Mack's pleasing writing style makes speculating about the death of the universe unexpectedly entertaining.
A theoretical astrophysicist surveys five possible scenarios for the end of the universe, backed by the latest research in physics and cosmology.
Acknowledging the end of the universe is a grim proposition. But after accepting the fact that our universe cannot “persist unchanged, forever,” thinking through the science of end times is actually a thrill, an opportunity “to dig deep into the question of where it’s all going, what that all means, and what we can learn about the universe we live in by asking these questions.” Mack uses humor, metaphor, and personal experience to offset her often technical descriptions, creating a delightfully unsettling narrative that explains big ideas in modern physics and cosmology through the lens of end times. “Whether or not the world is falling apart from a political perspective,” she writes, “scientifically, we’re living in a golden age. In physics, recent discoveries and new technological and theoretical tools are allowing us to make leaps that were previously impossible…the scientific exploration of how the universe might end is just now undergoing its renaissance.” In accessible yet precise language, Mack details how these modern scientific approaches suggest five apocalyptic scenarios: the Big Crunch, Heat Death, the Big Rip, Vacuum Decay, and the Bounce. Each is creative in its demise, giving the author an excuse to expound on the latest theories about dark energy and the expanding universe, the Higgs boson, and the multiverse. She celebrates that the near future will be filled with knowledge and discovery, even if the far future is doomed. “Work on the cutting edge of physics is already pointing us toward a universe far stranger than we even could have imagined,” she writes. Drawing on the wisdom of a variety of pioneering physicists, the author delivers a sleek narrative of discovery.
Mack's pleasing writing style makes speculating about the death of the universe unexpectedly entertaining. (b/w illustrations)Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-0354-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Light on brand-new news but a pleasure for Fab Four completists.
An overstuffed gathering of Beatlemania, an evergreen subject.
Who knew that Paul McCartney wrote “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” after watching “a couple of monkeys copulating en plein air” in Rishikesh? Or that John Lennon hesitated to let Paul join his band since Paul could play and might jeopardize his leadership? Brown, whose last book was an award-wining biography of Princess Margaret, serves up 150 episodes, most running just a few pages, concerning the lives and work of the Beatles, with poor Ringo, as ever, mostly an afterthought. (The author quotes American writer Carolyn See to deem the drummer “patron saint of fuckups the world over.”) Brown is not an uncritical worshipper, but when he does criticize, it’s seldom fresh. He observes, as have so many, that John and Paul needed each other as creative foils and competitors and that when they separated, their solo work suffered, “with John falling back on self-pity and Paul giving in to whimsy.” Still, there are some little-known moments here, as when Kingsley Amis railed, “Oh fuck the Beatles” in a bitter letter to Philip Larkin, attaching a nasty racist epithet to Yoko Ono in passing. Another example is when Brown describes the Maharishi’s retreat in India, which, thanks to the tobacco heiress Doris Duke, was “far from spartan,” though conducive enough to feelings of spiritual exaltation that John was reduced to writing “hippy-dippy lyrics” that later resolved into such self-doubting tunes as “Jealous Guy.” Collectors of all things Beatles will relish Brown’s description of their first time getting high, courtesy of Bob Dylan, who is “an enthusiast for visiting sites associated with rock stars,” touring John’s boyhood home after the National Trust acquired it. The author sometimes second-guesses, as when he decries the cover of Abbey Road, the quartet “generally looking as if they couldn’t be arsed,” but allows that it has since become iconic and often imitated, like the Beatles themselves.
Light on brand-new news but a pleasure for Fab Four completists.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-10931-8
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
Not for the faint of heart, but true-crime aficionados will appreciate this fast-paced, illuminating report.
An intimate investigative account of a notorious serial killer focused on the making of his teenage apprentices.
Acclaimed forensic psychologist Ramsland, author of Confession of a Serial Killer, Beating the Devil’s Game, and dozens of other true-crime books, teams up with investigative journalist and documentarian Ullman to add materially to the 50-year-old story of the “Candy Man” killer, Dean Corll, who was shot and killed in 1973. The authors examine the involvement of David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. as apprentices, performing Corll’s “grunt work,” which consisted of the abduction, torture, murder, and burial of other teenage boys. The authors explore the devious strategies predators employ when choosing their “apprentices” and grooming them. Brooks and Henley were both ready targets for Corll, but Henley, the book’s primary character, is especially noteworthy, both in terms of his vulnerability and willing participation as a primary accomplice to a serial killer. Ramsland and Ullman expand the background to Corll’s reprehensible acts to reveal the work of a larger criminal organization, a widespread network of sex offenders dealing in the trafficking and murder of boys operated by John David Norman, who “had been charged more than two dozen times previously for child sex crimes and had a long rap sheet charted by the FBI.” Norman, Corll, John Wayne Gacy, and thousands of other pedophiles coordinated their heinous acts for years. At the end, the authors provide sobering images from the case, including those taken on the day of Corll’s murder, as well as statements by the teen accomplices upon their arrests. Frighteningly, the authors write, “many of the same grooming techniques that Corll employed are still in use because they’re successful.” Ramsland and Ullman paint a disturbingly vivid portrait of true evil.
Not for the faint of heart, but true-crime aficionados will appreciate this fast-paced, illuminating report.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781613164952
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crime Ink/Penzler
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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