Why are we alive? Most things in the universe aren't living, and everything that is alive traces back to things that, puzzlingly, weren't. For centuries, the scientific question of life's origins has confounded us, but physicist Jeremy England argues that the answer has been under our noses the whole time, deep within the laws of thermodynamics, and the very same forces that tend to tear things apart assembled the first living systems. Suggesting that what we really want to know is what it means to be alive, England—who is also an ordained rabbi—uses his theory to examine how, if at all, science helps us find purpose in a vast and mysterious universe.