Customer Reviews

The Manga Guide to the Universe

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love this series so much for it's simple clarity and because the stories introduce the material in such a way that it's easier to visualize and understand.

In this one, 3 students need to put on a play to avoid losing their drama club. They decide to do the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, an ancient story about a bamboo cutter who finds a child in bamboo, the child is from the moon. Talking about it, they realize that they need to know a lot more about space so they can update the story and make it their own. The brother of one of the students is a university student studying astrophysics. With his help, and the help of his teacher, they learn a lot more about the universe.

The authors use things like soccer to demonstrate some of the current theories and discuss the history of astrophysics from the time when people thought the earth was the center of a very small universe, to realizing we weren't even the center of our solar system and on to realizing just how vast the universe is.

They explain the measurements used and a little bit about how our current data is being accumulated. They discuss theories as well as what is known and explain how tests and math are validating the theories that scientists currently have about the universe, it's origins, it's possible eventual end, and how it all works. Even talking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial life.

It's a fantastic introduction into basic astrophysics. Not just for kids but also for adults who would like more understanding. I'm not a scientist. Just an occasional dabbler, I watch Nova and read some of the more popular books on the subject. Where these books absolutely shine is how easy it is to apply the material to things you know so that you can learn it in the stories. The further detail in the text sections is then building on what you've learned so you can have a deeper understanding. Because it's engagingly written, these books have a strong appeal both to teens and adults.

I received a preview e-copy of The Manga Guide to the Universe to review. The book really surprised me. I have bought Manga Guides as gifts, but never read one myself. I expected a children's book, and it wasn't at all. On every page of text, I leaned something brand new, or something that I had forgotten years ago. This book has a thoroughly scientific bent underlying its fun attitude, covering details about the planets in our solar system and what lies beyond, the history of thought about the universe, and how to gain perspective on it all.

Discoveries made by great minds in the ancient world are humbling. Mathematicians and astronomers in those days had access to little more than their own unaided observations and power of thought, yet were able to make remarkably accurate calculations which we have scarcely improved with all of our technology.

The addition of manga to the pages of text is very welcome. Three or four pages of text was my limit before I found myself longing for the manga. The drawings are well done, with expressive characters in a range of manga styles and a variety of backgrounds and page layouts. The story has a clever correspondence to the topics covered.

One unexpected benefit of reading The Manga Guide to the Universe is that I have more insight into the science behind science fiction. Reading a story that includes interstellar travel or hyperspace, I can better appreciate and understand the structure of the world an author has built for the story.

For anyone wanting to learn the modern thoughts on the universe, this is a fantastic book to pick up. I expected the book to include some basic facts and a summary of a few ideas. I was surprised to not only find in-depth and in some cases highly technical explanations, but also the perspective of the universe from ancient cultures, such as the Egyptians and the Japanese.

This book is broken up into two parts per chapter: the story and the explanation. The story is just what it sounds like. This when the characters interact and discover more about their world in the "comic" format. The explanation is an exposition where facts are given to the reader to digest. This is where the bulk of detailed information and history lessons come into play. Many people may find this dry or too complex, despite it being simplified. Luckily, even if all you read is the story you'll still learn more than you knew.

First and foremost, this is a fun title. It's fun because of course it's a manga, and usually manga titles are dramatic, silly, funny, poignant and ridiculous... often all at the same time. It's part o the charm of the medium. No starch Press has released their latest installment of "The Manga Guide to..." series, and this time they are taking on a whopper of a topic... The Universe!

For me personally, there is a level of fascination to this topic that goes beyond my interest in the stars and what might be "out there". This is also a great book to open one's eyes to epistemology, or the study of what we know and why we think we know it. At the beginning of the series "The Day the Universe Changed" (BBC series from the 80's), James Burke starts out and says that a student or colleague of the philosopher Wittgenstein was talking to him, and commented on the fact that previous generations were so foolish to believe that the Earth was the center of the universe, when clearly the Earth and the moon revolve around the Sun. Wittgenstein's answer was quite clever. He said "yes, I suppose so. But I wonder what it would look like if the sun really did revolve around the Earth?" His point being, from our vantage point... it would look exactly the same!

