The Electromagnetic Spectrum of Neutron Stars: Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, Held in Marmaris, Turkey, 7-18 June 2004 Book

I wanted to read something by Neil deGrasse Tyson for a long time. I like how he can break complex matters up and present them in a way that children and laymen can understand them (there is a famous quote saying that you yourself have only understood a matter if you're capable of explaining it in simple terms).

This is probably the lightest of books by this author and people should know that going it. It's "only" about Pluto and that whole mess after it got declassified from "planet" to "dwarf planet".

Seriously though?! I don't know what the problem is. In fact, I didn't even know about all the controversy and the backlash until I saw an interview about three weeks ago in which deGrasse Tyson made jokes about it! Sure, the declassification itself was on the news here as well, but it was backed with scientific reasons so nobody had a real problem with it. It just meant that the old mnemonic rhyme didn't work anymore. It's the way of science: it's not infallible and theories/classifications/procedures have to be adapted or even abandoned, deal with it! *shrugs*

In the US, however, people apparently lost their shit and had to exaggerate again.

Thus, this book is full of letters the author received from school children to their teachers and other adults, of articles and other stuff in which deGrasse Tyson was blamed and even downright attacked (almost treated as if he had killed Pluto, in fact). It also contains a lot of cartoons from around the time the declassification took place. One of them is a real gem:

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

However, the book is not only about pop culture and social backlash, it's also about Pluto's history and some scientific background about the dwarf planet, though I have to admit that the history and science could have been a little more dominant.

Overall, it's a funny book (yes, I'm laughing at other people's stupidity, sue me) that has a nice design and is easy and fast to read. Nothing like a real science book but that is also neither its purpose nor what it was advertised as.