A description of the planets of the solar system, and the history of how they were described, in Dava Sobel's inimitable and erudite literary style. Will you learn stuff about the planets? Will you learn about how they interact with society and culture? Yes. Is it a scientific disquisition on the planets and astronomy and observation? No. Not as good as Longitude, but in the similar readable and lucid style. Good for what it is. ( )

An easy rundown of who discovered the planets, how & what they know now. I enjoyed it. ( )

Ok, pretty writing in places, but pretty thin. More like a collection of magazine articles. The planets are pretty, and interesting, and mysterious, tra-la...

Disappointed, because I really liked Longitude and the book about Galileo's daughter. ( )

An interesting experiment in writing style, but not one that pays off.

Everything in here becomes so fragmented that it is impossible to read and comprehend it unless you already know nearly as much as the author. It's not a text, it's a mnemonic. To learn that maps were for some time printed with 'Halleyan lines' (p89) is all very well, but it presupposes a knowledge of Halley, magnetic variation and the longitude problem. At most, some of these snippets might make one think, 'Oh yes, this connects to that, how interesting', but it only works if you've already read a (rather clearer) book that explained both.

To read (p153) that Jupiter's "diameter expanded at a fraction of the rates at which its mass and volume increased" is somehow connected to Jupiter's behaviour in somehow "compacting itself", rather than the volume being the inevitable behaviour of a cube law – that alone took a star off the rating. That's the writing of someone who either isn't truly at ease with maths, or is just being sloppy with the review editing. From that halfway point, this switched from a mindless read of something unchallenging into a slog to get to the end so that I could get rid of the book. But not even to pass it on to anyone, just to dump it in the charity bin. ( )

An interesting presentation of the information. Sobel uses poetry, mythology, and an imagined letter, among other things, to convey information about the planets. ( )