It's with these ideas in mind that The Manga Guide to the Universe begins its exploration of the Universe. It starts with our three protagonists trying to come up with a topic and a script for their drama club. If they don't, they will have to close own the club (cue stock music for tense drama ;) ). One of the stories they consider is the story of the Bamboo Cutter, and ancient folk tale within Japan and a telling story of a belief in extra-terrestrial life. It's from this area that we are introduced to the main character's brother and his Professor who teaches about astronomy and astrophysics. The first part of the book discusses the discoveries and setbacks that scientists had faced over millennia to explain their world and its lace in the cosmos. We go from Ancient Egypt an Ancient japan, through to the discoveries of the Greeks and the scientists in the Middle ages, the renaissance and beyond, to show how we grew to understand, postulate, test and finally prove that our place in the universe was not the center, with everything revolving around us, but that we were, to quote an old show from my youth, "a big blue marble in space", rotating around a sun the way the other planets in our solar system do. Like other books in The Manga Guide to..." series, each chapter is broken up into story panels like a traditional manga, but then a few pages of description, mathematics or physics will go into greater depth about the topics just covered. You wil learn a lot from just the manga panels, but you'll learn much more from reading the explanation pages, too.

The story develops with the student trying to find a way for the star of their play (a girl found inside of a stalk of bamboo by the bamboo cutter) that declares she's from another world and must return there. the search for a possible home for the girl is the development that leads the exploration through an out of our solar system, into the Milky Way galaxy, beyond our galaxy to local groups and the ultimate size and shape (we think) of our universe, and the various theories that help us measure these ideas.

What I found to be most valuable, again, goes back to epistemology, and showing what we have learned over the years, and how testing that knowledge has either reinforced ideas, or led us to new ideas. The mathematics used in this book are, well, daunting and massive. The sheer size of the universe as we perceive it is breathtaking, and it's exactly this order of magnitude thinking that makes this book refreshing and fun. Rather than drown the user in gigantic numbers, we se variations such as astronomical units (1 AU is the radius of the distance of the Earth to the Sun). From there, calculations using triangulation and other geometric means help explain how we can determine the massive distances, and also explain some thoughts about the potential of multiverses or a "curved universe' where the edge of the universe is reached when we come back to our starting point. Confused? After reading this book, you won't be (well, again, it's theory and pretty wild stuff, but you can definitely appreciate the logic behind it.

Do no think to yourself "children's book" when you see this title. This covers some intense stuff that adults might find hard to follow. Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology and even Science Fiction (appreciating the structure of and the keeping a world view coherent) are covered in this title. For fans of these sciences, this is a slam dunk. The Manga Guide to the Universe is a fun and engaging title. To my fellow testers, all of the above are true, but read it for a greater appreciation of how we acquire knowledge, and how each discovery is connected to those that came before. Testers will also appreciate the fact that our forefathers, having ancient an rudimentary tools, worked out remarkable solutions for their day, and some ancient discoveries still stand the test of time; if not 100% accurate, they are really close. So if I have piqued your interest, check out this fun and engaging book. Even if manga isn't your thing, there's plenty here to keep even hardened science geeks and armchair astronomers engaged.

I've gotten several Manga Guide to... books and they've all been wonderful. The Universe guide is no exception! The book's comic-style is entertaining, although I could do without the weird females-as-sex-objects undertone, and the authors have done a great job bringing some really arcane, difficult topics to an understandable level.

The book weaves its education of the reader around a central plot where three girls are trying to write and create a school play. Their attempts to flesh out their storyline bring them in to contact with a number of other characters, each giving different insights into astrophysics, astronomy, and the historical evolution of science and theory in these domains.

I greatly enjoyed the historical aspect of the book - learning how scientists like Kepler, Galileo, and Copernicus made their discoveries is really fascinating. The book's main storyline is interspersed with a lot of great sidebars on these practical matters in both historical and current contexts. You'll read about how ancients attempted to measure distances of solar bodies, what dark matter is, how the universe was formed, and what scientists are working on currently.

This is another great addition to the Manga series, and I'm very happy to have gotten it!

