Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch Professor in theoretical physics at Stanford University. He is the author of The Cosmic Landscape , The Black Hole War, and TheTheoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics. Susskind is a member of the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of numerous prizes including the science writing prize of the American Institute of Physics for his Scientific American article on black holes.