The winner of season 4 of the History Channel’s Top Shot has written a book, Shoot To Win, by Chris Cheng (Amazon link) that has as a subtitle, “Tips, Tactics, and Techniques to Help You Shoot Like a Pro.”  That might lead you to believe that the book is aimed primarily at experienced shooters who would like to improve their game. While there are a few chapters along those lines, the bulk of Shoot To Win deals with the very basics of firearms and safely handling them.

The full title of this layman’s guide to understanding the theory of relativity is What is Relativity?: An Intuitive Introduction to Einstein’s Ideas, and Why They Matter. Published by Columbia University Press, author Jeffrey Bennett uses his young adult, classroom lectures to aid in understanding the profound equations and theories that revolutionized our picture of how the Universe works. I’d like to write that this is a welcome addition to the field. I can’t.

When I was much younger, I read We Are Not Alone, by Walter Sullivan. In the forty or so years since then, the search for life outside our own planet has become far more sophisticated, and yet we’re still at the point where we haven’t found any. Are we searching correctly? Do we need to expand our ideas of how and what forms of life might develop on other worlds?  Where should we look?

Dr. Athena Coustenis and Dr. Thérèse Encrenaz, both renowned astrophysicists, answer those questions in Life Beyond Earth: The Search for Habitable Worlds in the Universe. (Amazon link.)