octavia_cade's review
3.0
Very clear and simple, if sometimes a little repetitive, explanation of how scientists have learned about suns. The title is really a misnomer - the second poorly titled non-fiction book I've read this week, grrr - as it's not really about Alpha Centauri, as I'd hoped when I picked up the book. Which was initially rather disappointing, but if I'd thought about it I would have realised that there's not really enough known about Alpha Centauri at time of writing, perhaps, to fill a couple of hundred pages. Instead, Asimov has done as he often does in his science writing, and gone into the background of what a star is, and how we know what direction it's going, what mass it has, how luminescent it is, and so forth. Alpha Centauri is frequently used as an example, but then so are a handful of other stars so it really doesn't merit title billing. The real strength of this book is in the science writing itself, which is absolutely accessible to beginners on up, though I do wonder if the dozens of tables weren't perhaps a bit of overkill. I understand that the author probably wanted to use them to illustrate trends, but there are only so many columns of numbers you can read before your eyes start to glaze over.
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