Don't Know Much About the Universe: Everything You Need to Know About Outer Space but Never...

Don't Know Much About the Universe: Everything You Need to Know About Outer Space but Never Learned (Don't ... | Kenneth C. Davis | A lightweight intro to a heavy subject

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Don't Know Much Ab...

	Don't Know Much About the Universe: Everything You Need to Know About Outer Space but Never Learned (Don't ... Kenneth C. Davis Harper Paperbacks, 2002 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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Who dug those canals on Mars? What was the biblical Star of Bethlehem? Were the pyramids built by extraterrestrials?

From the ancients who charted the heavens to Star Trek, The X-Files, and Apollo 13, outer space has intrigued people through the ages. Yet most of us look up at the night sky and feel totally in the dark when it comes to the basic facts about the universe.

Kenneth C. Davis steps into that void with a lively and readable guide to the discoveries, theories, and real people who have shed light on the mysteries and wonders of the cosmos. Discover why Einstein was such a genius, the truth behind a blue moon or two, the amazing secrets of Stonehenge, and even how one great astronomer lost his nose.

With the fun question-and-answer format that has appealed to the millions of readers of his bestselling Don't Much About® series, you'll be taking off on an exciting armchair exploration of the solar system, the Milky Way, and beyond.

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"Don't Know Much About.." Series is Excellent!

I've read all of the books in the "Don't Know Much About.." series. If you're interested in getting a rather thorough overview without becoming an expert, these books are for you. They are so easy to read, that I couldn't but them down.

A lightweight intro to a heavy subject

Some of us just don't understand math and physics -- and probably never will -- and thus this book serves a useful purpose in telling us about outer space in a language we can understand.

Davis makes it comprehensible by arranging his material in the form of questions and answers. "Which galaxies are nearest the Milky Way? Has anyone found a black hole yet?" etc. Some of the questions and answers are bizarre: "Has anyone been abducted by aliens? What became of Einstein's brain?" This trivializes the subject, but it also makes it easy to skip material which is not of interest. There are also little quotes and cartoons and other readily digestible material. "So where are they?" asked the Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi when colleagues speculated about the existence of space aliens -- one helluva good question in my opinion.

I also like a poem quoted in the book which goes: "There is in space a small black hole -- Through which, say our astronomers,-- The whole d--n thing, the universe, -- must one day fall. That will be all." You get the idea: levity mixed with doses of hard information.

If you know absolutely nothing about outer space this book is a good place to begin; if you know a little bit, as I do, this book is still worth reading to fill in gaps in your knowledge and to see if this author explains the incomprehensible in a manner in which -- at long last -- you gain a small glimmer of understanding; if you know a lot about outer space and physics I wouldn't bother reading this book.

Smallchief

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Another interesting addition to a fun series

This is another fun contribution to Kenneth Davis's DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT series of books. My own orientation in my reading is historical, philosophical, political, and literary, and rarely scientific, so this was a useful survey of where things stand at the present in our understanding of the universe. If not for the fact that this is part of a franchise of books, it might have been more appropriately titled EVERYTHING ABOUT THE UNIVERSE YOU'RE AFRAID TO ASK. Scientific accounts generally leave out the "fun" questions, such as whether or not aliens visit earth or if there is any validity to astrology. But here there are not forbidden topics. The old saying, "There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers" very much holds here. He thrives on giving us the information that people ought to have, but want to have. This gives the book a degree of fun that one often fails to find in similar books.

The book is, like Davis's other books, extremely wide-ranging. It begins with a very broad history of the history of astronomy, touching along with way with especially relevant topics in philosophy and astrology. I have to say that I found some of these sections to be less rich than they could have been. The Aristotelian picture of the universe got rather less coverage than I would have allotted it and he didn't do a very good job of explaining the degree to which astrology was a creation of Hellenism. For instance, for the Egyptians the zodiac was essentially a way of telling time, a fact discussed by all of the standard historical surveys of the history of astrology. I was also enormously disappointed later in the book to find no mention of the astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who was the first person to work out the mathematical properties of black holes among other achievements. I was talking with a Noble Prize winner in physics about fifteen years ago when I asked him about Chandrasekhar's place in physics. He replied that in his estimation he was the second most important astrophysicist of the twentieth century after only Einstein. What made the complete failure to talk about Chandrasekhar was the fact that Davis frequently alluded to the Chandra X-ray telescope, which was, of course, named for Chandrasekhar.

The book is also troubling for the occasional inaccuracy. Not knowing about astronomy in any detail, I can't say whether the overall information is accurate or not, but it is troubling to see a book that is designed to better inform people to repeat the utterly mythical folktale that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. What Gore said was that he was on the senate committee that created the Internet, and that was 100% true. Repeating something that is certainly not true isn't a good practice for a book intended to inform.

Though the book as a whole is fun there are numerous places where the book bogs down. Other reviewers have mentioned how meaningless the extremely large numbers become. It is hard to find any way to relate to billions and trillions, whether we are talking of distances or numbers of stars. Also, there are some tedious bits that resemble a pure reference work more than something intended to be read, such as the list of all the constellations.

Still, all in all this is a fun read, and as long as one keeps a small degree of skepticism about the accuracy of the information presented this should prove a very useful survey of many of the more important features of our current knowledge of the universe.

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Crash course in astronomy

Plenty of good information especially for teaching astromomy. So interesting, my copy was stolen from my classroom bookshelf within two weeks.

Great for the novice

Great read if you're just starting out. I did however find Mr. Davis' book alittle preoccupied with trivial tidbits about acomplishments in the space industry. I would have liked for there to have been more written about modern discoveries and theories on the nature and origin of the universe.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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