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Summary
Summary
With her blockbuster New York Times bestsellers Longitude and Galileo's Daughter , Dava Sobel used her rare and luminous gift for weaving difficult scientific concepts into a compelling story to garner rave reviews and attract readers from across the literary spectrum. Now, in The Planets , Sobel brings her full talents to bear on what is perhaps her most ambitious subject to date--the planets of our solar system.
The sun's family of planets become a familiar place in this personal account of the lives of other worlds. Sobel explores the planets' origins and oddities through the lens of popular culture, from astrology, mythology, and science fiction to art, music, poetry, biography, and history. A perfect gift and a captivating journey, The Planets is a gorgeously illustrated study of our place in the universe that will mesmerize everyone who has ever gazed with awe at our night sky.
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Author Notes
Dava Sobel was born in the Bronx, New York on June 15, 1947. She received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1969. She is a former New York Times science reporter and has contributed articles to Audubon, Discover, Life, Harvard Magazine, and The New Yorker.
She has written several science related books including Letters to Father, The Planets, and A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time won the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love won the 1999 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for science and technology and a 2000 Christopher Award. She has co-authored six books with astronomer Frank Drake including Is Anyone Out There? She also co-authored with William J. H. Andrewes The Illustrated Longitude.
Because her work provides awareness of science and technology to the general public, she has received the Individual Public Service Award from the National Science Board in 2001, the Bradford Washburn Award in 2001,the Klumpke-Roberts Award in 2008, and the Eduard Rhein Foundation in Germany in 2014.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Sobel's purpose in this lovely and personal volume is to show us the planets as she sees them. Writing in quite a different mode than in her best-selling Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, Sobel offers intimate essays inspired by the planets in our solar system, which she describes as "an assortment of magic beans or precious gems in a little private cabinet of wonderAportable, evocative, and swirled in beauty." She frames each essay in a different light, using a particular planet as a stepping stone toward a discussion of larger issues. Her "Jupiter" essay becomes a meditation on astrology, while her essay on the Sun, which relates the actual birth of the universe seemingly ex nihilo, evokes the Genesis account of creation in both its themes and the cadence of its language. Put simply, Sobel's conceits work (even, remarkably, the essay on Mars written from the perspective of a Martian rock) because each beautifully frames its planet. An essay that begins with the story of Sobel's grandmother coming to the United States as an immigrant, for example, sets up the author's musings on the odd nature of Pluto as somewhere in between "planet" and "other." This resonant and eclectic collection,informative, entertaining and poeticAis a joy to read. Agent, Michael Carlisle. (On sale Oct. 11) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Hoping to turn her readers on to the solar system, Sobel tours the sun and its revolving consorts. Intentionally evoking wonder over data, she tries out varying compositional forms for each orb, so that this work forms a set of essays, a literary counterpart to Gustav Holst's 1916 symphonic suite The Planets. The comparison waxes explicit when Sobel ruminates upon Saturn, the incomparable ringed beauty of the solar system and also Holst's favorite. Allusive of age and serenity, Saturn has inspired connotations in mythology and astrology, and these are turned over elegantly in Sobel's emotive prose, which recalls the awe it and its wandering companions inspired in ancient times but which city lights and, perhaps, space-age knowledge have washed out. Yet with subtle balance, Sobel adds background about the planets' discoveries without tipping her essays in the encyclopedic direction as she discusses Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. However, she handles Uranus and Neptune altogether differently, in an imagined letter from Catherine Herschel, astronomer-sister of Uranus-finder William Herschel, to nineteenth-century American astronomer Maria Mitchell, which indirectly addresses the topic of women in science amid providing the history of the planets' first detections. A thoughtful, apt diction permeates Sobel's journey among the planets, creating a mood of reading pleasure that also helped make Longitude (1995) a best-seller. --Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2005 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-The author's lifelong fascination with our solar system is evident in these essays that blend the latest scientific knowledge with popular