A review by katherine_shelton
The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

challenging informative slow-paced

2.75

I'm really hesitant to give this book a star rating because it's immensely personal and, despite some of my own issues with it, I think it has tremendous value. That said, it reads like 3 different types of books kind of tossed together. It's part pop-science, part memoir, all social commentary. It deals with really important themes of racism, sexism, colonialism, et al. in science. But it's more about Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's relationship to science in light of those issues. I kept wanting to judge the book for what it ISN'T, instead of what it is, and I realize that may not be fair. I will say that the final chapters of this book became really repetitive. I liked the chapter about Mauna Kea, but I felt like it focused more on how it influenced her relationship to astronomy and science (as an institution), than it did on explaining the actual issue. I had to do a Google search to really get a grasp of what she was talking about, and I felt that way throughout the book. She tosses in comments about Isaac Newton being "an asshole" without elaborating, for example, which made me Google "Isaac Newton racist" just to find out  what she was talking about. LOL. (He held investments in the South Sea Company, ie slavery). And she repeats a theory about Oppenheimer participating in the development of the atomic bomb because he "couldn't accept himself as a Jew" which was just... ick! I can't stand it when religious people act like their faith precludes people from committing atrocities because that HAS NEVER been the case. She also repeatedly calls him a "snitch," while she treats the complicities of Black physicists who succeed "by any means necessary" with considerably more gentleness. Don't get me wrong, she concludes that everyone has a responsibility to participate in justice, she just takes you on a circuitous journey before she gets us there. But these are tiny parts of the book that just irritated me, and don't make the book worthless, by any means. Overall, I think it's good, but messy. 
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