Customer Reviews

The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As I was reading this book, I was already thinking of how great it is. It flows and the presentation is logical and helpful that it great aids giving an appreciation of this incredible phenomena. Absolutely read this.

The subject of this book is fascinating, and there is a lot of great factual material here. Moreover, the book is beautifully produced, with nice thick paper, a decent-sized font, and fine color illustrations. But the demanding reader will have a hard time getting all the way through the book because it is so badly written. The text is full of fatuous poetic references. Thus, "the sun" becomes "Apollo's fiery chariot". "Nature", the author claims, "must surely be a chiaroscurist, a grande dame of light and dark, of shadow and contrast". The worst, however, is the relentless and lurid anthromorphising of natural phenomena (for example, "...the doomed plasma reaches out in its last desperate attempt to let us acknowledge it once existed"). There is something like this on almost every page. It's unnecessary, distracting and, frankly, stupid. Are we really supposed to feel bad when some gas falls into a black hole? Why didn't the editor do something about this? The author gives him the customary thanks in the preface - instead, he should be going after the guy with a baseball bat.

Last week I was fortunate to hear Prof. Melia speak on the subject of his two new books, this title, and "The Edge of Infinity," and was so impressed I rushed out to get copies of both. I was not disappointed. Both books are very well written, and beautifully produced, with color images throughout. His style is similar to that with which he presented the subject at our amateur astronomy meeting---clear, lively, and thoughtful.
I am recommending these to all my friends and relatives. They're the best astronomy books I've read in years, and am looking forward to reading more from him in the years to come!

I chose this book for my assignment this semester on how science is conveyed to the general public. The question is always, do you paint a superficial picture, watering down the material to make it more "palatable", or do you keep all the details and risk losing the majority of the audience? Well, it seems that sometimes it IS possible to stay true to the science and yet explain things in a way that everyone can understand. I felt compelled to write this review because I was caught by surprise. Fulvio Melia writes with the style of a storyteller, at times with passion, and always with obvious attention to the reader's needs. I just got my graded report back: A+.

This is a great book for who wants to start to read about Astronomy and also for people who already have knowledge about physics .
It's clear and easy to understand , you would not stop reading
until the last page .

The subject of this book has been one of my abiding interests since high school. My daughter strongly recommended it to me, with the assurance that it contained one of the best descriptions of general relativity for the layman, woven into the captivating story of the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Finally, someone who is directly involved with frontline research on this topic has taken the time to write about it in language that nonexperts can understand. Why is it that others don't do the same?

Take an exciting and exotic topic like "black holes"
and a gifted writer like Fulvio Melia, and what do
you get? A surprisingly and satisfyingly accessible
book like "The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy."
At times it reads like a science fiction novel, until
you realize that all of the contents are factual. It's
amazing how far astronomers have come in unravelling
the mystery behind arguably the most bizarre objects
in the universe, and especially the supermassive black

hole at the center of our own Galaxy. And Melia does
a great job setting the stage and then explaining where
things stand. I particularly liked chapter 3, in which
he sets out in everyday terms what mass is, and how it
is related to gravity. I read it twice before going
on to the next. Several questions that have bothered
me for years were finally answered. Read this and
catch up on where science has gone in the past decade!

Hooray for Carolyn Collins Petersen, who wrote a review of this book for the January issue of Sky and Telescope. She absolutely captured the essence of this worthwhile read, and convinced me to pick up a copy of my own. I agree with her assessment wholeheartedly. Melia's book is a detective story, but more than that, it's an up-to-date account of what black hole astronomers are aiming for. The only thing I was somewhat disappointed with was that the last chapter ended too early. The subject of supermassive black holes in general deserves a lengthier discussion.

Last week I was fortunate to hear Prof. Melia speak on the subject of his two new books, this title, and "The Edge of Infinity," and was so impressed I rushed out to get copies of both. I was not disappointed. Both books are very well written, and beautifully produced, with color images throughout. His style is similar to that with which he presented the subject at our amateur astronomy meeting---clear, lively, and thoughtful.
I am recommending these to all my friends and relatives. They're the best astronomy books I've read in years, and am looking forward to reading more from him in the years to come!

This book will soon become a classic popular science book of the caliber of Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" or Greene's "Elegant Universe." Dr. Fulvio Melia has a gift for telling the story of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. His narration is smooth and engaging, more like the writing of a seasoned novelist rather than an astophysicist! From narrating the discovery of the black hole to describing the observational techniques used to study the dark giant, Melia is able to translate complex astrophysical concepts into expressive layman's terms, describing simply the beauty and power of our black hole. This book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in astronomy or physics.