{"id":17868,"date":"2025-08-23T07:25:47","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T07:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/17868\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T07:25:47","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T07:25:47","slug":"to-the-moon-and-quack-books-in-brief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/17868\/","title":{"rendered":"To the Moon and quack: Books in brief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/d41586-025-02282-7_51201028.jpg\"\/><b>The Story of Astrophysics in Five Revolutions<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Ersilia Vaudo W. W. Norton (2025)<\/p>\n<p>Apollo 11\u2019s Moon landing in 1969 wowed the whole world. But it is science that is \u201cthe greatest of all adventures\u201d, suggests astrophysicist Ersilia Vaudo. In a short history of astrophysics, without resorting to mathematics, she tells the riveting stories of five revolutionary discoveries: Isaac Newton\u2019s revelation that gravity controls the celestial world; Albert Einstein\u2019s special and general theories of relativity; Edwin Hubble\u2019s comprehension of an expanding Universe; and, finally, antiparticles and cosmic evolution.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/d41586-025-02282-7_51201024.jpg\"\/><b>The Ocean\u2019s Menagerie<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Drew Harvell Viking (2025)<\/p>\n<p>Animal biology research often focuses on vertebrates. But invertebrates emerged in the oceans roughly 700 million years ago \u2014 some 200 million years before the first vertebrates appeared. \u201cJoin me on a deep dive to explore the ancient biological powers of spineless animals,\u201d beckons marine ecologist Drew Harvell. Her tour of wondrous creatures, from extremely strong corals to sponges that release compounds now used as drugs, shows how climate change threatens their existence. We need to look after this \u201cmenagerie\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/d41586-025-02282-7_51201026.jpg\"\/><b>Hope Dies Last<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Alan Weisman Dutton (2025)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a wise world, scientists would make decisions best suited to scientists\u201d and politicians and economists \u201cdecisions appropriate to their expertise, whatever that might be\u201d. Although this doesn\u2019t tend to happen, environmental journalist Alan Weisman doesn\u2019t give up hope. He discusses with innovative thinkers \u2014 from scientists and economists to architects and artists \u2014 how to cope with rising heat, hunger, tides and other climate-related perils. His book, ten years in the making, is both vividly written and intellectually provocative.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/d41586-025-02282-7_51201016.jpg\"\/><b>The Urban Naturalist<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Menno Schilthuizen MIT Press (2025)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Story of Astrophysics in Five Revolutions Ersilia Vaudo W. W. Norton (2025) Apollo 11\u2019s Moon landing in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[365,359,1067,18,117,1099,19,17,1100,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-17868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-culture","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-multidisciplinary","17":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}