From the author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry and the host of
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a memoir about growing up and a young man's
budding scientific curiosity. This is the absorbing story of Neil
deGrasse Tyson's lifelong fascination with the night sky, a restless
wonder that began some thirty years ago on the roof of his Bronx
apartment building and eventually led him to become the director of the
Hayden Planetarium. A unique chronicle of a young man who at one time
was both nerd and jock, Tyson's memoir could well inspire other
similarly curious youngsters to pursue their dreams. Like many athletic
kids he played baseball, won medals in track and swimming, and was
captain of his high school wrestling team. But at the same time he was
setting up a telescope on winter nights, taking an advanced astronomy
course at the Hayden Planetarium, and spending a summer vacation at an
astronomy camp in the Mojave Desert. Eventually, his scientific
curiosity prevailed, and he went on to graduate in physics from Harvard
and to earn a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Columbia. There followed
postdoctoral research at Princeton. In 1996, he became the director of
the Hayden Planetarium, where some twenty-five years earlier he had been
awed by the spectacular vista in the sky theater. Tyson pays tribute to
the key teachers and mentors who recognized his precocious interests and
abilities, and helped him succeed. He intersperses personal
reminiscences with thoughts on scientific literacy, careful science vs.
media hype, the possibility that a meteor could someday hit the Earth,
dealing with society's racial stereotypes, what science can and cannot
say about the existence of God, and many other interesting insights
about science, society, and the nature of the universe. Now available in
paperback with a new preface and other additions, this engaging memoir
will enlighten and inspire an appreciation of astronomy and the wonders
of our universe.
