Customer Reviews

The Planets

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Great Service from the sender, quick and clean book.
Dava Sobel writing compelling story. This is a must read for all amateur back yard astronomers.

If John Lennon were alive today to read Dava Sobel's "The Planets", I've no doubt he would be pleased to call it "a magical mystery tour".

I've always enjoyed reading popular science but, frankly, some of it is turgid, dry-as-dust commentary that is far more soporific than informative. By contrast, Sobel's "The Planets", a whirlwind tour of some of the most fascinating features of our very own solar system, waxes lyrical, indeed, almost poetic at times with the compelling beauty of its prose.

Each chapter, written from a unique imaginative perspective, takes what might otherwise be difficult scientific concepts and weaves them into a narrative that will draw in even the most science-phobic reader with an irresistible urgency and fascination. Sci-Fi, for example, the chapter that lucidly tells us the story of Mars, uses the extraordinarily clever device of narration from the point of view of a Martian meteorite, a piece of Martian rock blasted loose from Mars' surface by an asteroid impact that found its way to earth, landing in an Antarctic icefield over sixteen million years ago.

I don't think I could improve on Newsweek's comment ... "a guided tour so imaginative that we forget we're being educated while we're being entertained."

"The Planets" is highly recommended and adds to a growing body of work that includes the equally entertaining "Longitude" and "Galileo's Daughter".

Paul Weiss

I've read and been delighted by Longitude and Galileo's Daughter so when I came across "The Planets." I was intrigued and wanted to read it. I knew even before I bought the book that it would be nothing like the other two by Dava Sobel, but by now she has established herself as a great writer and I trusted her and her instincts. If she wanted to take an unorthodox trip across the Solar System, I was all too willing to buy a ticket for the journey. And it was a refreshingly new look at the landscape that I thought I had already known all too well and have become a bit jaded with. Part informative, part imaginative this book both entertains and educates. It is well suited for both young and old readers. Each planet gets its own "voice" and is approached and dealt with from a unique point of view. The two works of art - one in fiction one in music - which this book reminds me of are Italo Calvino's "Cosmicomics" and Gustav Holst's "The Planets." Like Calvino and Holst, Dava Sobel possesses a rare gift of imagination and skill to bring a potentially dry subject and weave it into something that entices us and enthralls us. That's why I decided to recommend this book to my college Astronomy class that I teach this year.

This charming guide to the solar system explains the planets in everyday language while drawing on history, myth, science fiction, art, literature and the latest scientific advances. It discusses the ongoing discoveries in our planetary system, dealing with every body from the sun to Pluto. The writing style is accessible and highly engaging.

The chapter Genesis deals with the sun and the formation of the solar system, Mythology is devoted to Mercury and astronomers like Tycho Brahe, Copernicus and Kepler, and Beauty is reserved for Venus, where the poetry of amongst others, Blake, Wordsworth, Oliver Wendell Holmes and CS Lewis is quoted. Earth gets its turn in Geography (On Becoming a Planet), and the Moon in the chapter Lunacy.

Jupiter and the Galileo spacecraft are investigated in Astrology, whilst Music Of The Spheres is about Saturn and the music of the planets as represented by Holst in his Opus 32 and Kepler's book Harmonice Mundi in which he interpreted their motions as music. Uranus and Neptune are discussed in the chapter Discovery, and Pluto in UFO where the controversy on whether Pluto really is a planet is explored.

The concluding chapter Planeteers discusses the Cassini spacecraft and the Huygens probe which landed on Saturn's moon Titan in January 2005. The author concludes with the observation that the planets have always been stalwarts of human culture and the inspiration for much of mankind's higher-minded endeavor. The book concludes with a glossary, notes by chapter and a bibliography. There are black and white illustrations, photographs and maps throughout the text.

The PS section at the end contains an interview with the author by Travis Elborough, Sobel's favorite books and writers, Other books by Sobel and books she recommends, and an essay about the New Horizons spacecraft launched on 19th January 2006 on its 10 year journey to Pluto.

"The Planets" is an enchanting tour through the solar system. On its pages the reader encounters the heavenly bodies through science, mythology and history.

Author Dava Sobel introduces the reader to the physical attributes of each planet, its composition, whether rocky, gas, solid or molten, its atmosphere and weather. She explores the evidence, or lack thereof, for life and the reasons why a particular body may or may not harbor life somewhere on or in its sphere.

This book is not limited to the eight known planets, but also includes the moons of the earth and other planets, Khyber Belt Objects, those betwixt and between objects, too small to be planets but too large to be asteroids orbiting beyond Neptune, the most famous of which is the former planet, Pluto, and the objects of the asteroid belt.

Although I knew a fair amount about the solar system before reading this book, I learned much from it. While scientifically informative, the writing style is easy to follow and entertaining. For anyone with a thirst for knowledge about our solar system, "The Planets" is a good place to start.

Having recently listened to Dava Sobel's two popular scientific historical works, Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, I was quite looking forward to this more recent work with regard to our Planets. While I was not disappointed, I was suprised at the very noticable change in style and approach.

Part of this, is directed by the subject matter. The Planets of our Solar System have varied histories in terms of their discovery and their insertion into our popular literature and culture. Rather than looking at this as a cohesive narrative you'll better appreciate it if you see it as a collection of short essays with varience as to styles and narrative voice.

The Planets, in this context then read (or listen in my case as again I listened to it on CD) much cleaner and crisper. In fact, while scientific information certainly does play throughout, you may appreciate the much more florid descriptions and fanciful whims that occur. While this is different that the purer narrative of her former work, it is well done and showcases the literary style and voice that Sobel hints at in her former works.

All this said, I would say in comparison to her former work, this doesn't quite measure up. Sobel in that regard has set the bar very high. It's certainly worth the time and effort to read however and it will entertain as well as inform.