The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating indeed
Review: The subject of this book has been one of my abiding interests since high school. My daughter strongly recommended it to me, with the assurance that it contained one of the best descriptions of general relativity for the layman, woven into the captivating story of the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Finally, someone who is directly involved with frontline research on this topic has taken the time to write about it in language that nonexperts can understand. Why is it that others don't do the same?

Rating:
Summary: Pain and torment in the heart of the Milky Way!
Review: The subject of this book is fascinating, and there is a lot of great factual material here. Moreover, the book is beautifully produced, with nice thick paper, a decent-sized font, and fine color illustrations. But the demanding reader will have a hard time getting all the way through the book because it is so badly written. The text is full of fatuous poetic references. Thus, "the sun" becomes "Apollo's fiery chariot". "Nature", the author claims, "must surely be a chiaroscurist, a grande dame of light and dark, of shadow and contrast". The worst, however, is the relentless and lurid anthromorphising of natural phenomena (for example, "...the doomed plasma reaches out in its last desperate attempt to let us acknowledge it once existed"). There is something like this on almost every page. It's unnecessary, distracting and, frankly, stupid. Are we really supposed to feel bad when some gas falls into a black hole? Why didn't the editor do something about this? The author gives him the customary thanks in the preface - instead, he should be going after the guy with a baseball bat.

Rating:
Summary: THE ENGAGING STORY OF OUR BLACK HOLE!
Review: This book will soon become a classic popular science book of the caliber of Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" or Greene's "Elegant Universe." Dr. Fulvio Melia has a gift for telling the story of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. His narration is smooth and engaging, more like the writing of a seasoned novelist rather than an astophysicist! From narrating the discovery of the black hole to describing the observational techniques used to study the dark giant, Melia is able to translate complex astrophysical concepts into expressive layman's terms, describing simply the beauty and power of our black hole. This book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in astronomy or physics.

Rating:
Summary: THE ENGAGING STORY OF OUR BLACK HOLE!
Review: This book will soon become a classic popular science book of the caliber of Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" or Greene's "Elegant Universe." Dr. Fulvio Melia has a gift for telling the story of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. His narration is smooth and engaging, more like the writing of a seasoned novelist rather than an astophysicist! From narrating the discovery of the black hole to describing the observational techniques used to study the dark giant, Melia is able to translate complex astrophysical concepts into expressive layman's terms, describing simply the beauty and power of our black hole. This book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in astronomy or physics.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent for both beginners and Experts
Review: This is a great book for who wants to start to read about Astronomy and also for people who already have knowledge about physics .
It's clear and easy to understand , you would not stop reading
until the last page .

Rating:
Summary: Very excited about this book
Review: This is an exciting book for just about anyone interested in astronomy.
First of all I'd like to express all my admiration, the book is really
wonderfully written, witty, elegant, always
crystal clear and never boring, a real pleasure for the
mind. Second of all it's a real surprise to see how close
astronomers are to actually seeing a black hole. Since things
are changing so fast, does the author plan on writing an updated
edition soon? It seems that a new edition would be necessary
in a few years.