National Geographic’s ‘Stargazer’s Atlas’ Encourages Us to Look Up and Learn [REVIEW]

Stargazers
Imagine what you can discover when you take the time to look up! (Photo by Yuting Gao on Pexels.com)

When I was a boy, my grandfather gave me my very first book about constellations. Ever since, I have been fascinated by the heavens and love nights when the sky is black as pitch and the stars look close enough to touch. It’s such a marvel to me to think that we are looking up at things so far away, no man has ever been there. At least not yet. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t get familiar with them. To do that, you simply have to open National Geographic’s dazzling new volume, the Stargazer’s Atlas. Even if you haven’t spent your nights looking up in the past, you will after you read this beautiful guide to the night sky.

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Launch Scientific Thought with Neil DeGrasse Tyson and James Tefil’s ‘Cosmic Queries’ [REVIEW]

Orion Nebula in the Galaxy
Orion Nebula in the Galaxy (Photo courtesy Canva)

As a boy, I fell in love with the stars. My grandfather had given me a book about astronomy, and I had fun gazing up at the heavens trying to locate the different constellations depicted within its pages. But the more I looked upward, the more questions I had. Just how vast is the Milky Way? Is there life on other planets? And what would it be like to visit places like Jupiter or Saturn?

Obviously, I’m not the only one with these questions, or else astrophysicists like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and academics like James Trefil would probably be out of a job. Fortunately for us, they have now joined forces to write Cosmic Queries: StarTalk’s Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going. In this fascinating volume from National Geographic, they address many of our burning questions about space and the universe around us.

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Katey Walter Anthony’s ‘Chasing Lakes’ Is About Much More Than Scientific Discovery [REVIEW]

Walking in the arctic
(Photo courtesy Canva)

Katey Walter Anthony has loved nature and science and marveled at the world around her since childhood. But as she grew toward adulthood, her life unraveled until darkness threatened to consume her. Desperate for answers to some of life’s toughest questions, her journey takes her from the Sierra Nevada to some of the farthest reaches of the planet. What she discovers along the way will ultimately change her life, her heart, and her faith. Discover her truth in the captivating memoir, Chasing Lakes: Love, Science, and the Secrets of the Arctic.

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In Sabrina Jeffries’ ‘Who Wants to Marry a Duke,’ the Heroine is No Wilting Flower [REVIEW]

Poison definition
(Photo courtesy Canva)

In Who Wants to Marry a Duke, the third dazzling installment of Sabrina Jeffries’ Duke Dynasty series (after The Bachelor), a beautiful young chemist is recruited to determine if a duke’s father died of natural causes or was poisoned. But will her experimental methods prove successful or will her investigation be thwarted before it even begins?

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In Ann Druyan’s ‘Cosmos: Possible Worlds,’ We All Help Shape Our Future [REVIEW]

Unleash your curiosity as you ponder the universe in Cosmos: Possible Worlds. (Photo courtesy Canva)

Back in high school, I really wasn’t that intrigued by science. It was all so complicated, and I just didn’t see how it really had much to do with me, so I didn’t pay much attention to it. But in college, I found myself in a class at the Cincinnati Zoo that introduced students to the wonderful, diverse, interconnected world of science through an interactive class where we studied animal and plant life, and suddenly I was riveted. Watching everything from gorillas and macaques to insects like bullet ants and cicadas, I discovered that every species of life makes a contribution to the planet, and why we need to understand and respect each one. And although not everyone can take a zoo class, they can read Ann Druyan’s new book, Cosmos: Possible Worlds, and find out for themselves just how approachable science really is, on our planet and beyond.

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