The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie
About the book
Author: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Publisher: Pantheon
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
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Bookshop.org (print or ebook) | Libro.fm (audio)
My review
I haven’t read as much nonfiction this year as I’d like to (there are so many books!!), and The Edge of Space-Time has been on my TBR since I first listened to Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on The Stacks podcast, so I was delighted when my quarterly office book club picked this.
In this book, Prescod-Weinstein has written a normie’s guide to complex levels of physics, like special relativity. As someone who loved astronomy as a kid and enjoyed science in high school but never studied it at higher levels in college, this was made for me. It’s not easy to explain such complicated concepts in a way everyone can understand, and Prescod-Weinstein has a true talent for it. That said, I wish I had left myself a little bit more time to read this before my book club meeting; I (stupidly) hadn’t anticipated that I would need to read it more slowly than I usually read, and ultimately I ended up having to rush through it a bit because of the deadline. That meant some of the concepts still slipped through my fingers, but it was all my fault. I might reread it someday for this reason.
I also wanted a bit more from this book on the cultural commentary side of things — I think I had expected the mix to be more like 65% science and 35% relating that back to social issues, when in reality it’s more like 85%/15%. But that’s a personal preference rather than a failing of the book. I loved the cultural commentary that was there and was impressed with the way Prescod-Weinstein tied it all together and made me see things in new ways.
TLDR; read this book, but take your time with it!
Content and trigger warnings
Racism (discussed)
Sexism (discussed)
Genocide (discussed)
