Book Review: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book. This is a very short book, to the point, and explains the universe in simple terms. What I didn't expect and was a surprise to me was the Author's humorous anecdotes, completely relevant to the present day reader inserted between the concepts in the pages.

For e.g. It was funny to know that behind US Govt which consumes Helium for military and research, the next second highest consumer of "Helium" was Macy's for it's Macy's day parade.

It was startling to know that life as we understand in any form, the single-celled organism has started in existence only the last 2% of the history of the universe. The universe is very very old, very very big.

Often there is a question on "Is there life elsewhere in the universe?" - The more I read these kinds of books, the more I realize that "There is life elsewhere in the universe. Highly likely. It is inevitable that either Earthians discover the other life forms, and they discover the Earthians. Also, the timeline of advancement, the calamities that are possible in next thousand years, humankind will, of course, take the ship, explore, and start settling in various other parts of the universe. Thinking like this doesn't sound like fiction to me.

It was a great book. I will start looking out for Neil DeGrasse Tyson from now.

Here are some excerpts that I noted from the book. This one is about Einstein, and the kind of impact he had in our understanding of the universe.

And this one is about Spherical shape for any object that we may encounter in the universe.