culture, mythology, astrology, literature, music, and more. Beginning with the Big Bang and the Sun in Genesis, Sobel presents the nine planets in turn, inviting readers to share her sense of wonder. Each selection begins with a different point of view. In "Sci-Fi," an ancient meteorite talks of the formation and physical nature of Mars; it is followed by an imaginative discussion of the colonization of the planet, including the views of science-fiction writers. "Night Air" begins with a letter from Caroline Herschel, daughter of Uranus discoverer William Herschel, and also his assistant to the American astronomer Maria Mitchell. Readers will probably assume that this is a real letter; not until the "Details" section at the end of the book is it revealed that it is fiction, although factually accurate. The writing is clear and elegant, almost lyrical at times, and the research is thorough. This unique and attractive book will be of interest to both science students and general readers.-Sandy Freund, Richard Byrd Library, Fairfax County, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
Following the success of her best-selling book Longitude , Dava Sobel, a former New York Times science reporter, has turned her attention to the planets, and has produced an account of the main members of the solar system. Many books have appeared recently on the same subject, but the approach here is unusual in as much as it attempts to combine astronomy with history, poetry, mythology and folklore. The style is somewhat flowery, as is indicated by the chapter headings: "Mythology" (Mercury), "Lunacy" (the Moon), "Music of the Spheres" (Saturn) and even "UFO" (Pluto). The associations are not always clear. For example, flying saucers are mentioned only once in the Pluto chapter, where this puzzling world is described as being "so small and so far away that even today, the most detailed portraits obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope reveal merely a bleary sphere in shades of grey, as unsatisfying and lacking in detail as a faked photo of a UFO". The main science - some of it separated into an Appendix - is accurate. There are a few slips, and one or two sections could be tidied up, as with the description of the calendar on Mercury, but as the author is not an astronomer this is understandable, and all the slips are trivial. Most of the chapters follow a set pattern, beginning with some mythology and folklore, plus some poetry, and then an account of the planet itself; the information is as up to date as possible. The section on Venus ("Beauty") includes quotes from Tennyson, Blake, Wordsworth, CS Lewis and a modern poet, Diane Ackerman, who will no doubt appeal to many people. The Earth chapter ("Geography") deals with mapping and exploration, with special reference to Ptolemy, the first to compile a map based on astronomical observation, and explorers such as Columbus and Cook. Tides are discussed in the Moon chapter, but there is one misleading paragraph. It is quite true to say that tidal friction is gradually driving the Moon away from us, at the rate of a few centimetres per year, and over a sufficiently long period this means that "the rotation of both bodies will be synchronised"; "Earth will eye the Moon with the same wary, one- sided gaze the Moon now fixes on the Earth." Alas, by that time we know that changes in the Sun will have doomed both the Earth and its satellite. For Mars ("Sci-Fi") the story is told in the first person by the meteorite Allan Hills 84001, which most astronomers believe to have been blasted away from Mars and to have wandered through space before encountering Earth and coming to rest in Antarctica, where it remained until it was found by geologists. This is certainly an attractive approach, even though it is not quite clear where the meteorite ends its account. Whether there is any trace of life on Mars today remains to be seen; the various space-craft have given no proof, though it does now seem very probable that water did once exist on the surface. If life does survive, it must be very lowly. The brilliant canal-building engineers conjured up by astronomers such as Percival Lowell have been relegated to the realm of fantasy. Jupiter ("Astrology") comes next, with a good deal about horoscopes before modern-type science is introduced. Saturn is linked with "The Music of the Spheres", apparently because this was Gustav Holst's favourite movement in his Planets suite. With Uranus and Neptune there is a long letter which might well have been written by Caroline Herschel to the American astronomer Maria Mitchell: women scientists were rare in the 19th century and though Herschel is best remembered as the sister of William - discoverer of Uranus - we must not forget that she had a considerable reputation in her own right, and discovered half a dozen comets. Uranus is said to resemble "a pale blue-green pearl", while "its near-twin, Neptune, reveals a more complex beauty in subtle stripes and spots of royal to navy blue, azure, turquoise and aquamarine". Finally there is Pluto, which now seems to be too insignificant to be classed as a true planet: it is only one of a great number of similar-sized objects in the far reaches of the solar system. If