| View Larger Image | The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet | Paperbackby Neil deGrasse Tyson (Author)
| List Price: | $15.95 | | Price: | $10.76 | | You Save: | $5.19 (33%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | W. W. Norton & Company | | Page Count: | 224 Pages | | Publication Date: | December 07, 2009 | | Sales Rank: | 19,369th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
The New York Times bestseller: “You gotta read this. It is the most exciting book about Pluto you will ever read in your life.”—Jon Stewart When the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History reclassified Pluto as an icy comet, the New York Times proclaimed on page one, “Pluto Not a Planet? Only in New York.” Immediately, the public, professionals, and press were choosing sides over Pluto’s planethood. Pluto is entrenched in our cultural and emotional view of the cosmos, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Rose Center, is on a quest to discover why. He stood at the heart of the controversy over Pluto’s demotion, and, consequently, plutophiles have freely shared their opinions with him, including endless hate mail from third-graders. color throughout. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 31 reviews)
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cute but flawed by Neurasthenic (New York City, New York)  3 Stars
October 20, 2009
The topic here is a good one -- Pluto holds a special fascination for Americans, so a history of its discovery, naming, cultural impact, and demotion of its planet, can be good fun. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has proven himself to be a good educator and popularizer of science, and his design of exhibits at the Rose Planetarium in New York was at the heart of the recent 'demotion' of Pluto, so this was an appropriate project for him.
The book fails though in its selection of material. It's nice to read about Venetia Burney, the 11-year-old girl who initially proposed the name "Pluto," but do we really need to know her married name and later career and the town to which she ultimately retired? The origins of the Disney character Pluto are fun to read, but why the discussion of the fact that Pluto is Mickey's dog, while Mickey is not Pluto's mouse?
The book wants for editing, and for copy-editing; I caught more than one who/whom error and other mistakes.
It's good enough for bathroom reading, just don't expect too much of it.
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Dad's Planet by Alden C. Tombaugh (Las Cruces, New Mexico)  4 Stars
September 15, 2009
My father discovered Pluto in 1930. Neil Tyson's book is an interesting and enlightening history of the discovery and the controversy surrounding the new definition of major Planets and Tyson's decision to omit Pluto from the depiction of our solar system at the new Rose Center in New York. Although I do not agree with all his points of view, I do applaud his endeavors in astronomy, writing and education.
Alden Tombaugh
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The ninth planet...until it wasn't! by Molly Grue (SF Bay Area, CA USA)  5 Stars
August 22, 2009
Brief and entertaining history of the discovery of the ninth planet and its demotion to a Kuiper Belt dwarf, enhanced by high quality photographs and hilarious cartoons from a wide variety of print sources. The book is printed on high quality, glossy paper and is so attractive that it's a shame it wasn't better edited. The text contains a few jarring typographical errors, and some of the captions are completely redundant---they repeat (word for word) information already in the body of the text. Still, it's easy to overlook these few flaws because this well-written book is educational and engaging, yet completely intelligible to non-scientists.
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A bit short, but a solid overview of the Pluto Question by Jvstin (Circle Pines, MN United States) 4 Stars
August 16, 2009
Neil Degrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist with the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. (he serves as director). He's a columnist for Natural History magazine, and already has a book of essays, Death by Black Hole, to his credit.
To lovers of the planet Pluto, however, he is a villain.
Although it took a NY Times columnist a year to bring the change to light, the new Rose Center for Earth and Space, under Tyson, kept Pluto out of the display of the main sequence of planets, putting it with the Kuiper belt objects instead. In effect, Pluto had been "demoted".
Once that article came out, however, the howls rose, and the IAU took up the question in full...
In The Pluto Files, Tyson tells the full story of Pluto, and his part in its rise and fall.
Tyson is not a self-aggrandizer, but he does have a central role in the drama and he fully documents his part in Pluto's story in the book. Along the way, he tells the story of Pluto's discovery, its debate among the IAU, and the ultimate designation given by the IAU. Plenty of digressions tie in the field of astronomy and astronomers, popular culture (including a certain Mouse's dog) and more.
I've previously read Tyson's work in Death by Black Hole, and he keeps that easy, accessible style for his work here. He may not have the skill of the late Stephen Jay Gould or Carl Sagan just yet, but those who only have a little science education should not be intimidated or put off by the subject.
I, myself, learned a lot of what happened "behind the scenes" in the debate on Pluto, and found the book educational as well as a pleasure to read. The book is relatively short for the price, which is about the only major thing I can say against the book.
Recommended.
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Not the best by Andre T. Bradshaw (Phoenix, AZ) 4 Stars
August 13, 2009
I am a very big fan of Neil Degrasse Tyson, and I was very excited to read this book. This book however, was probably my least favorite of Neil's work. While it is an interesting subject; most of the real content could have been reduced to a small essay. I read this book in one sitting while waiting to get my oil changed. I would suggest other people read this for free at the library. This book is definitely worth a read, but is not worth purchasing.
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