact book demystifies the strange and beautiful quantum world, and hence the nature of reality itself. Contents include: Schrodinger's cat, inside the atom, the particle zoo, the Higgs boson, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, God playing dice, relativity, the Big Bang, dark energy and matter, black holes, the fate of the Universe, the Theory of Everything, quantum gravity, string theory, the multiverse, instant communication, quantum computing and cryptography, superconductivity, quantum biology, quantum consciousness, and much more. Written as a series of mini essays with 200 simple diagrams to help understanding, there can be no easier guide to this notoriously confusing subject. At last it's possible for non-specialists to understand quantum theory and its central role in the birth of the universe and the very existence of life.