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A Traveler's Guide To Mars
With all the noise and kerfuffle about Mars recently I thought I should take a look at the Red Planet. I'm not well educated about astronomy, have to think hard to get the order of the planets right, but still wanted something with some depth. I found a great little guide for the uninformed visitor, "A Traveler's Guide to Mars" by William K Hartmann. This fairly inexpensive volume is full of all the information you're going to need, a large number of pictures, several maps and a great deal of information about previous voyagers to the planet. Indeed Hartmann was one of the scientists for the Mars Global Surveyor mission.
This book really does look like a typical traveler's guide with large print, bold headings, a good use of colour and text boxes. The style is light enough that when it gets scientific you don't notice too much. It is broken up into seven sections
- Introducing Mars: Past and Present.
- Noachian Mars: Exploring The Oldest Provinces
- Interlude: Landing on Mars
- Hesperian Mars: A Time of Transition
- Interlude: Rocks From Mars
- Amazonian Mars: The Red Planet Today
- Where Do We come From, Where Are We Going
The first section is a quick overview of the planet and a look at the history of Martian research. Section three looks at the various landings and what they discovered. Section five is a single chapter explaining the Martian meteors and what they might mean. Section seven is also small and looks at future Martian research. The other three sections look at the geography and geology of various parts of the Red Planet.
I found the whole book fascinating. I particularly liked the way Hartmann kept almost all his own tale in small sidebars called "My Martian Chronicles", 15 of them scattered through the book. These were interesting and meant that he could push his own barrow in a way that didn't intrude into the rest of the book, you could read them when you wanted. Throughout the book you get a huge amount of information about Mars and how the various bits were likely formed and what further exploration is likely to find.
All that said, it's not a book that can be taken in huge gulps. It took me several weeks to read it, picking it up and reading a few chapters then putting it down for a day or so, then perhaps another hour or two just looking at pictures, maps and reading sidebars. The layout does lend itself to this, however, so I'm not quite certain I'd call this a flaw, it seemed like a good way of making a 450 page book on Mars that much easier to digest. It also doesn't seem like a book that you need to read cover to cover, in order. I certainly didn't, reading bits about the meteors and landings and the last section before reading the section on Hesperian Mars.
The Workman Publishing web page on the book is not much use, with only a tiny excerpt from the book and while the book does have a selected reading list at the end it would have been nice to have a list of recommended web sites for further information as most of us don't have access to the sort of library likely to carry advanced astronomy journals or books.
If you're not an astronomy geek and want to know more about Mars then you may well find this book ideal. I certainly enjoyed my visit to the Red Planet.
You can purchase A Traveler's Guide To Mars from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Wow.. that thing is powerful.. may it never be unleashed on slashdot again!
/* * pope1 */
All that said, it's not a book that can be taken in huge gulps. It took me several weeks to read it
Two things timothy:
One, what exactly can be taken in huge gulps? I think you mean penis.
Two, it took you that long to read it because you're a fecking idiot!
OVERRATED!!!!!??? WTF!? I was just asking a simple question! The fucking word honstepuck just doesn't make any fucking sense to me. It relates to nothing and as far as I can tell is a non-existant word! I can't even find honste in the dictionary. Is it German? Dutch? Swiss? What is it? Can some just fess up and tell me what the fuck that name is supposed to mean? Or is it just some made up crap meant to irk people like me who demand that everything be logical and correct? I'll bet it was some /. fuck who modded me down. That's the only time I've seen overrateds. Only the owners of /. can do that, not regular mods. You are all a bunch of stinking asshats.
here it is, just in case you can't access this post's parent comment.
With all the noise and kerfuffle about Mars recently I thought I should take a look at the Red Planet. I'm not well educated about astronomy, have to think hard to get the order of the planets right, but still wanted something with some depth. I found a great little guide for the uninformed visitor, "A Traveler's Guide to Mars" by William K Hartmann. This fairly inexpensive volume is full of all the information you're going to need, a large number of pictures, several maps and a great deal of information about previous voyagers to the planet. Indeed Hartmann was one of the scientists for the Mars Global Surveyor mission.
This book really does look like a typical traveler's guide with large print, bold headings, a good use of colour and text boxes. The style is light enough that when it gets scientific you don't notice too much. It is broken up into seven sections
Introducing Mars: Past and Present.
Noachian Mars: Exploring The Oldest Provinces
Interlude: Landing on Mars
Hesperian Mars: A Time of Transition
Interlude: Rocks From Mars
Amazonian Mars: The Red Planet Today
Where Do We come From, Where Are We Going
The first section is a quick overview of the planet and a look at the history of Martian research. Section three looks at the various landings and what they discovered. Section five is a single chapter explaining the Martian meteors and what they might mean. Section seven is also small and looks at future Martian research. The other three sections look at the geography and geology of various parts of the Red Planet.
I found the whole book fascinating. I particularly liked the way Hartmann kept almost all his own tale in small sidebars called "My Martian Chronicles", 15 of them scattered through the book. These were interesting and meant that he could push his own barrow in a way that didn't intrude into the rest of the book, you could read them when you wanted. Throughout the book you get a huge amount of information about Mars and how the various bits were likely formed and what further exploration is likely to find.
All that said, it's not a book that can be taken in huge gulps. It took me several weeks to read it, picking it up and reading a few chapters then putting it down for a day or so, then perhaps another hour or two just looking at pictures, maps and reading sidebars. The layout does lend itself to this, however, so I'm not quite certain I'd call this a flaw, it seemed like a good way of making a 450 page book on Mars that much easier to digest. It also doesn't seem like a book that you need to read cover to cover, in order. I certainly didn't, reading bits about the meteors and landings and the last section before reading the section on Hesperian Mars.
The Workman Publishing web page on the book is not much use, with only a tiny excerpt from the book and while the book does have a selected reading list at the end it would have been nice to have a list of recommended web sites for further information as most of us don't have access to the sort of library likely to carry advanced astronomy journals or books.
If you're not an astronomy geek and want to know more about Mars then you may well find this book ideal. I certainly enjoyed my visit to the Red Planet.
You can take the fucking time to mod me down you worthless shits, but you can't take the fucking time to reply to me. Real nice! Someone needs to throttle you fuckers.
"With all the noise and kerfuffle about Mars recently I thought I should take a look at the Red Planet"
In Soviet Russia, the Red Planet looks at YOU!
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass