Ice, Rock, and Beauty

The Wonder Just Goes On and On.- Within Ourselves.- That's You, Right in the Middle.- Not Quite a Bee's Eye View.- The Namer and the Named.- The Truth but not the Whole Truth.- What Happened Next.- Up and Down.- What It's Good At.- Third Rock and a Bit.- A Fabulous Night.- Aorounga to Zapadnaya (by Way of Manicouagan).- Known and Unknown.- Works of Nature....- ...And Cold Indifference.- Enough Way Beyonds.- A Pretty Face but a Cold One.- A Journey of a Thousand Lifetimes.- A Moon of One's Own.- No Substitute for Going There.- Ringshine.- Beneath the Blowing Sands.- Designed by Committee.- No Ordinary String.- An Innocent Passer-by?.- Once Upon a Time, Long Ago.- Bigger Than We Are.- Unpossessed.- So Similar, So Different.- As an Angel.- Tricks of the Light.- More Than a Match.- Curiously Normal.- Looking Again.- Realities Like This.- Above a Turbulent Sky.- They All Turn out Differently.- Warhol's Worlds.- An Edge of Darkness.- No Moon Is an Island.- What Shall We Call Her?.- The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time.- Heaven's Harpstrings.- ...And the Gates of Hell.- Simple Rings.- Crime Scene Investigation.- The Dust Left Behind.- Skies on Fire.- Looking on the Bright Side.- Fragments of Truth.- All Her Thoughts.- Leaving Just the Oddballs.- Epic Stories.- Mimas in Blue.- Taking What You Can Get.- Time in the Sun.- Something out there Moving.- This Side of Xanadu.- Simplicity Too.- The Journey of a Hero.- Whatever Seasons.- Forever Entangled.

David Brodie is the author of several successful educational textbooks and his travel writing has been published in the national press. He has initiated and run 'art-science' projects on neuroscience and on particle physics, resulting in significant national exhibitions.

From the reviews:



"The author's plan is simple but compelling: select about 60 recent, stunning images of objects in the solar system and arrange them on double-page spreads so that each image is printed nice and large with related text on its facing page. ... It's a lovely book to dip into, with interesting angles on most of the objects chosen. A full index enables readers to navigate to entries of particular interest. ... Brodie shows how naturally science and humanity go together." (Peter Campbell, Physics Education, March, 2008)

"Brodie, a travel writer and textbook author, encapsulates, in dozens of color pictures with explanations alongside, the great gain in the sophistication available in the images from recent space probes. ... This book is for anyone who seeks to keep up on the solar system as it is known in the 21st century. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers/libraries." (A. R. Upgren, CHOICE, Vol. 45 (11), July, 2008)

"The aim of Ice, Rock, and Beauty ... is to show the diversity of the objects in the Solar System. ... The content is written in a beautifully poetic way ... . Each description is accompanied by a schematic of the Solar System , usefully illustrating the location of the Sun, Earth and the body that is being described. ... With accessible, descriptive language that captures the wonders of the Solar System, this book would be an excellent read ... ." (Emily Baldwin, Astronomy Now, October, 2008)

"This book is a collection of images of the smaller bodies in the Solar System. The greater part is taken up by more than sixty images, some in black and white, some in colour, true or false, and a few graphics. Nearly all the images are from space and are credited to NASA. ... The prose style is vivid and enthusiastic, well matching the images. ... The pictures are beautiful ... ." (Derek Jones, The Observatory, Vol. 128 (1206), October, 2008)