Customer Reviews

Impact Earth: Asteroids, Comets and Meteors--The Growing Threat

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I can understand why Impact Earth triggers a powerful response - it's the sort of topic that polarises people's opinions. Either you are open minded or you reject the idea of asteroid and comet impact. I was a sceptic about the so called impact threat, but recent news articles pushed me to learn more. Austin Atkinson's book sets out to remind us that life is precious. A worthy goal. More than that it succeeds in offering a number of leading scientists a chance to voice their concerns and feelings about how the impact threat may be averted. That done, the author proceeds to paint a picture of how destructive an impact might be and uses the computer modelling carried out by the shock physics laboratory at Sandia National Laboratory (they who model the effects of nuclear war for the US government) to reinforce his point.

In the second half of the book Atkinson uses the facts he's outlined to create a fictional scenario - to allow readers to understand how it would feel to live through such an impact. It's very effective. I started out a sceptic, but Impact Earth changed my mind.

Impact Earth, Asteroids, Comets, and Meteoroids, The Growing Threat

Besides being a captivating subject I was impressed by the way Austen Atkinson researched the subject so thoroughly and gave a chillingly detailed and logical treatment of the risk of Earth impacting with comets, asteroids and other bodies in space.

This book is a call to action on a par with Rachel Carlson's Silent Spring, in my opinion. It should be required reading for every legislator, teacher and anyone under the age of 30 with hopes of seeing middle and later life. Austen Atkinson did something very unique in Impact Earth. He added a second book to the end, a fictional account of what it might be like to experience a major impact. If the first book does not get attention, the second surely will. It adds a human element that is missing from other more technical books on this subject. Both parts of Impact Earth are expertly done and written for the lay person in a manner that makes the impact risk clear and obvious to anyone able to read. Austen is a great writer. His style is easy reading and his development is extremely logical and captivating. This is one for every middle school library and a great gift item for the skeptic on your list.

Larry Robinson Sunflower Observatory Kansas

Author Austen Atkinson has revolutionised popular science with this book. He has taken the improbable-sounding possibility of a major meteorite impact and animated it in such a way as to make the reader seriously consider the prospect and seriously ponder about how best to lobby government to protect us. It is a book blessed with great wit, intelligence and authority.

There is something more than vaguely disconcerting about those who marshall armies of fact, then, having done so, proceed to put a highly speculative, "must be a conspiracy somewhere, somehow" twist on it all. This book would have been a lot better without Nostradamus, Genesis, and all that conspiracy glop. As it is, I wasted my money. Stick to the facts, and maybe, just maybe, someone will believe you.