I took my Brownie troop to the Observatory last week (twenty-four seven year olds in a tiny, enclosed space — not my smartest idea), so it seemed fitting that the next book I reviewed was about the Cosmos. In German, the universe translates to das All, which I also wonderfully appreciate. Einstein spoke German, so there we have it — tying everything in together!
So The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe (ellipses in a title; really? Really?) reads like a science article run a little amok. It has quite a readable, polished, and leisurely tone; a bit chummy, which isn’t a problem. The odd changes in tense to present whenever something happens is off-putting. But, basically, even for a short book, it seems too long. I can see it being an article in a magazine. A book seems a stretch.
The title too seems a bit of misnomer. Einstein’s destruction of Vulcan, a purported unsighted planet between the Sun and Mercury necessary to account for Mercury’s orbit under Newtonian laws of physics, was hardly a Godzilla-Einstein coming in and purposefully stomping out Vulcan. Vulcan’s non-existence came as a consequence of Einstein’s theories of relativity, and ends up being almost a non-event. A good deal of the book is about pre-Vulcan: the initial sightings of Neptune and Uranus and how those fit so perfectly into Newtonian physics, so not even falling into the title at all. For me, I didn’t need the huge background sections on earlier astronomical outings. I mean, ha ha ha Edison shot a stuffed jackrabbit, my life isn’t changed for knowing that.
Finally, we get to Einstein and the two halves of the book: the hunt for Vulcan and let’s follow around Einstein for a bit, came together rather ineptly. It seemed like Levenson was torn between which story he wanted to tell. Both are worth telling. In a magazine article maybe. Or in a longer book with deeper focus. But in this book, it feels both like a tease and like a slog.
I don’t often read popular science books, so this was good for me, at least, even if I wasn’t particularly taken with the book. I expanded mein All, but I often skimmed the science explanations. I should work on learning how to read science. As a former scientist, I am quite lazy about that. I don’t know if, in this case, it’s me or Levenson. Did I gloss over the science because I need to work at reading non-narrative or because Levenson’s explanation didn’t grab my interest?
And, from a technical standpoint re: epubs; someone’s got to get footnotes and endnotes less awful on my kobo. Computer scientists: you have your goal!
The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe by Thomas Levenson went on sale November 3, 2015.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.