I bought this book after reading a review indicating that it was a history of activity at the Lowell Observatory, esp. the personalities and behind the scenes stories. Well, it isn't, and the writing style is awful in some sections. Even the forward by Carolyn Shoemaker is poorly written, but I guess she doesn't claim to be a professional writer. Anne Minard, the author, has no such excuse!
To begin with, much of the first third of the book is a completely random selection of letters found in the Lowell Archives between Percival Lowell himself, and people at the observatory (esp. Slipher). The author just throws out snippets of the mail with no context or explanation. What she does write varies from poor to awful. You will find chestnuts like this in the text (p. 36):
"For many reasons, Slipher could not have known there would someday
be an Internet-based phenomenon, 'answers.com', and his daring
spectrum of the Andromeda Nebula would land his name under one
of just four major accomplishments in astronomy cited for the
year 1912."
If the book were all this bad I'd never have made it through to the end. Thankfully the author's writing improves, and especially where she has living people to interview she does OK. It's all still pretty disorganized though. It comes across as a random selection of astronomy projects which all end in a paragraph indicating that it took place at the Lowell Observatory. That's kind of a backwards way to approach a story I think.
Unless you just happen to know someone who's interviewed in the book, just pass this one by.
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