Bill Bryon has a new book out, “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. I’d buy it purely on the basis of this passage:
“…disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn’t receive and about 1% of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.”