Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Universe

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Universe - Andrew Newsam ****

Nowadays, TV science presenters tend to be young, attractive and matey, but there was a time when they were more like erudite but twinkly old uncles, imparting their wisdom to the next generation. Andrew Newsam's writing style is very much in this wise old uncle vein.

I don't see this as a bad thing - quite the reverse. In my youth, the doyen of such eccentric TV uncles was Patrick Moore, who got me interested in astronomy to the extent of being out on dark nights with a 6 inch reflector. Moore wrote clear, readable books - and Newsam gives us a straightforward, accessible tour of the astronomical universe in solid Moore style.

The title is a bit of an exaggeration - it's not so much everything you might want to know about the universe, but rather about astronomy. However, within that field Newsam gives us well-constructed tours of the view from Earth, the Sun as a star, the solar system, stars in general, galaxies and the Big Bang. Although there is a touch of astrophysics required in some of these sections, the approach sticks primarily to the astronomical view, which has the advantage of making it more timeless. We do get passing mentions, for example, of black holes, dark matter and dark energy, but topics like these aren't emphasised.

There is one oddity here. Manuscripts are often provided double spaced to the publisher to aid with editing, but it does feel strange to read a published book with such wide spacing between lines of text. Either they forgot to change the spacing, or the final book was shorter than expected.

Don't come to this book expecting to explore hot new theories and weird quantum effects. That's not what it's for. And it is has entered a relatively crowded market as an overview of astronomy. However, Newsam does what he does well - I'd recommend it for anyone dipping a first toe in astronomical waters.

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Review by Brian Clegg

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