A superb composite of scientific knowledge that will no doubt inspire readers of all ages to learn more about our enigmatic...
A beautifully illustrated survey of the universe and its constituent parts, from quarks to galaxies and beyond.
Billions of years ago, exploding stars and other events expelled atoms that became the building blocks of the universe as we know it. Today, these ancient atoms form everything on Earth, including our bodies. Scharf (The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Possibilities, 2014, etc.), the director of the Columbia Astrobiology Center, and Miller (Spaceships: An Illustrated History of the Real and the Imagined, 2016, etc.), a Hugo Award–winning illustrator and former art director of the National Air and Space Museum’s Albert Einstein Planetarium, take readers on a spectacular journey, starting in the farthest reaches of the universe and ending in the deepest depths of the atom. Using the power of 10 to incrementally scale down, each chapter explains the physics powering the many systems that work together to form the universe. Miller’s stunning illustrations pair perfectly with Scharf’s compelling writing, which introduces complex ideas using everyday language and lucid metaphors. Complementary infographics are fun to read and help put massive numbers in perspective—e.g., consider that our solar system is a tiny speck in the Milky Way galaxy, which is just one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. Though they make sure that every page is accessible to nonscientists, Scharf and Miller don’t skimp on the science, providing plenty of depth in their discussions of general relativity, the composition of planets, the bizarre behavior of particles in the quantum realm, and everything in between. The clever sequence of chapters makes the book enjoyable when read from start to finish, but each chapter tells its own story, and many chapters have two-page illustrations that are discrete tools as entertaining as they are educational.
A superb composite of scientific knowledge that will no doubt inspire readers of all ages to learn more about our enigmatic universe.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-71571-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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