The Sun: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

The Sun: A Very Short Introduction surveys the history and contemporary state of solar physics, including the big questions that now drive the science. The reader needs only basic physics that will be familiar to college science students or readers of (for example) Scientific American. I am deeply impressed by the depth, clarity, and scope achieved in this slim volume. The writing is engaging, and the story of discovery is compelling. I bought a stack of them to share with my students.

Elegantly written and easy to follow, with plenty of engaging and relevant history woven into a solid understanding of the current state of knowledge about our home star and its interaction with us here on Earth.

The mantra of the Very Short Introduction series is “stimulating ways into new subjects”. Judged by this criterion, this book fails.And it’s such a shame. The author obviously understands his topic, and the book is dotted with interesting little tidbits. But — and I invite anyone to try this experiment! — just ask a simple question about the Sun, and flip open the book to try and answer it.Good luck! I tried to do this with the simplest question of all: “Why does the Sun shine?” I read through the book, but wasn’t able to find the question even directly addressed (much less concisely answered).I BELIEVE the book finally glances at the question on pages 52–53, in a paragraph on stellar evolution — but the paragraph is riddled with indecipherable terminology and unnecessary historical notes.I don’t think this question is an outlier. Nor, sadly, do I think that this book is an outlier.I remember being so excited when the VSI series first came out; finally, I thought, a way to simply understand the most important things in the world!Most of the books in the series, though, seem to be written in that hoary style of academic non-explanation explanations:1. assume the reader already understands the big ideas2. give an explanation using technical terminology3. bury that explanation in detailsI’m angry about this, because we — the science-curious laity — deserve better explanations than this.I suspect that books like this aren’t merely missed opportunities to explain science, they actively cause harm — they make us suspect that science is dull. (And perhaps make us suspect that we’re stupid.)But science is fascinating. And, given proper explanations, we non-geniuses really can understand a lot of this stuff.

Firstly I am not a scientist or an astronomer. If I see a tree or insect I like to know what it is. I find that the more I know about the world around me I realise that I actually know very little. We take the Sun for granted because it's ever present and reliable. I saw this book and realised that I knew absolutely nothing about the subject despite seeing and appreciating it's presence every day. This book has taught me such a lot which I could not have understood from a more detailed study. My aim was to read something which would give me a basic understanding of the mechanism by which we receive the most crucial ingredient for life on earth. I don't understand the physics or graphs in the book although I am well able to see the direction they are going in. To read and appreciate the book you don't nee a degree just a curious mind. I am reading the book for a second time and loving it. I can heartily recommend this book to anybody who has an enquiring mind. Go for it !!!

This book deals with a very complex subject in a readable and understandable way which is so important when read by a lay man like me with an interest in but not complex knowledge of the subject.

VSI is a totally wonderful series. They give just what the non-specialist wants in a compact package.