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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excelllent review on the unique habitable planet.,
This review is from: How to Build a Habitable Planet (Hardcover)
This book is relatively unknown to readers outside of the university community, because it is used commonly as a textbook. However, I've not seen any other jargon-free book that explains the evolution of the Earth so clearly. This book is so popular that in addition to the English edition, German, Japanese and Chinese versions have been published. It is filled with diagrams and photographs, all in black and white though.The recipient of the National Medal of Science, and member of both the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the author is currently Newberry Professor of Geology at Columbia University. He certainly has the knowledge, expertise, and the talent to get his ideas across to the general public too. "How to Build a Habitable Planet" has nine chapters. It starts on the origin of the universe ¡V Big Bang, followed by how elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were created in stars. It then introduces step-by-step how the inner and outer planets were developed, how and when the Earth was segregated into layers. Most of all, during the evolution of the Earth, a combination of factors resulted in making it the only habitable planet in the solar system. Why is the Earth so unique? How did it warm up or cool down automatically many times in the past 4.6 billion years so as to maintain a suitable temperature for its organisms? What is the origin of natural resources (metal, petroleum, fertilizer etc) essential for the human civilization? Why can't we find these resources on other planets? ¡§In a nutshell, what makes it habitable?¡¨ Having evolved for billions of years, this precious and beautiful planet, however, is on the verge of destruction. It all started about 10,000 years ago, long after human appeared. Why? Answering this question and looking into the future of the Earth, Broecker brings the book to a finale. This book weaves basic principles of physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, and biology into consecutive pictures depicting the emergence of the only habitable planet we know of. Above all, it links us ¡V a pile of elements living at an instant on a unique planet, with the immensely huge and awesomely old universe. This thought, I believe, is provoking. The reason that I did not give the book 5 stars is that a few updates and revisions are needed (such as the number of satellites in the solar system is 63 instead of 33; the equation on p.70 etc). I have been using this book in teaching a distant learning class to about 700 students.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excelllent review on the unique habitable planet.,
This review is from: How to Build a Habitable Planet (Hardcover)
This book is relatively unknown to readers outside of the university community, because it is used commonly as a textbook. However, I've not seen any other jargon-free book that explains the evolution of the Earth so clearly. This book is so popular that in addition to the English edition, German, Japanese and Chinese versions have been published. It is filled with diagrams and photographs, all in black and white though.The recipient of the National Medal of Science, and member of both the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the author is currently Newberry Professor of Geology at Columbia University. He certainly has the knowledge, expertise, and the talent to get his ideas across to the general public too. "How to Build a Habitable Planet" has nine chapters. It starts on the origin of the universe ¡V Big Bang, followed by how elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were created in stars. It then introduces step-by-step how the inner and outer planets were developed, how and when the Earth was segregated into layers. Most of all, during the evolution of the Earth, a combination of factors resulted in making it the only habitable planet in the solar system. Why is the Earth so unique? How did it warm up or cool down automatically many times in the past 4.6 billion years so as to maintain a suitable temperature for its organisms? What is the origin of natural resources (metal, petroleum, fertilizer etc) essential for the human civilization? Why can't we find these resources on other planets? ¡§In a nutshell, what makes it habitable?¡¨ Having evolved for billions of years, this precious and beautiful planet, however, is on the verge of destruction. It all started about 10,000 years ago, long after human appeared. Why? Answering this question and looking into the future of the Earth, Broecker brings the book to a finale. This book weaves basic principles of physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, and biology into consecutive pictures depicting the emergence of the only habitable planet we know of. Above all, it links us ¡V a pile of elements living at an instant on a unique planet, with the immensely huge and awesomely old universe. This thought, I believe, is provoking. The reason that I did not give the book 5 stars is that a few updates and revisions are needed (such as the number of satellites in the solar system is 63 instead of 33; the equation on p.70 etc). I have been using this book in teaching a distant learning class to about 700 students.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Goofy Science Book.,
By zonaras (Jimbo's House of Pie) - See all my reviews
This review is from: How to Build a Habitable Planet (Hardcover)
I had to use this textbook recently for an "Origin and Evolution of the Earth" basic Earth Science class. It's surprisingly easy to read and understand as far as science textbooks go. The humor value comes in where the author notes how many theoretical ways the world can end: a comet or asteriod colliding with the earth, the sun burning out in a few billion years, earth freezing when the tectonic plates in the earth's crust cease moving, man's ability to destroy life through pollution especially through coal buring that releases CO^2 and the hazards of nuclear waste. The author also notes how surprisingly precarious the status of life is. It is incredibly mind boggling how many things could have gone wrong and human beings would never have existed if the world was created and life evolved by chance as modern science maintains, as this book illustrates time and again. Even very slight shifts in the earth's orbit around the sun, the tilt of is axis of rotation can have vast effects on climate over great periods of time. Very interesting subject material even if one does not agree with all of the author's views.
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