Kaltenegger’s exploration of nearby and faraway space is absorbing, informative, and entertaining.
A leading astronomer blends knowledge and enthusiasm to show how the universe is slowly being revealed.
This book is an excursion that turns the esoteric field of stellar cartography into an engaging and entertaining story. Kaltenegger, the director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell, has a knack for starting with a few simple principles and then adding layers of increasing complexity. She believes the discipline of astronomy is at a turning point, mainly due to the new NASA James Webb Space Telescope, which has provided a new level of stargazing clarity and distance. The revolutionary telescope has led to new ways “to explore the universe around us by reading the message encoded in light,” a process that Kaltenegger explains in jargon-free terms. Information gleaned from spacecraft travel has also been valuable. Scientists have discovered a host of exoplanets, and the author looks at a handful that could harbor some form of life. She also examines possibilities in our own solar system, with Mars and the moons Titan, Europa, and Enceladus being contenders in the search for organisms—although they would probably be microbial. Kaltenegger clearly loves her subject and often injects flashes of dry wit and personal experience. She devotes a chapter to planets that have appeared in science fiction, having some fun with probabilities and impossibilities. She likes to think that there’s intelligent life somewhere out there, but she admits that the hunt has yet to yield positive results. Regardless, humanity has so far barely scratched the surface of the galaxy. A bonus of the book is an appendix of websites offering further information and even the opportunity for citizen scientists to propose names for new exoplanets.
Kaltenegger’s exploration of nearby and faraway space is absorbing, informative, and entertaining.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781250283634
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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