This is the first in an occasional series of posts based on the premise that people send me things for free, and I then review them. If you'd also like to send me anything for free, please get in touch.
Today's subject is a book called The Sun Kings, by Stuart Clark. It also has a subtitle, "The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began." The subtitle is, I think you will agree with me, pretty crap, and the front cover is a dire mixture of red and greenish yellow that would look nice on the dinner plate at my local Indian Restaurant, but doesn't make the cover particularly attractive or easy to read.
Sadly, I expect most people's reaction in a bookstore these days would be "Who the **** is Richard Carrington?"
And even as a fan of science, if I saw this book in a bookshop, I'd be more like to have an epileptic fit while trying to make out the text then to actually pick it up.
And that's a shame, because once you open it up, it's a very pleasant read, as Clark takes us on a stroll through the history of our understanding of the Sun, beginning at the end of the 18th century and finishing just shy of the First World War.
In a way though, the Sun isn't at the centre of this book. The real star of the show is the science, and the often eccentric, bloody-minded or freakishly determined characters who did it, whether building giant observatories in their back yards or leading expeditions to the depths of Africa or South America to chase eclipses or take new magnetic readings.
They weren't scientists in the modern sense but explorers, adventurers and entrepenuers, sailing through life on the seat of their pants.
As brightly as these towering figures shine, they're overshadowed by the vivid description of one of nature's greatest shows, a completely unknown force we now know to be a solar storm, that erupted in the Summer of 1859 and lit up skies around the world with fire, setting compass needles spinning and causing Telegraph machines to burst into flames.
In fact it's hard not to read this book and think about those episodes of Star Trek, where some mysterious future technology gets dumped on an unsuspecting pre-warp planet and we watch their scientists struggling to explain what on Earth it is.
If you're looking for a detailed non-fiction account of what we know about the Sun, then this isn't the book for you. But if you're fascinated by the progress of science, and the characters who make it possible, then get yourself a copy and read it on the beach this summer.
Just make sure you get a brown paper bag to keep it in.
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Get it now from Amazon:
UK: The Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began
Perhaps a better subtitle would have been "The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began and How the Irish Saved the World from Jane Austen's Vampire Cult"?