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Best Books of the Month
Want to know our Editors' picks for the best books of the month? Browse Best Books of the Month, featuring our favorite new books in more than a dozen categories.
I had some instant cultural gratification at the beginning of the month. I'd just read a review of The Edge of The Sky: All You Need to Know About the All-There-Is, by Roberto Trotta. Trotta is an astrophysicist at Imperial College London, where he studies dark matter, dark energy, and the early Universe. The very next day I found out he was giving a talk and book signing at Powell's Bookstore.
Astrophysics is not something I understand, but every time I look at the night sky, I wonder at its vastness, its origin, its story. What I read about it is not always understandable. I can absorb creation myths and stories much more easily.
There was nothing, then there was something - a god, a turtle, a raven, a cold moon, a lonely sun, a big bang.
Trotta believes that anyone should be able to understand what astrophysicists are discovering about the universe. So he decided to write a book about it using the 1000 most common words in the English language. He was partially inspired by the 6 word novel that is attributed to Hemingway:
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
Trotta began to think about simplifying his own language to make what he studies more accessible and immediate to everyone, not just PhDs. He found a list of the 1000 most common words in English online and began the challenge of working within the limits of those words. His goal was to make cosmic science easy to understand and spark a sense of wonder. .
The result is a slim volume - only 85 pages - that tells a story about what is known in modern cosmology through the eyes of a female student-person. Words like scientist, telescope, and even the names of planets aren't on the list so he created hyphenated words to describe things.Read more ›
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Roberto Trotta, a theoretical cosmologist and lecturer in astrophysics at Imperial College, London, is the author of "The Edge of the Sky: All You Need to Know About the All There Is". He deconstructs the Universe, using only the 1000 most common words in the English Language, in 85 pages.
The result is not only illuminating, but pure poetry. Planets become crazy stars, galaxies are star crowds, The Milky Way is the white road, and Earth is the home world.
The Edge of the Sky is told from the point of view of a scientist (or student-person), during her night observations through a "Big Seer", one of the world's most powerful remote mountaintop telescopes—out of the reach of ever-encroaching light pollution. We are treated to passages like this:
"With the touch of a finger, she pushes the last red light and with barely a noise Big Seer opens his big eye. The light from the stars falls on her arm: All of a sudden Big Seer jumps to life. He moves his glass gaze slowly but without pausing. He knows what he is looking for."
Roberto Trotta answers the BIG QUESTIONS that humans have pondered throughout our time on planet earth, and raises new ones. He interprets rarefied scientific language and brings the latest discoveries back down to earth. It reads like a gift to humankind.
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It was a very interesting idea to try to explain high-level concepts in quantum physics using the 1000 most commonly used English words. However, I think it would be better if the author had used perhaps 2000 most commonly used words. That way words like scientist and atom could be. Using alternate terms for scientist and atom actually made the reading a little bit harder, which went against the spirit of the book - i.e. to make things easier. I understand - the question will be - where do you draw the line, and I don't have an answer to that. I am not criticizing the book - I liked it and I gave it four stars, I am simply sharing a thought that crossed my mind. Congratulations to the author for taking a brilliant idea and writing a very nice book off of that idea.
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The fascinating idea of using only 1000 words to explain the unimaginably vast and infinitely complex universe makes this book stand out from others. It seems into fall into it's own wonderful genre of poetic science writing, and sustains a childlike yet intelligent voice throughout, making it a great read for 3rd graders and cosmologists alike. It beautifully explains some of the most fundamental ideas we have about the universe while sidestepping the jargon that works it's way into science writing and incorporating narrative elements that make it story like and quite enjoyable for anyone who has ever looked up and wondered what's out there.
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Roberto Trotta is a leading astrostatistician and astronomer from Imperial College, London. He can develop an explanation of astronomical phenomena using technical language understood only by those who specialize in the area. In this book, however, he chose to direct his story to those who he thought would appreciate astronomy from a different perspective. The fact that so many excellent astrophysicists enjoyed the book makes it clear that it was not meant to be read by only those with little to no background in astronomy. In fact, I believe that knowledge of various astronomical concepts was assumed by Trotta. Given the fact that most people reading the book have very likely read other books on the subject, or have at the least watched TV shows such as “Cosmos”, “How the Universe Works”, and “Wonders of the Solar System”, he was safe to assume some prior astronomical knowledge. Trotta makes it a goal to describe the basics of what is now known about the Universe and our place in it using only the 1000 most commonly used words in English. No technical language is used. This is a difficult task. By limiting his story to the 1000 most common words in English, Trotta had to find alternative terms for the Milky Way, galaxies, telescopes, and other words which most people still understand quite well. A few critics thought he was talking down to them, but this was not at all his intent. To think that he believed readers would not understand more complicated language entirely misses the point. The book starts with a listing of the 1000 words to be used in the rest of the book, but in fact he uses only 707 different words. There are 79 proper names in the story component of the book, which is only 68 pages in length.Read more ›
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This item: The Edge of the Sky: All You Need to Know About the All-There-Is
