rossbm's review against another edition
4.0
(listened as audio book)
What's it about?
It's a short book - 4 hours in audio - that gives quick overviews of different concepts in astrophysics. It is written in a very approachable manner.
What did I think?
I enjoyed this book. It imparts quite a bit of information in a short amount of time, so obviously doesn't go into great depth. The subject matter is very interesting, and Neil deGrasse Tyson does a good job narrating and making the complex subjects easy to follow. I found the idea of dark matter to be very interesting - something we can't observe directly, but something that we know must exist since there isn't enough observable matter to account for gravity's known effects.
What's it about?
It's a short book - 4 hours in audio - that gives quick overviews of different concepts in astrophysics. It is written in a very approachable manner.
What did I think?
I enjoyed this book. It imparts quite a bit of information in a short amount of time, so obviously doesn't go into great depth. The subject matter is very interesting, and Neil deGrasse Tyson does a good job narrating and making the complex subjects easy to follow. I found the idea of dark matter to be very interesting - something we can't observe directly, but something that we know must exist since there isn't enough observable matter to account for gravity's known effects.
angelofthe0dd's review against another edition
5.0
This book is absolutely phenomenal! Neil deGrasse Tyson covers many topics: Einstein's General Relativity, the Big Bang, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, the scale of the Universe, how the Periodic table relates to the Big Bang, etc. And he explains everything in the most down to earth way imaginable.
wayfaring_witch's review against another edition
4.0
This took longer than I expected to get into, but this book beautifully illustrates the process science. What questions have we asked, what we did to search from answers, and the questions came from those processes... “People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe.” - NDT
2018 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge - A Past Goodreads Choice Awards Winner
2018 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge - A Past Goodreads Choice Awards Winner
dlberglund's review against another edition
5.0
I did it! I read most of this book twice, some of it three times, to work on really understanding it. I really enjoyed learning more, but I'm not a person with a background in hard sciences, so there was some deep digging into the recesses of my high school memory for this one. The chapters (there are only 12) nearly stood alone, so I could tackle them in easier to manage chunks. It was not surprising to learn that some of these chapters had been individual published articles, with some editing for flow. The first two were the most complex for me (I still don't really understand hadrons and other tiny things), but I felt so accomplished and intelligent after completing the chapter on invisible light. (I get it! I really get it!) Add to the experience the dulcet tones of Neil reading the audiobook himself, and it was almost sublime.
alissamargaret's review against another edition
4.0
Audiobook (4 hours). I think this should be titled “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry Who Already Know Some Stuff About Astrophysics.” I am not a big physics person but I do enjoy astronomy. This book covers some of the questions we have sought to find the answers to about where we came from and what is out there in the big night sky. However my existentially-related anxiety did not do me well when listening to this book about the cosmos. Overall I did enjoy it and thought NDT was a good narrator.
findyourgoldenhour's review against another edition
5.0
I’m giving it five stars, although if I’m being honest, a lot of it went over my head. NDT was kind not to call this “Astrophysics For Dummies”, but that’s what it was supposed to be; even so, much of this was written in a language I just don’t speak. But the parts that spoke to the majesty and mystery of the cosmos were brilliant, so I’m glad I read it.