| SEARCH AMONG THE STARS Carl Heintze Denny McMains (Illus.) Princeton, NJ: D. van Nostrand Co., 1966 |
Rating: 4.0 High |
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| LibCong 66-16902 | ?p. | HC/BWI | $? | |
Carl Heintze, a native Californian, was trained in journalism at Columbia University. At the time this book was published, he was serving as science writer for the San Jose, CA News. (It's now the San Jose Mercury News.)
Search Among the Stars is one of a series of van Nostrand books for young readers. Heintze has produced a very readable book which covers many aspects of space science well. The illustrations are clear and accurate, and there are many excellent photographs of spacecraft, observatories, and planetary bodies.
Among the subjects discussed are the origin of the solar system and life, the history of astronomy, exploration of the nearer planets with space probes, travel to the stars, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Curiously, although he obviously knows about it, Heintze mentions Einstein's theory of relativity only in connection with the source of power of the Sun, which depends on converting matter into energy according to Einstein's famous formula E = Mc2. There is no discussion of time dilation; perhaps Heintze thought that this would have been an unnecessary complication.
The writing is clear without being excessively condescending. Heintze does not omit technical terms when they are useful; examples are the names of the four amino acids that make up DNA. He takes care to define them on first use. A reasonable index and a short but well-chosen bibliography are also provided. (Among the titles selected are Walter Sullivan's We Are Not Alone, The Nature of the Universe by Fred Hoyle, and Ben Bova's The Uses of Space.)
Of course, the book reveals how much progress we have made in thirty years. It is somewhat jarring to me today to realize that when Heintze wrote, the Apollo missions were still a gleam in the nation's eyes, and no probe had yet touched down on Mars or Venus. Quasars were known, but not pulsars; nor had Ohio University's Big Ear yet received the famous "Aha!" signal.
Aside from the fact that it is so dated, the book makes some annoying mistakes. It places Dr. James van Allen (discover of the van Allen radiation belts which surround the Earth) at Iowa State University. He's actually at the University of Iowa (and always was). Also, Heintze asserts that the bowl-shaped valley where the 1,000-foot Arecibo dish is located was constructed. In fact, it already existed, and was merely surfaced with wire mesh that conforms to its natural contours.1
Despite these defects, Search Among the Stars is a worthy introduction to the subject of space exploration for young readers.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.