You need to know the probability of intelligent life evolving on a planet of the red sun Betelgeuse. But first you need to know how to pronounce Betelgeuse. Who you gonna call? Asimov, of course, the only contemporary author who measures his output in astronomical units. He has been writing a popular science column for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for over 25 years; this volume reprints columns from 1983-84. Asimov is now Lewis Thomas and—these are not quiet, meditative syntheses of science and philosophy, body and spirit and mind. Asimov is a crass though often engaging wholesaler of facts—in such weak entries here as his essay on the moons of the solar system, those facts are simply laid out—like the moons—in a line from here to Pluto. Elsewhere, however, the expository skills of a fine teacher are clearly evident, as in the essay on photosynthesis, a tour de force of lucid explanation and casual learnedness. The physics section is occasionally hard to track, but is mercifully free of those irritating analogies ("If the Universe were a football field and Earth was in the end zone. . .") that make "popular" science so widely and deservedly unpopular. Asimov is crystal clear on the slippery topic of general relativity and recent efforts to prove it experimentally. (Surprisingly, the first strong proof did not emerge until five years after Einstein's death.) This is a highly formulaic writer, of course, but the formula here—a brief anecdote followed by a related essay on some topic from applied or theoretical science—often yields an informative piece, particularly when the topic is biology, chemistry, or the history of science. Asimov says he enjoys this column more than any of his other regular writing assignments. In many of these essays, the pleasure shines through.
Pub Date: Aug. 2, 1985
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1985
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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