I am one of those people who wonder where everything comes' from, what things are made of, how they are made. I just love knowing these things, so when I had the chance to read this book, I was fascinated. When I first opened the book and saw how many pages were in it, my first thought was, there can't be that many pages about meteorites, can there? I was thinking along the lines of meteorites are just one little rock from space. I didn't realize how many different types of meteorites there were, how many different elements make up those different types of meteorites. The whole book was just so fascinating. The book is organized well and moves logically from one topic to the next. There were no lulls in my attention with the book, there was no place where I was just bored. If science and geology are your thing, I definitely recommend this book. It's informative and well thought out.

I really enjoyed this book, and have grabbed a copy to add to my reference library for later research. Meteorites aren't just falling stars, and honestly, there's some really interesting nuggets in here. Well worth the read, casually, or for research!

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Really fascinating exploration of meteorites that drop to earth (vis-a-vis asteroids, which are still in space) - through the lens of 'cosmochemistry' and the historical discovery and unpacking of the history of our solar system and the universe itself. The author did an excellent job breaking down terms for the layperson although I did have to re-read sections at times on atoms, elements, molecules and so on. One of the most fascinating topics covered was organic molecules and what is a foundation for organic life and what are simply organic in nature (and found throughout the universe). The last 1/3 of the book seemed a bit disjointed at times where historical incidences were introduced but not immediately contextualized. Additionally the assertion that we will colonize Mars and possibly other planetary bodies is speculative and not yet evidence-based. This bit was introduced and not picked up for many pages until the end, where the author states that colonization elsewhere was necessary for the preservation of human existence in case of another massive asteroid hit to the earth (e.g. cretaceous extinction 66 mya), although he does briefly discuss asteroid deflection technology and its pro's/con's.

Overall I would definitely recommend reading it.

Who would think a science book would be a page turner? This one is. It's about meteorites, space rocks, and it's cool. I didn't even know there was so much to know about meteorites. If you have a space loving friend who also likes rocks, this book is for them. It's a really interesting read.

Meteorite: The Stones from Outer Space That Made Our World, by Tim Gregory, does what the best popular science books do — uses a vibrant, engaging and distinctive voice to both broadly and deeply inform the lay reader without dumbing down the science down too much while placing it in historical context. Check, check, and check. I already can’t wait for what Gregory turns to in his next non-fiction work.

The title tells you all you need to know about the subject matter. This isn’t a “space” book; it’s all, and almost solely, about, meteorites: how they’re found, where they come from, how they impacted (literally and figuratively) the Earth, what they can tell us about our world, other planets, and the solar system’s creation. As tightly focused as it is, though, Gregory still makes room for some effectively brief digressions into more general astronomical/geological issues, such as star formation, the Big Bang, supernovas, the Earth’s makeup, crystal formation, gravity waves, and more.

Gregory begins in what at first seems a strange place, starting by describing the oldest human artwork and then continuing on to the oldest writing. We start to see where he’s going when he notes how this ancient writing was “first created by pressing symbols into clay tablets and chiseling them into stone tablets” so that “our acquisition of knowledge and understanding of the world . . . all began by recording them on rocks.” And there it is. The pivot point. “Rocks.” And so we turn to “another story written in rock . . . [not] by us [but] by Nature.” Gregory continues the metaphor, explaining how, “Each rock contains a single short story, but a sequence of rock contains a narrative . . . the story of our home planet. But the history of the Earth . . . is but a sub-lot of a far grander story arc . . . that begins farther back in time.” And the building blocks of that story are meteorites.

I love me a good metaphor, especially an extended one. And Gregory comes back to this language and imagery repeatedly (and successfully) throughout the book. And it’s just one example of his better-than-your-average science book style, a more polished, literary type of prose that makes Meteorite not just an informative work but one that is a pleasure to read.

Of course, a science book’s number one priority is to inform, and Gregory excels at that even more than he does in the writing style. In incredibly concise, efficient fashion, Gregory lucidly details (in sharp, vivid detail) the various categories of meteorites, how it was first discovered that they were parts of asteroids (and then, for some, parts of the Moon or Mars), how their chemical and mineralogical makeup can be used to plumb the depths of our own rocky planet, how they can take us back in time to before the planets and even, for some, before the sun itself.

