Space and Astronomy: Decade by Decade

When I picked up this book and started to read it I immediately thought: "This would make a great high school textbook for a course about space science". Sometime later I turned the book over and found that was the idea! A very readable book that hits the highlights of the space and astronomy advances during the last century. Not only is the book very readable it has a extensive list of additional reading materials to provide more depth. I am a retired aerospace worker and took part in the Apollo and Shuttle programs and the book provided a good review of the many events which occurred. In the day to day activities of the workplace it is easy to lose sight of the big picture and the book provided a good review. The astronomical side was mostly new material to me and was very informative. If you want a good history of this period I highly recommend this book.

Dyson's background as a NASA flight controller and winner of the AIP Science Writing Award and the Golden Kite award guarantees that her science and her writing are accurate as well as clear. But I was still delighted and surprised by both the depth and sparkle of this book. Just picking it up, I was captivated by her use of graphics: ultra clear and engaging. Read from beginning to end, this book is an education in itself. I'd love to see this book widely adopted for high school and beginning college science courses. It's also first rate as a history of science text. It gives accurate facts and presents them in a way that the most uninitiated can understand and yet the more sophisticated reader can appreciate and profit from. The clarity of the textual material and graphics just pulls the reader into the history of the space program and the recent history of astronomy. Topics include how stars evolve, the exploration of the moon and Mars, the significance of the Hubble telescope, the search for extrasolar planets and extraterrestrial life, the International Space Station, and much much more. I think it would also make a great gift for a child with an interest in science. Dyson has a genius for explaining complex space discoveries without complex math. Another potential audience is anybody who likes science fiction or wants to learn to write science fiction. Follow the facts in this book and you won't make stupid mistakes about space travel. Its usefulness would not be limited to children. As an adult, I find this book a source of wonder and fascination with our world in the context of space. When I was eight, my forward-thinking grandmother bought me the twelve volume The Book of Knowledge. Although the information in that book is now very much outdated, it changed my life. I became interested in the aurora borealis, the planets, the stars, and science in general, an interest that has enriched my life to this day. This single volume will do the same for a child or a curious adult today.

This book is a very readable, insightful history of the development of astronomy and space through the course of the twentieth century, a century in which our knowledge of the universe changed rapidly, and our ability to explore space moved from the Wright Brothers' hops to the voyages to the moon. Dyson, a former spaceflight controller at the NASA Johnson Space Center, chronicles this development, showing how we got where we are and who did it, in an interesting format, with diagrams and pictures to illustrate the key points. She profiles a "scientist of the decade" for each decade between 1900 and the millennium, and puts everything together into a coherent story of the great adventure of the twentieth century: the human search outward into the universe, and its growing understanding of our home planet and our place in the solar system and in the universe.