Pluto is a planet, then so are Quaoar, Varuna, Ixion, Sedna and many others. Comets are not dealt with in any detail; the last chapter, "Planeteers", takes us to a party, held at the home of one of the scientists working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. There is also mention of the Cassini probe which has reached the system of Saturn and ferried Huygens, the space-craft which has made a controlled landing on Saturn's largest satellite, Titan. Interesting though it is, it cannot honestly be said that the book is a complete success, mainly because Sobel does not seem to be clear about her audience. There is not enough astronomy to satisfy the astronomer, not enough history to satisfy the historian and not enough poetry to satisfy the poet. The illustrations are rather drab; there is no colour section. There is a short glossary of technical terms, and an adequate list of references - but there should be a special corner of the Inferno reserved for a publisher who puts out a scientific book minus an index. Despite these criticisms, The Planets is a very agreeable read. It is an ideal book to take with you on a long aircraft flight. Patrick Moore on the Moon is published by Cassell. To order The Planets for pounds 14 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875. Caption: article-dava.1 Most of the chapters follow a set pattern, beginning with some mythology and folklore, plus some poetry, and then an account of the planet itself; the information is as up to date as possible. The section on Venus ("Beauty") includes quotes from Tennyson, Blake, Wordsworth, CS Lewis and a modern poet, Diane Ackerman, who will no doubt appeal to many people. The Earth chapter ("Geography") deals with mapping and exploration, with special reference to Ptolemy, the first to compile a map based on astronomical observation, and explorers such as Columbus and Cook. Tides are discussed in the Moon chapter, but there is one misleading paragraph. It is quite true to say that tidal friction is gradually driving the Moon away from us, at the rate of a few centimetres per year, and over a sufficiently long period this means that "the rotation of both bodies will be synchronised"; "Earth will eye the Moon with the same wary, one- sided gaze the Moon now fixes on the Earth." Alas, by that time we know that changes in the Sun will have doomed both the Earth and its satellite. - Patrick Moore.
Kirkus Review
A brief tour of the solar system, with liberal dollops of scientific history. Sobel's previous books (Galileo's Daughter, 1999, etc.) have tended to focus on a key person associated with an important discovery. Here, each planet provides the anchor for a chapter on astronomy and planet history. Sobel opens by discussing her youthful participation in science fairs as a kid (she built a model solar system) and her visits to planetariums before turning focus on the solar family--beginning with an account of the origin of the sun. She then works outward, planet by planet. Airless Mercury is so close to the sun that its motion could be explained only by Einstein's theories. Venus's thick atmosphere is full of acidic greenhouse gases that raise its temperature to the melting point of lead. The section on Earth includes a history of geography, from Ptolemy through Columbus and Magellan to the seeming certainty of GPS systems, while the section on the Moon covers topics including Moon rocks, which "set a new standard for dryness," and the effect of lunar gravity on ocean tides. The portion on Mars is narrated from the point of view of a Martian meteorite found in Antarctica ("Of the twenty-eight Martian meteorites definitively identified to date, I am by far the most ancient," it explains.) Sobel continues with coverage on gigantic Jupiter, ringed Saturn, the team of Uranus and Neptune and finally distant Pluto, perhaps about to be demoted from full planetary status to membership in a group of comet-like objects. Along the way, Sobel offers amusing observations on astrology. Thoroughly readable: not a dry recitation of facts--though the facts are there--but a lively exploration of the historical and cultural meaning of the planets. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Once again, best-selling author Sobel (Galileo's Daughter) brings science to readers across the spectrum. Her writing is vivid and poetic as she looks at each planet, including the sun and moon, from various scientific and cultural perspectives. The chapter on Earth, for example, begins with the story of Ptolemy's attempts at mapmaking in the year 150 C.E.; the chapter on Saturn opens with a discussion of 20th-century composer Gustav Holst and his orchestral suite the The Planets. In each chapter, Sobel deftly weaves together astrology, music, art, popular culture, history, biography, poetry, and science fiction with current knowledge about our solar system. The resulting fabric offers something for all readers, even those who think they might not be interested in science and space. Highly recommended for public libraries of all sizes and smaller academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/05.]-Denise Dayton, Jaffrey Grade Sch., NH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.