The Cosmic Mystery Tour: a High Speed Journey Through Time and Space by Nicholas Mee
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2019.
207 p. : ill. (chiefly col.) ; 21 cm.
This was an ambitious little book. I say "little" in that 207 p. is fairly brief for an attempt to introduce the wonderous scope of current science about forces, particles, fields, gravity, time, the elements, supernovae, galaxies and - well - the whole universe! The book looks at the very small and the very large - from fermions and bosons to a supermassive black hole with an estimated mass of 8 trillion suns (yes, that's 8 TRILLION!)
What I liked about The Cosmic Mystery Tour is that it succeeds in being readable, interesting and keeping up a brisk pace. After reading it, I found myself ruminating on the vast expanses of the cosmos, along with the strange and remarkable subatomic world that is so hard to fathom.
In spite of a few parts that are just hard to follow (the explanation of the fundamental particles being one of these) most of the book does a great job of being very accessible to the lay reader.
If I had a student ask about a good overview of modern science regarding the universe/cosmos, I'd definitely recommend this little gem.
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