Good sense for those who value good sense.
The well-known astrophysicist argues in favor of science.
Tyson, popular TV commentator and director of the Hayden Planetarium, points out that until a few centuries ago, all cultures explained natural phenomena through words from wise men (i.e., “authority”), sacred texts, and myths. Life was short, disease-ridden, and violent, and few claimed that important questions remained unanswered or that progress was possible. After the 17th-century Enlightenment, scientific inquiry began delivering explanations that “are true even when you don’t believe in them,” and there followed significant improvements to our quality of life as a species. Even though science has delivered the goods for centuries, Tyson warns against two alternatives. The first, deeply held personal beliefs, are not susceptible to argument and range from the literal truth of the Bible to the superiority of the Dodgers over the Yankees. Personal beliefs are benign unless they become coercive political beliefs, and the intensity of this coercion continues to increase in today’s political climate, sometimes culminating in violence. Tyson urges readers to base their actions on accurate observation—evidence rather than feeling—and a willingness to discard ideas that don’t work. “To deny objective truths is to be scientifically illiterate,” he writes, “not to be ideologically principled.” Among the best sections of the book is an essay in which the author, taking a page from early racist anthropology, delivers a tongue-in-cheek but strictly fact-based argument that Whites resemble chimpanzees far more closely than Blacks do. Marshalling his evidence, he shows “how easy it is to be racist.” Since it’s been proven (scientifically) that humans are terrible at assessing risks, flummoxed by statistics, impervious to facts that contradict their prejudices, and murderously attached to their tribe, Tyson may be fighting a losing battle. Still, he’s a welcome voice in the escalating fight with the array of forces aligned against science and rational thought.
Good sense for those who value good sense.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-86150-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.
New York Times columnist Brooks (The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement, 2011, etc.) returns with another volume that walks the thin line between self-help and cultural criticism.
Sandwiched between his introduction and conclusion are eight chapters that profile exemplars (Samuel Johnson and Michel de Montaigne are textual roommates) whose lives can, in Brooks’ view, show us the light. Given the author’s conservative bent in his column, readers may be surprised to discover that his cast includes some notable leftists, including Frances Perkins, Dorothy Day, and A. Philip Randolph. (Also included are Gens. Eisenhower and Marshall, Augustine, and George Eliot.) Throughout the book, Brooks’ pattern is fairly consistent: he sketches each individual’s life, highlighting struggles won and weaknesses overcome (or not), and extracts lessons for the rest of us. In general, he celebrates hard work, humility, self-effacement, and devotion to a true vocation. Early in his text, he adapts the “Adam I and Adam II” construction from the work of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Adam I being the more external, career-driven human, Adam II the one who “wants to have a serene inner character.” At times, this veers near the Devil Bugs Bunny and Angel Bugs that sit on the cartoon character’s shoulders at critical moments. Brooks liberally seasons the narrative with many allusions to history, philosophy, and literature. Viktor Frankl, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Tillich, William and Henry James, Matthew Arnold, Virginia Woolf—these are but a few who pop up. Although Brooks goes after the selfie generation, he does so in a fairly nuanced way, noting that it was really the World War II Greatest Generation who started the ball rolling. He is careful to emphasize that no one—even those he profiles—is anywhere near flawless.
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9325-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enthusiastic appreciation of a spectacular astrophysical entity.
A short, lively account of one of the oddest and most intriguing topics in astrophysics.
Levin, a Guggenheim fellow and professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College, knows her subject well, but her goal is appreciation as much as education, and there is much to admire in a black hole. Before Einstein, writes the author, scientists believed that the force of gravity influenced the speed of moving objects. They also knew that light always travels at exactly the speed of light. This combination made no sense until 1915, when Einstein explained that gravity is not a force but a curving of space (really, space-time) near a body of matter. The more massive the matter, the greater it curves the space in its vicinity; other bodies that approach appear to bend or change speed when they are merely moving forward through distorted space-time. Einstein’s equations indicated that, above a certain mass, space-time would curve enough to double back on itself and disappear, but this was considered a mathematical curiosity until the 1960s, when objects that did just that began turning up: black holes. Light cannot emerge from a black hole, but it is not invisible. Large holes attract crowds of orbiting stars whose density produces frictional heating and intense radiation. No writer, Levin included, can contain their fascination with the event horizon, the boundary of the black hole where space-time doubles back. Nothing inside the event horizon, matter or radiation, can leave, and anything that enters is lost forever. Time slows near the horizon and then stops. The author’s discussions of the science behind her subject will enlighten those who have read similar books, perhaps the best being Marcia Bartusiak’s Black Hole (2015). Readers coming to black holes for the first time will share Levin’s wonder but may struggle with some of her explanations.
An enthusiastic appreciation of a spectacular astrophysical entity.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-65822-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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