Black Holes in Spacetime

School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up-- Everything readers always wanted to know about black holes, but were afraid they wouldn't understand: where they come from, how they fit into physics, what they are like, how to find them. Readers still may not feel comfortable with the counter-intuitive concepts involved in the study of matter packed so densely that nothing can escape its immediate vicinity, but this highly accurate, non-mathematical presentation may be their best chance for gaining a general understanding. The text is so tightly focused that a bit of general background on nuclear reactions and spectral analysis is helpful, although not imperative. Unfortunately, the pleasure of reading an error-free piece of popular scientific writing is alloyed with such peripheral nuisances as painfully small print in some of the boxed insets and the overuse of sentence fragments. The glossary of words appearing in bold type in the text adds little enlightenment. The list of sources notes which books are accessible to young adults. Nothing else currently available on this level offers so complete a description of the subject. However, Asimov's How Did We Find Out About Black Holes? (Walker, 1978) is useful for historical background, and many readers of Ferguson's book will want to go on to the wider view of the universe presented in A Brief History of Time (Bantam, 1988) by Stephen Hawking. --Margaret Chatham, formerly at Smithtown Library, NY