Mysteries, menaces, and thrills for the skyward eye.
A first-rate science-writer (The Whole Shebang, 1997, etc.) delves into his lifetime passion for stargazing, and the result is essential reading for kindred spirits and all would-be astronomers.
The heavens, with all the myth and majesty the term implies, are accessible to one and all, asserts Ferris (Emeritus/Univ. of California, Berkeley). Giving the reader a tour of everything from our Solar System’s companion planets to the Milky Way, distant galaxies, and baffling giant clouds of dust or gas, he emphasizes what to look for, whether with naked eye, binoculars, or telescope. Throughout, Ferris interweaves the latest scientific information and speculation in a way that further whets readers’ appetites. His visits with other amateur astronomers, some of whom have become legends in their own time, are equally inspirational; these people’s dedication and visual acuity have led to important discoveries overlooked by the institutional professionals. “Patience and the desire to see are the most important things,” states Barbara Wilson, who helped establish Houston’s George Observatory, where amateurs have discovered scores of asteroids. Ferris advises that we’ll need all the eyeballs we can get, amateur and professional, to identify and track potentially thousands of comets and asteroids whose orbits may be “randomized” by some future near-encounter with a larger body and cocked toward a potentially fatal collision with Earth. In perhaps the ultimate adventure in “remote seeing” today, Ferris walks the reader through the process of e-mailing a request for a slice of observation time and getting back the crisp digital image of the desired coordinates delivered via Internet direct from the charge-coupled device (CCD) attached to a massive institutional telescope formerly accessible only to qualified professional astronomers willing to queue up and wait.
Mysteries, menaces, and thrills for the skyward eye.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-684-86579-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
Ackerman writes with a light but assured touch, her prose rich in fact but economical in delivering it. Fans of birds in all...
Science writer Ackerman (Ah-Choo!: The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold, 2010, etc.) looks at the new science surrounding avian intelligence.
The takeaway: calling someone a birdbrain is a compliment. And in any event, as Ackerman observes early on, “intelligence is a slippery concept, even in our own species, tricky to define and tricky to measure.” Is a bird that uses a rock to break open a clamshell the mental equivalent of a tool-using primate? Perhaps that’s the wrong question, for birds are so unlike humans that “it’s difficult for us to fully appreciate their mental capabilities,” given that they’re really just small, feathered dinosaurs who inhabit a wholly different world from our once-arboreal and now terrestrial one. Crows and other corvids have gotten all the good publicity related to bird intelligence in recent years, but Ackerman, who does allow that some birds are brighter than others, points favorably to the much-despised pigeon as an animal that “can remember hundreds of different objects for long periods of time, discriminate between different painting styles, and figure out where it’s going, even when displaced from familiar territory by hundreds of miles.” Not bad for a critter best known for bespattering statues in public parks. Ackerman travels far afield to places such as Barbados and New Caledonia to study such matters as memory, communication, and decision-making, the last largely based on visual cues—though, as she notes, birds also draw ably on other senses, including smell, which in turn opens up insight onto “a weird evolutionary paradox that scientists have puzzled over for more than a decade”—a matter of the geometry of, yes, the bird brain.
Ackerman writes with a light but assured touch, her prose rich in fact but economical in delivering it. Fans of birds in all their diversity will want to read this one.Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59420-521-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