It’s all fascinating material laid out in crystal clear fashion. But Gregory, and through him the reader, never loses sight of the wonder for the facts. One way he conveys this is through the several colorfully described “falls”: stories of meteorites dropping from the sky (or plunging screaming through the air and then dropping). Sometimes to be picked up by the locals and turned into iron weapons that eventually appear, say, in the tomb of the young boy-king of Egypt. Sometimes to be the reason why dinosaurs still aren’t striding the Earth. Sometimes to give some poor (or incredibly lucky) woman a nasty bruise (one of the rare documents cases of a meteorite striking a person).

The wonder also shines through in Gregory’s enthusiastic optimism for humanity, for the future, and his constant astonishment at the universe. Here he is, for instance, on the small bits of rock in the earliest day of the Solar System avoiding destruction: “Of all the chance encounters that led to the present in which we find ourselves, the survival of the planetesimals from which Earth grew were some of the first. Our existence — the Earth and all life that inhabits it has been precarious from the beginning.”

His sense of the marvelous doesn’t occur only when looking backwards though; it exists as well as he gazes ahead in time toward the future, a brighter one than many perhaps assume: “It may well be the case that it is easier and wiser to settle on the surface of other worlds . . . Interplanetary human flight, and eventual habitation of other rocky worlds likes in our future . . . Science continues to give our species an excuse to be the best versions of ourselves. We can do anything we collectively put our minds to.”

Nice, especially in this 2020 year from hell, to end on such a positive note. Meteorites is Gregory’s first book, and based on it, he has a long and successful career ahead of him as a science popularizer. I can’t wait to see where he turns next. Highly recommended.

What a gem. Truly. This book made reading science fun again in a way I haven't had since I was a kid and would read ahead to the interesting bits of the textbook.

This book gives you a portrait of the solar system in its current state and its creation, and gives you on a peak of what our ancestors must have thought of it. Written with a passion and space and our cosmic neighborhood in general, that passion lends itself to every sup-topic within.

I try to look up the authors of science books before I request an ARC. Simply because there is so little known about the book that forming an idea of who is writing it can be the only idea of what you might get. Dr, Gregory (or rather, his website) came across professionally and credentialed, and that seeps into his writing here as well.

It's not really a book I can 'spoil', but to go too much on a topic would rob you of the ability to learn about it from someone with clearly better words. If you're reading this review, you already have an idea of if you want to read the book or not. If you think you might, you definitely should. Well informed, lovely writing makes the choice simple. Thank you to Netgalley and Basic Books for the ARC!

Who would guess that a book about meteorites is a page-turner? Yet here it is: suspense, fast-paced action, fascinating characters, all enriched by a healthy dose of scientific facts that will satisfy even the most curious reader. I have to admit that night after night I delayed my sleep because I couldn’t shut down my reader before finishing the chapter.

Tim Gregory is a fantastic storyteller. He can make interesting even the more complicated details of geology or chemistry (sorry, “cosmochemistry” – what a wonderful word!). His writing is clear and precise, but by no means dry – on the contrary, he is funny and engaging, and his enthusiasm for science is infectious. While reading, you begin to wonder about many meteor-related things, and the author promptly delivers responses to every possible question you can think of. I love this kind of popular science book.

A must-read for everyone with even the slightest interest in the nature of the Universe and history of scientific progress.

Many thanks to the publisher, Perseus Books, Basic Books, and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book.

Informative and Poetic. Gregory knows his subject extremely well and knows how to explain it well to an audience that doesn't necessarily have near the academic pedigree in the field that he seemingly does. Ostensibly a story about the space rocks that land on earth, this tale is part history, part chemistry, part theoretical astrophysics, and a whole lot of detailed yet understandable explanation of how all of these fields interact as it relates to the subject at hand. I learned more about chemistry from reading this book than I *ever* understood from my high school chemistry class. Very much recommended.

Meteorite is a love letter to humanity in its own way through an exploration of meteorites. The book goes through our history of understanding of meteorites, to what they've been used for, where to find them, and it is clear how much passion Tim Gregory has about the subject. The writing is conversational and light. Everything comes with a clear explanation for anyone to understand. It's not the most in depth text on the subject, but should suit anybody looking for an introductory text on the subject. It's incredibly optimistic, which is much needed in these times. Please enjoy!

