A Pocket Guide To The History, Structure, Theories And Building Blocks Of The Cosmos. By Gemma Lavender.
Cover, “The Short Story of the Universe”
The Short Story of the Universe is a handy and photo-rich reference work made up of 130 one-page non-fiction articles about everything that’s “out there.” The descriptions of the universe’s history and probable future, its structure, its theories, and its components are digestible. Each article clearly credits the main scholars and scientists upon whose contributions it relies. The explanations are written in accessible language that might satisfy a highly curious 9th grader but that will also help adults as they wade their ways through other textbooks and science articles in the general press.
Radio galaxies, Uranian moons, spiral arms, seyferts and LINER galaxies, and stellar spectroscopy may all sound esoteric, but they do appear in plain ol’ newspapers now and again. Sadly, the journalists responsible for writing those stories rarely have either the deep knowledge or the column inches to satisfyingly describe everything. The Short Story of the Universe can be a helpful guide in these instances; it’s an inexpensive, small competitor to more weighty volumes like The Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia’s Volume 8, The Universe. Reading The Short Story of the Universe topic by topic as needed would be one good approach to taking it all in. As time-consuming as it might be, reading it cover to cover, on the other hand, might be downright illuminating, as the order in which the facts are presented gives a gorgeous, incremental education in the universe and its components.
Other books by astronomer Gemma Lavender include Quantum Physics in Minutes: The Inner Workings of Our Universe Explained in an Instant, Milky Way: From 13.5 Billion Years Ago to the Infinite Future, and Large Hadron Collider: 2008 Onwards.
The Short Story of the Universe: A Pocket Guide to the History, Structure, Theories and Building Blocks of the Cosmos.
Gemma Lavender, PhD. Laurence King Publishing (Hachette Book Group) $19.95 (224 pages including Introduction and Index.) September 27, 2022
ISBN 9780857829382
