by Marcus Chown ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 2019
Heavy stuff lightly spun—just the thing for the science buff in the house.
A genial tour of the universe and its mysteries.
According to Einsteinian and other theories of relativity, light should take about 8.5 minutes to zoom from the sun to Earth. Yet, as New Scientist cosmology consultant Chown (The Ascent of Gravity: The Quest to Understand the Force that Explains Everything, 2017, etc.) notes, it takes much longer—30,000 years, in fact. The delay has to do with the density of the sun and the circuitous route that light must take in order to leave: “Photons are like Christmas shoppers fighting their way down a crowded street,” writes the author. “They cannot go in a straight line but are forced to zigzag.” In the case of light from the sun, it can advance no more than a centimeter before pinging elsewhere, and before you know it—well, as Chown notes, the light now bathing us was born during the last Ice Age. The author writes with gods-for-clods, rocks-for-jocks enthusiasm: “Some slime molds have thirteen sexes. (And you think you have difficulty finding and keeping a partner!).” Though the rhetorical ploy gets old, there’s plenty for more advanced students to ponder, such as Chown’s passing note that all life is really cellular life. Indeed, there are lots of moments that will stir the imaginations of meditative stoners. For example, the air we breathe was also very likely breathed by Marilyn Monroe, Julius Caesar, and “the last Tyrannosaurus Rex ever to have stalked the earth.” Also, the laws of probability suggest that the number of possible earths and their possible inhabitants are uncountably unknowable: “There are an infinite number of galaxies that look just like our own galaxy containing an infinite number of versions of you, whose lives, up until this moment, have been absolutely identical to yours.”
Heavy stuff lightly spun—just the thing for the science buff in the house.Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63576-594-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Diversion Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Share your opinion of this book
More by Marcus Chown
BOOK REVIEW
by Marcus Chown
BOOK REVIEW
by Marcus Chown
by Tom Wolfe ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 1979
Yes: it's high time for a de-romanticized, de-mythified, close-up retelling of the U.S. Space Program's launching—the inside story of those first seven astronauts.
But no: jazzy, jivey, exclamation-pointed, italicized Tom Wolfe "Mr. Overkill" hasn't really got the fight stuff for the job. Admittedly, he covers all the ground. He begins with the competitive, macho world of test pilots from which the astronauts came (thus being grossly overqualified to just sit in a controlled capsule); he follows the choosing of the Seven, the preparations for space flight, the flights themselves, the feelings of the wives; and he presents the breathless press coverage, the sudden celebrity, the glorification. He even throws in some of the technology. But instead of replacing the heroic standard version with the ring of truth, Wolfe merely offers an alternative myth: a surreal, satiric, often cartoony Wolfe-arama that, especially since there isn't a bit of documentation along the way, has one constantly wondering if anything really happened the way Wolfe tells it. His astronauts (referred to as "the brethren" or "The True Brothers") are obsessed with having the "right stuff" that certain blend of guts and smarts that spells pilot success. The Press is a ravenous fool, always referred to as "the eternal Victorian Gent": when Walter Cronkite's voice breaks while reporting a possible astronaut death, "There was the Press the Genteel Gent, coming up with the appropriate emotion. . . live. . . with no prompting whatsoever!" And, most off-puttingly, Wolfe presumes to enter the minds of one and all: he's with near-drowing Gus Grissom ("Cox. . . That face up there!—it's Cox. . . Cox knew how to get people out of here! . . . Cox! . . ."); he's with Betty Grissom angry about not staying at Holiday Inn ("Now. . . they truly owed her"); and, in a crude hatchet-job, he's with John Glenn furious at Al Shepard's being chosen for the first flight, pontificating to the others about their licentious behavior, or holding onto his self-image during his flight ("Oh, yes! I've been here before! And I am immune! I don't get into corners I can't get out of! . . . The Presbyterian Pilot was not about to foul up. His pipeline to dear Lord could not be clearer"). Certainly there's much here that Wolfe is quite right about, much that people will be interested in hearing: the P-R whitewash of Grissom's foul-up, the Life magazine excesses, the inter-astronaut tensions. And, for those who want to give Wolfe the benefit of the doubt throughout, there are emotional reconstructions that are juicily shrill.
But most readers outside the slick urban Wolfe orbit will find credibility fatally undermined by the self-indulgent digressions, the stylistic excesses, and the broadly satiric, anti-All-American stance; and, though The Right Stuff has enough energy, sass, and dirt to attract an audience, it mostly suggests that until Wolfe can put his subject first and his preening writing-persona second, he probably won't be a convincing chronicler of anything much weightier than radical chic.
Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1979
ISBN: 0312427565
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1979
Share your opinion of this book
More by Tom Wolfe
BOOK REVIEW
by Tom Wolfe
BOOK REVIEW
by Tom Wolfe
BOOK REVIEW
by Tom Wolfe
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Richard Rhodes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1986
A magnificent account of a central reality of our times, incorporating deep scientific expertise, broad political and social knowledge, and ethical insight, and Idled with beautifully written biographical sketches of the men and women who created nuclear physics. Rhodes describes in detail the great scientific achievements that led up to the invention of the atomic bomb. Everything of importance is examined, from the discovery of the atomic nucleus and of nuclear fission to the emergence of quantum physics, the invention of the mass-spectroscope and of the cyclotron, the creation of such man-made elements as plutonium and tritium, and implementation of the nuclear chain reaction in uranium. Even more important, Rhodes shows how these achievements were thrust into the arms of the state, which culminated in the unfolding of the nuclear arms race. Often brilliantly, he records the rise of fascism and of anti-Semitism, and the intensification of nationalist ambitions. He traces the outbreak of WW II, which provoked a hysterical rivalry among nations to devise the bomb. This book contains a grim description of Japanese resistance, and of the horrible psychological numbing that caused an unparalleled tolerance for human suffering and destruction. Rhodes depicts the Faustian scale of the Manhattan Project. His account of the dropping of the bomb itself, and of the awful firebombing that prepared its way, is unforgettable. Although Rhodes' gallery of names and events is sometimes dizzying, his scientific discussions often daunting, he has written a book of great drama and sweep. A superb accomplishment.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1986
ISBN: 0684813785
Page Count: 932
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1986
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.