News from the Ice Giant Planets

Next Tuesday, August 31 at 7 p.m. Eastern on Zoom, Dr. Heidi B. Hammel will bring you up to date on Uranus and Neptune, discussing her results from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Keck 10-m telescope, and many other observatories. Dr. Hammel will also review the plans for ice giant system exploration with NASA’s newest … Read more

2020 Year-End Science Book Roundup

This blog marks a transition for me. For more than 20 years, I have been reviewing science books written for the library and bookstore crowd. For a few of those years, I even managed a four-figure supplemental income from selling my reviews to major metropolitan newspapers. Then, one-by-one, book review pages began to disappear or … Read more

Science Book Roundup, Social Distancing Edition

When I posted my last science book roundup, few of us knew what was about to come. We had heard about a novel coronavirus and an outbreak of a new disease called COVID-19 in China, but only those well-versed in epidemiology or the history of previous pandemics expected to see so much of the economy … Read more

Catching up, part 3, science book roundup 2019

As I begin collecting titles for an early 2020 science book roundup, I have four left over from 2019, three from the life sciences and one celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of arguably the greatest human and technological achievement of the twentieth century. That achievement, as you probably have guessed, was the first human landing on … Read more

Science Book Roundup, April-May 2019

As an ongoing feature of my blog, here is my Science Book roundup for April and May of 2019. I will occasionally publish full reviews of titles that I consider particularly important. My usual caveat: For my Roundups, I don’t read all of the books in detail, but they are published by reputable publishers and … Read more

Science Book Roundup, January-March 2019

My catch-up science book blogging continues with a selection of titles released in the first three months of 2019 My usual caveat: I haven’t read all of these in detail, but they are published by reputable publishers and written by credible authors. I have browsed them enough to recommend picking them up from a library … Read more

Year-end roundup, space and astronomy books

As promised in my recent blog, I am returning with a few suggestions of recent science books that are suitable for gift-giving. I haven’t read all of these in detail, but they are published by reputable publishers and written by credible authors. This is the second of three postings, organized by subject area, this time … Read more

Science Book Roundup, Spring 2018

The arrival of Spring 2018 in my area has been marked by an unusually large outburst of pollen. In the science book world, it has been marked by an outburst of varied, interesting titles. And that is certainly nothing to sneeze at. One of the perks of being a reviewer of long standing is the … Read more

Book Review: Chasing New Horizons

To preserve my objectivity, I have assiduously avoided reading other reviews of Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto by Alan Stern and David Grinspoon. But I would bet euros to eclairs* that an online search would reveal at least one review that includes this sentence: “Alan Stern was born to write … Read more

Why all the buzz about inflation?

If you are not a physicist, you may be asking yourself why so many science reporters are suddenly abuzz about gravitational waves and the phenomenon known as Cosmic Inflation. Perhaps this blog post can help answer that question. As an author of nearly 30 science books for young readers, I may be well equipped to … Read more