The Planets

By: Dava Sobel

Narrated by: Lorna Raver

Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

With her blockbuster New York Times best sellers Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel used her rare and luminous gift for weaving difficult scientific concepts into a compelling story to garner rave reviews and attract readers from across the literary spectrum. Now, in The Planets, Sobel brings her full talents to bear on what is perhaps her most ambitious subject to date: the planets of our solar system.

The sun's family of planets become a familiar place in this personal account of the lives of other worlds. Sobel explores the planets' origins and oddities through the lens of popular culture, from astrology, mythology, and science fiction to art, music, poetry, biography, and history. Whether revealing what lies behind Venus' cocoon of acid clouds or capturing firsthand the excitement at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory when pictures from Cassini at Saturn are beamed to Earth, this intimate account is filled with fascination, beauty, and surprise.

Written in Dava Sobel's characteristically graceful prose, The Planets is a distinctive view of our place in the universe. It is that rare book that will delight the experienced astronomer and, at the same time, engage someone eager to get to know the planets.

©2005 Dava Sobel (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Playful . . . lyrical . . . a guided tour so imaginative that we forget we’re being educated as we’re being entertained.” (Newsweek)

“[Sobel] has outdone her extraordinary talent for keeping readers enthralled. . . . Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter were exciting enough, but The Planets has a charm of its own . . . . A splendid and enticing book.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

“A sublime journey. [Sobel’s] writing . . . is as bright as the sun and its thinking as star-studded as the cosmos.” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Beware - as much religion and astrology as science

From the description, I was expecting a book mostly about planetary science and astronomy. There is some science, but it's pretty weak, and there's enough non-science presented as fact to ruin it for me. For example, she makes arguments for the factual basis of the genesis story in the bible, the legitimacy of astrology, and that the similarity in angular size between the moon and sun from earth is an act of god. Overall, not a scientific book.

Eclipsed

Like some of the other reviewers, I liked “Longitude” very much and so perhaps found “Planets” more disappointing than I should have. However, the science is often weak, the prose style grating at times (if you want to say that a planet has no atmosphere, just say it rather than that, “It lacks the aegis of air”) and the narrator sounds comatose. How some one who made watches interesting can make planets boring is a mystery, but this book manages it. Bill Bryson’s “Short History of Nearly Everything” is far, far better.

Started it but couldn't finish it

This book should have been good, I love astronomy as much as the next space geek, but I had to turn it off after 20 minutes. I tried but I just couldn't listen to the dribble any longer.

This book should be categorized as fiction

I was expecting a scientific book about the planets, instead I got a book whose author gives equal weight to the biblical account of the creation of the universe. If you are going to compare rigorous scientific theory with fantasy then don't label it as non-fiction.

Dava Sobel misses

Oh dear! I am a great Dava Sobel fan. I loved LONGITUDE so much that I went to Greenwich in England, just to see those clocks. I reread GALILEO'S DAUGHTER twice.
Dava Sobel is a fantastic science writer.

But this book is just silly. Starting with Mercury and moving outward she combines all kinds of unrelated drivel about each planet. No plot. No Theme. Nothing to focus on.
A complete waste of a good credit.