First of all, living in Hawaii, I grew up with Manga and I liked it. As for all matters of science, not so much... but now with the infusing of Manga and Astronomy, science becomes "cool", and learning it... fun. The comic-format really made it easy to read and entertaining. I also found the interaction between the characters (students of different backgrounds/educational levels and a professor) great for assisting with my overall comprehension of the subject. Manga takes visual learning to the next level. I can hardly wait to read some of the other titles too... I think I will try the Manga Guide to Relativity next so

I really know theory and not just "know of" it =)

This one is a bit more information-dense than some of the other "Manga Guide to..." books in the series that I've read. Sometimes so much that I found myself skipping the "science" part after a few pages just so I could concentrate on the "story" part. Of course the "science" part is presented well enough to keep me coming back to satisfy my curiosity. It's probably a bit too much for a 5th or 6th grader. A high-school student would have no problem with the material. And even if you're just mildly interested in astronomy and astrophysics, this book is a painless introduction to many surprisingly complex ideas and explanations.

Can comics illustrate the nature of the cosmos? If you're talking about Manga comics, yes they can.

Although clearly written for adolescents with little math training, this book provides a sophisticated look into current theories of of the origins and structure of the cosmos. Using a backstory of 3 young high school students planning a play for the Arts Festival, the story romps through the history of ideas about beginnings, starting with a charming Japanese fairy tale about an extraterrestrial visitor who comes to earth from the moon, and ending with speculation about multiverses and where does the universe end? Or begin?

Along the way, the story intersperses historical vignettes of major figures in astronomy and cosmology, including Copernicus, Ptolemy, Kepler, Sagan, and Hubble. Considerable space is devoted to explaining the tools that we've used to attain our current understanding of cosmology. Examples include the trigonometry of Aristarchus, the early telescopes of Newton and Galileo, ways that celestial distances are measured, and modern telescopes such as the Mt. Wilson 100" scope that was used to such advantage by Hubble. And of course the Hubble telescope. In fact there is a gallery of beautiful astronomical images included at the end of the book, among them are images taken by the Hubble.

The historical highlights of discovery are chronicled, including

the shift from a geocentric view of the heavens to a heliocentric one

the derivation of Kepler's laws of planetary motion

a detailed view of the bodies of the solar system

the mysteries behind the shapes of galaxies

the expansion of the universe

the big bang, including a description of inflation

the Drake equation

Cepheid variables and what they tell us

This is a delightful book that manages to avoid the repetition of big numbers as it explains a big subject, and engages its readers as it presents current evidence for the nature and life of the cosmos we inhabit. It also indulges in some whimsy as it discusses more speculative cosmological ideas such as multiverses and the end of the universe. It is perhaps the most serious of the Manga Guides I've read, but it retains a light touch that always keeps your attention. Highly recommended.

The "Manga Guide to ..." series provide a fun and easy to access guide to complex topics from physics and statistics to general topics such as the above product (Universe).

My daughter and I have used these thru out her education to bridge the gap between what is taught and what is retained. She enjoys the lighthearted aspect of manga and still comes away with the core concepts of the topic at hand.

They are all very well written, particularly considering the authors are experts in the fields they are writing about not in comic story lines.

All in all I highly recommend this series.

The Manga Guide finds new ground to teach and makes learning fun and easy in the Manga Guide to the Universe. It takes a reader through the evolution of our theories about space, the cosmos and its celestial bodies. It does it all in a very easy to understand format and style that makes learning interesting, fun, and far easier than the topic might suggest.

This book was great. It begins with ancient world views on the cosmos which was fascinating whether it was looking at the Babylonian concept or the Egyptian and Chinese beliefs. It eases the reader into the more sophisticated theories by building up the history of how the theories came to fruition. It delves into Galileo's theories, touches on Copernicus' concepts, and slowly builds the education about why our world and the worlds beyond are the way they are and why and how space is what it is believed to be both historically and in the present.

By the time it builds to present beliefs, readers will have learned all about the planets in our solar system, Geocentric vs. Heliocentric theories, the expansion of the universe, Dark Matter, Kepler's Laws and how the universe is measured! It is all immensely exciting material for anyone to learn. What is truly impressive (beyond the many awed moments you will have reading this book with what you learn) is how the guide makes the information so accessible. I am no astrophysicist by any stretch and yet I could understand every concept as it was explained in the book. The guide accentuates the ease of learning by having entertaining comical manga panels with an ongoing story for readers to enjoy. There are also many helpful and clear diagrams to assist in the learning process as well as some amazing full colored photographs at the end of the book involving our solar system and beyond.

IN SUMMARY:

The very best of the manga guide series so far! It makes learning about the many and at times challenging theories about space fun and easy to grasp.

Review from activeAnime [...]