The significance of stars

The significance of stars - Feature

Personally, I think stars are underrated. Not the ones in the sky – if it weren’t for one of them, the Sun, the Earth wouldn’t exist (and even if there was an Earth, there would be no life on it because it would be far too cold). For that matter, if it weren’t for stars in general there would be no atoms other than hydrogen, helium and a touch of lithium – making the whole concept of a planet (or a person) inconceivable. So the stars of the cosmos are seriously rated.

Nor am I talking about the stars of stage and screen. Because, let’s face it, most of them are seriously overrated. I refer instead to stars in reviews.

A good while ago I wrote to the journal Nature, complaining about some of the book reviews they carried. I pointed out that the (long) reviews said nothing about whether the book was any good – they merely gave the reviewer a chance to do his or her potted version of the theme of the book. They said what the book was about, but not if it was any good or whether you should read it. I got what was, frankly, a rather snotty email back from someone at Nature saying something to the effect of ‘ours aren’t the sort of trivial reviews like yours on www.popularscience.co.uk are. We aren’t going to start giving a book stars.’

Personally, I think this is a mistake. Life is too short to read every review – it’s very handy to be able to check out the star rating and then decide which reviews to read. I’m not suggesting we only take notice of the star rating, but it’s a good indicator of whether the reviewer considers a book (or film or whatever) really bad or excellent – in both cases suggesting the review is worth getting into in more depth.

However a star rating means different things to different people, so I thought it would be useful to finish by giving a quick guide to the way we use the star rating system on www.popularscience.co.uk:

* – Just doesn’t work for us
** – Has some interesting points, but not for everyone – check the provisos in the review
*** – Good solid book, well worth reading if you are interested in the topic
**** – Excellent book that any popular science fan would want to read
***** – One of the best popular science books of the year

ImageCredit: NASA, ESA, and J. Maiz Apellaniz (Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Spain)

Comments

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The New Lunar Society - David Mindell *****

David Mindell's take on learning lessons for the present from the eighteenth century Lunar Society could easily have been a dull academic tome, but instead it was a delight to read. Mindell splits the book into a series of short essay-like chapters which includes details of the characters involved in and impact of the Lunar Society, which effectively kick-started the Industrial Revolution, interwoven with an analysis of the decline of industry in modern twentieth and twenty-first century America, plus the potential for taking a Lunar Society approach to revitalise industry for the future. We see how a group of men (they were all men back then) based in the English Midlands (though with a strong Scottish contingent) brought together science, engineering and artisan skills in a way that made the Industrial Revolution and its (eventual) impact on improving the lot of the masses possible. Interlaced with this, Mindell shows us how 'industrial' has become something of a dirty wo...

Search This Blog