Book review by Dennis D. McDonald

Why I liked this book:

1. Every page contains something new (to me).
2. Many chapters include historical information about how our knowledge of the sun has grown over the ages.
3. There are several exciting examples where advances in one field have impacted advances in other fields (e.g., spectroscopy and understanding solar composition).

At a profound level this book readably demonstrates human intelligence and creativity at their best. Berman’s historical approach highlights how our current understanding of the sun has grown over time despite the often primitive nature of instrumentation and computation technology. I guess the combination of creativity + discipline + data + imagination is hard to beat, whether you live in the 21st Century or the 17th.

One more thing: Reading this book makes me look forward to June 6, 2012.

Book review copyright (c) 2011 by Dennis D. McDonald