Book Review: Merlin's Tour of the Universe: A Traveler's Guide to Blue Moons and Black Holes, Mars, Stars, and Everything Far

 

Merlin's Tour of the Universe is a book by Neil deGrasse Tyson, first published in 1989 and updated in 2024. In it, Tyson answers letters written by people asking science questions. He responds as a fictional character, Merlin, who is an alien who has visited Earth many times over thousands of years from his home planet in the Andromeda Galaxy. Within the responses, he explains concepts from almost every branch of science, including complicated astrophysics, with letters grouped in different topics that make up the chapters of the book. 

The hardcover version of the book is moderately long at just under 280 pages of substantive text. None of the responses to the letters is very long. Most are a paragraph or two. The shortest responses are a sentence or two long, and the longest are about a page. It is relatively easy to read and reads quickly. Although this was Tyson's first book, it is very similar to the style and tone that he has maintained in his subsequent works. He makes the topics easy to understand, and you do not have to be a scientist or engineer to follow what he is saying. It is absolutely worth reading if you are a fan of Tyson's, like or love science (especially astronomy), and/or just want to learn more about science.