Science writer and astrophysicist Impey (Beyond: Our Future in Space) gives an absorbing and lay-reader-friendly look at the intriguing dead stars called black holes. Impey begins in 1784 with the earliest theoretical description of a massive star with gravity so strong that not even light could escape it. In the early 20th century, Einstein suggested with his general theory of relativity that astronomers could find black holes by looking into how their extreme gravity affects space-time around them. With clarity and enthusiasm, Impey describes the work of scientists such as John Wheeler-who coined the name "black hole"-and visionary theoretical cosmologist Stephen Hawking, as well as his own work. In subjects including the supermassive black holes at the center of every galaxy and primordial black holes, Impey gives readers a good sense of how these phenomena have gone from astronomical curiosity to intellectual touchstones that fascinate and challenge researchers. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Veteran writer Impey (astronomy, Univ. of Arizona; How It Began) examines black holes, which he refers to as "Einstein's Monsters" because they are mysterious, difficult to find, and tend to scare people. Readers do not need a deep understanding of astronomy to comprehend this accessible work, which is divided into two parts: the evidence surrounding black holes and later chapters discussing their past, present, and future. The first section covers the long-standing theory of the existence of black holes as well as 20th-century scientists who made massive strides in their study. Moving on, it relays how black holes are formed, what they do to the matter and material surrounding them, and how astronomers are discovering new black holes and what they are learning about the universe from them. VERDICT Fans of popular science authors such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lisa Randall, and Mike Brown will enjoy this wonderful, accessible introduction to black holes.-Jason L. Steagall, formerly with Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

*Starred Review* Astronomer Impey (Beyond: Our Future in Space , 2015) surveys the research into black holes. Mathematically allowed by Einstein's theory of general relativity, the idea of a point of infinite density within space-time so curved that light cannot escape wasn't accepted by most astrophysicists until the 1960s, when John Wheeler coined the catchy phrase, black hole. Skeptical and empirical, the scientists required proof, and Impey recounts various observations of electromagnetic radiation that piqued curiosity; indeed, radio astronomy found something big and energetic at the center of our Milky Way galaxy as early as the 1930s. As detection technology improved, studies of cosmic sources of X-rays, gamma rays, and gravity waves (a discovery touted in Janna Levin's Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space , 2016) have dispelled all scientific doubt that black holes are actual objects. Black hole research is now entering a realm of description (that Milky Way radio beacon is a black hole four-million times the mass of the Sun) and of cosmic prediction. Replete with explanatory diagrams, visualizations of black holes, and lively accounts of scientific personalities, Impey's book will wow the general-interest science audience.--Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2018 Booklist

This book contains a great deal of accurate and up-to-date information on its subject - black holes - and Impey, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, is a world-class expert on the subject whose passion and understanding frequently shine through. Unfortunately, "Einstein's Monsters" lacks an interesting story to hold it together. Without a narrative structure the book comes across as scattered, with different ideas placed one after the other with no particular logic. Questions arise and are left hanging, concepts introduced without any background or explanation, and jarring shifts from section to section (sometimes even sentence to sentence) are the norm. There are also frequent examples of simply thoughtless writing. For instance, the first chapter features an individual, John Michell, who is introduced with a single quote attributed to "his contemporaries." Yet it seems implausible that all or even several of his contemporaries said this one thing - and indeed it's hard to judge, as it is not until several paragraphs later that we find out the century in which Michell and his contemporaries lived. Several chapters later, there is a particularly bizarre jump from a discussion of poisonous snakes of Australia to one of telescope instrumentation, separated only by a paragraph break, immediately bucking the reader from the page. The book does improve from there, and later portions are more readable and clear. But stray sentences, awkward transitions and confusing tense disagreements, while less frequent in the second half, never disappear entirely. This is all especially disappointing because black holes are fascinating, and because Impey knows so much about them. There are glimpses of several good lectures that Impey could give (and likely has given) on how black holes power the most spectacularly bright objects in the universe, active galactic nuclei, as well as the history of how we came to understand these strange and violent objects. Unfortunately, glimpses are all we get.

A lucid tour of "the best known and least understood objects in the universe."A black hole is a region in space where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, not even light. It's a concept that has long fascinated astronomers and continues to generate a steady stream of popular science books. In his latest, Impey (Astronomy/Univ. of Arizona; Beyond: Our Future in Space, 2015, etc.) delivers an accessible yet definitely not dumbed-down explanation of this spectacular phenomenon. From its inception, most scientists accepted Einstein's 1915 Theory of Relativity, which described gravity as a distortion of space-time by a nearby mass. When his equations revealed that immense gravity would distort space-time so much that light would double back on itself, most scientists, Einstein included, assumed this was a mathematical curiosity. It wasn't. Within the past 100 years, writes Impey, "black holes have evolved from a monstrous idea, one that violates common sense, to a proving ground for the most cherished theories in physics." An ordinary black hole forms when a star ages, runs out of fuel, and collapses. Most shrink into dwarves, but when this happens to the rare star with a mass greater than 20 times that of the sun, no known force can prevent it from collapsing to an infinitely dense point called a singularity, surrounded by a black hole. Stranger still, at the center of every galaxy, including ours, is an immense "supermassive" black hole containing millions or billions of solar masses. A good writer as well as a specialist in black holes, Impey works hard and mostly successfully to illuminate complex phenomena without resorting to the TV documentary magic show (entertainment trumping explanation) and includes plenty of personal anecdotes, imaginative analogies, and useful illustrations.Readers who remember freshman college physics or astronomy will have an easier time, but few will regret encountering such irresistible astrophysical wonders. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.