What happens when something is sucked into a black hole? Does it disappear? Three decades ago, a young physicist named Stephen Hawking claimed that it did — and in doing so put at risk everything we know about the fundamental laws of the universe. Leonard Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft realized the threat and responded with a counterattack that changed the course of physics. The Black Hole War is the thrilling story of their united effort to reconcile Hawking's theories of black holes with their own sense of reality — an effort that would eventually result in Hawking admitting he was wrong and Susskind and 't Hooft realizing that our world is a hologram projected from the outer boundaries of space.