Mike Brown did a fantastic job of telling the story behind Pluto's demotion. I didn't know about each of the events leading up to the IAU vote and how the cumulative evidence really created a compelling argument for the change. The story was fun and easy to digest for a non-science minded person. It definitely reads more like a memoir or narrative that science text. I really enjoyed this book. ( )

An immensely engaging and personable account of the death of Pluto that will make you care about astronomical bodies you've never even heard of before. I particularly love the insight into the motivations and methodology of astronomy. ( )

Good, interesting read, though the definition of planet that includes 100s, kind of makes more sense to me than having just 8 important objects. It was more memoir like than I expected, with all the family stories, but they were cute. ( )

This a great book for a lot of reasons. This little gem is an excellent description of a scientist involved in his research but it is also a wonderful meditation on dealing with work, the big things and the mundane things, and what happens when life brings to us a partner and, ultimately, a child. I enjoyed reading about Mike Brown the astronomer, but I also was moved when the astronomer realized he was falling in love and the additional joy that came with the birth of his daughter. The issue of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt objects is still not settled. But this is a well written story of how icy minor plants were discovered. ( )

I really like the cover of this book, and I was pretty sure I'd be reading something kind of self-centered with the first-person title, and I wasn't wrong. I'm not necessarily complaining about it, but Mike Brown wrote a book about his life during the period that he was finding objects and when Pluto was reclassified, instead of just writing about those things. So when he did a couple tangents about how great his baby is and how he kept a blog about her, I was expecting it. I even agree with him that it's strange that apparently no one has data on the how far away from the official due date women give birth? That's weird. But it's not really what I was reading for, and I don't really care about Mike Brown. I'm sure he's a great person...though he did do a lot of "I" statements about things that his team did, while still giving them credit. Maybe when he said "I" in certain contexts he actually meant "we". Anyway, it's an interesting look at the lead up to the reclassification of Pluto, and I learned some about the controversy surrounding the discovery of Eris that I didn't know before.

What really bugs me about this though is how often Brown says that he "killed Pluto". It's in the title, presumably for effect which it does have, and apparently he also said that "Pluto is dead" when the vote happened, and he consistently uses that wording through the book. Maybe he thinks we're all smart enough to know that he's just using this wording for effect, but I got tired of it really fast. For someone who wanted the public to accept the reclassification of Pluto, he's using the most damning language possible. Pluto is not dead, except in the sense that it has no life on it (as far as we know...), and it's really annoying to keep hearing it from someone who definitely knows better. I agree with him that "dwarf planet" is kind of a dumb name, and I found it interesting to know that it was only used to try and keep Pluto in the planet club. I also liked his explanation of astronomy terms being used to describe concepts instead of strictly defined things. But seriously, tone it down with the "killing Pluto" thing. It's like he was so let down at not being known as a guy who discovered the 10th planet that he took up the mantle of "planet-killer" just to have some good-sounding notoriety. It would have been note-worthy still to be one of the guys who helped change Pluto's classification. It's not as snazzy, but it's more accurate. I wonder if the other guys on Brown's team refer to themselves as guys who killed Pluto. So after this book, which while I'm sure is factual is also biased, I'm going to seek out some other Pluto books to balance myself out. ( )