A provocative and expansive introduction to the exciting new field of exoplanet science.
An exploration of the feasibility and ethical implications of establishing human life beyond Earth.
In his latest, Impey, an acclaimed astronomy professor and author of Einstein’s Monsters, Dreams of Other Worlds, and many other books about the cosmos, blends a history of astronomy with a tour of the latest technologies and leading pioneers in space exploration. To date, scientists have discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets, which are planets that orbit around stars other than our sun. This number is expected to rapidly increase as technology makes it easier to recognize and image exoplanets and to identify those in the so-called “habitable zone.” In turn, this means that the possibility of discovering extraterrestrial life is increasingly within reach. “It is astonishingly likely that we are not the only time and place that an advanced civilization has evolved,” writes Impey. Meanwhile, the habitability of Earth is diminishing, with little progress toward a solution to the current “sustainability crisis.” The author surveys the many planets that may harbor life, the current technologies and scientists that enable these profound discoveries, and the possible future technologies that may bring us there and allow for long-term settlement. Throughout these complex yet fluid discussions, Impey emphasizes the need for careful introspection about the ethics of expanding our footprint in space and whether we should instead focus our resources on overcoming climate challenges on Earth. “Populating space is an activity that pushes us outward while inducing introspection and motivating us to grow as a species,” he writes. In the coming decades, a slew of endeavors to image, traverse, and explore the far reaches of our solar system and beyond will bring these issues to the forefront of decisions for long-term survival. “We are curious,” he writes, “whether the experiment that began on Earth soon after its formation has been replicated anywhere else.”
A provocative and expansive introduction to the exciting new field of exoplanet science.Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9780262047661
Page Count: 376
Publisher: MIT Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.
The comic and television personality turns serious—semi-serious, anyway—in a combination memoir and self-help book.
Handler opens these generally short essays with a memory of childhood that closes with the exhortation to keep the child within us alive into adulthood: “Hold on to that child tightly, as if she were your own, because she is.” The memory soon veers into the comically absurd, with an account of a cocaine-fueled cross-country trip with a random companion who looked like another TV personality: “I don’t know if Dog the Bounty Hunter does copious amounts of cocaine, but he sure looks like he does.” Drugs and juice are seldom far from the proceedings, but therapy is close by, too, and clearly the latter has been of tremendous use, if “exhausting in the sense that every new development or idea led to a period of intense self-awareness followed by waves of acute self-consciousness coupled with endless self-recrimination.” As the anecdotes progress, that intense self-awareness becomes less fraught. Some of her life lessons are drawn from her experiences wrestling with the yips and setbacks of performing before audiences; some turn into knowing one-liners (“I knew if three men in a row told me not to do something, it was imperative that I do the opposite”). Most, even if tongue-in-cheek or rueful, are delivered with a disarming friendliness laced with her trademark archness: Her account of a dinner opposite Woody Allen and daughter/wife Soon-Yi is worth the price of admission alone. In the main, Handler is a cheerleader for everyone worthy of cheers, and especially women. As she writes, encouragingly, “You have misbehaved, and then corrected, and then misbehaved again, and then corrected some more”—and have grown and flourished.
A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593596579
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Press
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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