(Neil deGrasse Tyson reads at the Paramount Theatre tonight at 7 pm.)
- CHRIS CASSIDY
You can’t argue with Neil deGrasse Tyson’s appeal. The celebrity astrophysicist (and let’s just take a moment to marvel at those two words) recently fronted Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a relaunch of the 1980s Carl Sagan science documentary miniseries, to massive success. The show reached more than 130 million people worldwide in its first run, and is presumably reaching millions more now that it’s streaming on Netflix. Can you recall the last time you’ve seen whole armies of human beings around the world enraptured by science? In this time when one in four Americans doesn’t believe in global warming, Tyson’s popularity is something to be cheered.
Fresh off the success of Cosmos, Tyson is now taking a victory lap, embarking on a tour of the United States and enjoying his newfound global celebrity. Four of his early books, too, have just gotten the deluxe treatment from W.W. Norton, seeing republication in a Cosmos-friendly trade dress. Originally published between 2004 and 2013, these books are likely next steps for people interested in expanding on the information that caught their attention in Cosmos, and they’re also an opportunity to enjoy another dose of Tyson’s personality.
As monuments to his charisma, the books are successful. Tyson’s public persona—friendly, full of wonder, prone to dropping mind-blowing factoids into the conversation every few minutes to string along your interest—is thick in these pages. And his devotion to science is evident: Every few chapters, he rhapsodizes on the importance of NASA, say, or funding for scientific studies. But it’s an unfortunate fact that the written Tyson simply doesn’t measure up to some of the best science writing of our time…