Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
The Sky Is Not the Limit
The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist | Neil deGrasse Tyson
3 posts | 3 read | 9 to read
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.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
review
Shadowfat
post image
Pickpick

This book was dense but good. It's part memoir part his musings on different aspects of the universe. It reminded me of Startalk without the comedian co hosts.

quote
BarbaraTheBibliophage
post image

Maybe this explains my preference for words over numbers ... either way, I do love #science.

#quotsynov17

BookBabe May have a point there! 🙃 7y
SandyW Hah! Love this quote. 7y
108 likes1 stack add2 comments
quote
BarbaraTheBibliophage
post image

Watching Jurassic World with my DH. Would rather be reading! 😃📚📚📚

Chessa I couldn't get past the running in white heels thing. WHY?! 8y
SusanInTiburon @Chessa Because it was after Memorial Day and before Labor Day 😜 8y
BarbaraTheBibliophage @Chessa She was SO buttoned up - at the beginning! 8y
See All 8 Comments
Chessa @Susanintiburon lol!😂 8y
Trav 😂😂 😂 8y
Megabooks Not on Star Trek Voyager! They found dinosaurs in the Delta Quadrant. 8y
BarbaraTheBibliophage @Ebooksandcooks I'm surprised Tyson didn't mention that! 😀 8y
28 likes5 stack adds8 comments