Fun, well-explained look at meteorites

I enjoyed this book. Tim Gregory uses simple explanations to explain meteorites and their place in the solar system. He writes with a conversational tone and shows some humor. I also enjoyed the footnotes. I generally don’t comment on epilogues, but in this book I found the epilogue very satisfying, more so than in many non-fiction books. Overall this is an excellent book and I recommend it for anyone interested in science.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

Apparently, this book is about falling rocks, but actually  it is a tribute to the beauty of the universe and to the greatness of human ingenuity.
Of course, it seems absurd to see beauty in a series of scorched stones hitting the Earth. It's easier to see them as a divine wrath, or a mean of total destruction (ask the first dinosaur you will meet, or the last one, maybe...).
Yet, Tim Gregory takes the reader beyond appearances and shows what beauty and what great, truly "spacey" stories meteorites contain (for example, have you ever imagined our solar system as an ocean of sparkling beads?).
Also, this book is a hymn to the willpower and ingenuity of men (e.g., do you know the 'oxygen fractionation line'?), capable of overcoming enormous difficulties, finding answers to fundamental questions and going backwards billions of years just by examining pieces of rock.
You will be glad to read "Meteorite", a book that educates and that at the same time instills optimism about our creativity and future.

Continuing my recent foray into science nonfiction, I picked up Meteorite hoping to learn a bit more about the titular subject matter than I did in my school years, and the author did not disappoint. With information presented in a very organized fashion and with a writing style accessible even to those with very little scientific knowledge, Meteorite acts as a great primer for anyone interested in learning about the key role that meteorites have played in our journey to understand the origins of our solar system.

The book includes a great many stories about the historical discoveries of meteorites and how scientists used those discoveries to gradually learn more and more about how the solar system formed—in particular, which cosmic processes created the solar system we know today, what elements were involved in those processes, and what modern-day by-products were created by those processes.

The author also takes the time to thoroughly explain the basics of meteorite categorization—what the different types of meteorites are called, what they’re made of, and how each one helped us understand more about the history of the solar system—without delving so far into advanced math and science that the book becomes difficult for a non-science-oriented reader (like me) to understand.

All in all, I thought this book was a well-written introductory text for anyone interested in studying the topic of meteorites, or even just anyone interested in learning a little more about the subject than they did in high school science.

Rating: 4/5

Tim Gregory has given us a wonderfully entertaining work on meteorites. But not just meteorites. I now know the difference between a meteor, an asteroid, the formation of atomic elements, which made so much more sense than what I learned any science class in school. And every bit of this book, one chapter to the next, is clear and extremely fascinating. Sitting here now, I'm making dad-jokes about how many "stars" to give the book and if the book is intended for "mass" market.

I'm struggling to come to grips with all that was covered and yet realizing that at no point did the author leave me in the dust (!) with too much science. I didn't feel overwhelmed at all, but I did feel pulled along at every angle into historical events somewhat feeling like a real-life Dan Brown novel, with scientists navigating around the globe, unraveling hints of mysteries buried within the rocks. I know, without a doubt, that nothing I'm writing will prepare you for such an enjoyable ride.

The author's narrative is smooth and nicely refined, combining multiple disciplines of science in a truly readable journey. I've been to Meteor Crater, but the author gives the crater additional depth, allowing me to imagine the impact (literally) of these foreign bodies. I could visualize what happened in the Yucatan peninsula and Germany.

Now for the negative: I was a bit sad when I had finished the entire book. I wished (upon a star?) that George R. R. Martin or Robert Jordan had the skills to write accessible science as Gregory does. This is the kind of book that makes me want to join in the hunt for rocks with strange black crusts.

I have no hesitation in recommending this title, not just to science buffs, or historians, or rock hunters, but to everyone who enjoys a little mystery and discovery. And yet, the author isn't afraid to admit there are mysteries remaining. Wonderful.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me the opportunity to review the book. I enjoyed it so very much.

I like to read about astronomy. It fascinates by shear paucity of our knowledge about it.
This book is about rocks flying in space. It is a vast text. It covers a lot. From origin of universe and our solar system to possible end of life on earth. It covers role that meteorites have played in our current understanding of the universe.
It has wonderful information about every aspect of asteroids and meteorites. I found description of Mars and expeditions sent to moons of Saturn. Information about planets of solar system is fascinating.
A good read but at certain points it becomes too academic for an amateur science reader.
But you can easily skip those descriptions of crystals of silica and metals in meteorites.
If you wish to dwell outside world of Stephan Hawking, it could be a good starting point.
Thanks netgalley and the publisher for review copy.

This book yet Scientific it is not at all boring. It is very poetically descriptive when taking about phenomena, research. Big discoveries, the impact of it on mankind. How something started to be speculative on being celestial in origin. Space mystery related ) dated back to the BC)

This arc was given to me by netgalley in exchange for an honest review.