From one captivating storyteller to another
I started out in the corridors of Cincinnati academe as a highschool teacher of athletic upperclassmen who discouraged my predecessor by holding him by his heels out a thirdfloor classroom window. Sensibly, that teacher quit.
But I was a tad taller and distracted the students with — what else? — literature that lives. It kept them in their seats and me on my feet. I bring this up because I just discovered a new book that captivates me the same way Shakespeare — and, ultimately, the students — did: “Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry” by Neil deGrasse Tyson with Gregory Mone (Norton Young Readers, paperbound, 176 pp., $11.95).
I’m no scientist, but this book sings of signs and wonders. It invites us out to look skyward and regard them. It’s at once exciting and accessible.
A sample: “Sixty-five million years ago, a ten-trillion-ton asteroid hit what is now the Yucatan Peninsula, in Mexico. The space rock punched a hole in the surface that was one hundred and ten miles wide and twelve miles deep. The impact, and the dust and debris it sent up into the atmosphere, obliterated most of the life on Earth, including all the famous large dinosaurs.
“Extinction. The absolute end to the existence of a creature or life form.
“This catastrophe allowed our mammal ancestors to thrive, rather than continue to serve as snacks for T. rex. One big-brained branch of these mammals, that which we call primates, evolved a species ( Homo sapiens) with enough smarts to invent methods and tools of science — and to figure out the origin and evolution of the universe.
“That’s us.”
It was, it is, it will be.
This magnificent book may not have all the answers but it is most assuredly deep into all the questions.
After a long semester when I never sat down — the imposition of psychological size — that rowdy classroom of mine went wild and crazy in keeping with the day before Christmas holidays, and I slammed down a book larger but less interesting than Tyson’s that created the required sudden silence. I told the Wild Bunch that I’d arm wrestle the first volunteer. If he won, we’d cancel the class, but if I won, it would be the wrap-up on Chaucer.
Bang! He let me win. We did Chaucer. I asked him about that after.
“I liked you,” he told me, “because you dint give up on us.” “Didn’t,” I said.
“Didn’t.” Bill Ruehlmann is professor emeritus of journalism and communications at Virginia Wesleyan University.