Publisher Description
The solar system most of us grew up with included nine planets, with Mercury closest to the sun and Pluto at the outer edge. Then, in 2005, astronomer Mike Brown made the discovery of a lifetime: a tenth planet, Eris, slightly bigger than Pluto. But instead of its resulting in one more planet being added to our solar system, Brown’s find ignited a firestorm of controversy that riled the usually sedate world of astronomy and launched him into the public eye. The debate culminated in the demotion of Pluto from real planet to the newly coined category of “dwarf” planet. Suddenly Brown was receiving hate mail from schoolchildren and being bombarded by TV reporters—all because of the discovery he had spent years searching for and a lifetime dreaming about. Filled with both humor and drama, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming is Mike Brown’s engaging first-person account of the most tumultuous year in modern astronomy—which he inadvertently caused. As it guides readers through important scientific concepts and inspires us to think more deeply about our place in the cosmos, it is also an entertaining and enlightening personal story: While Brown sought to expand our understanding of the vast nature of space, his own life was changed in the most immediate, human ways by love, birth, and death. A heartfelt and personal perspective on the demotion of everyone’s favorite farflung planet, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming is the book for anyone, young or old, who has ever dreamed of exploring the universe—and who among us hasn’t?
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“Exceptionally good: laugh-out-loud funny, informative, suspenseful, readable, nerdy. If you don’t know much about astronomy already, I’m not sure how much you’ll learn from this book, but it’s not dumbed down, and you’ll learn a whole lot about how astronomy is practised (apparently they spend all of their time staring at computer screens like the rest of us). Mike Brown is so likable that by the end I found myself wondering if he was painting himself as a little more perfect than he really is. But I haven’t enjoyed a book so much in a very long time; this is a perfect example of why I tend to prefer non-fiction over fiction these days.”
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Katya (4 out of 5 stars)
