Earth-Shattering: Violent Supernovas, Galactic Explosions, Biological Mayhem, Nuclear Meltdowns, and Other Hazards to Life in Our Universe is blithely engaging, a glittery planetarium that is, for the most part, a stage for astonishing and unnerving spectacles ... I greatly admire [Berman's] ability to lucidly explain astrophysics to the nonscientist ... Inevitably, [Berman's] accounts of egregious Earth-centric afflictions, while never pedantic, are just a little stolid.
A far-ranging and enthusiastic tour of cataclysms, local and remote ... Berman covers an exhaustive list of exotic and fascinating events, closing with a few disasters that weren’t, like the infamous “Y2K” problem, and the apocalypse supposedly predicted by the ancient Mayan calendar. This lively menagerie of astrophysical oddities will entertain any reader who’s ever wondered what the biggest, most dangerous 'bangs' in the universe might be.
Berman writes with verve and vigor about such things as the Snowball/Slushball catastrophe, the Cambrian explosion, the meteor collision that produced the Chicxulub Crater, novas and supernovas and H-bomb tests, and all manner of suchlike terrors. Sometimes the prose can get cutesy, in the catchy way of pop-magazine writing. But mostly, Berman’s book is a pleasing excursion into the hows and whys of how the universe—our universe, anyway—took shape and how it works—except when it doesn’t ...Just the book for a bright teenager interested in astronomy and geosciences.
