Pluto Wasn't Plutoed

I wrote the following book review for the book "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming". I wrote this at work as something my boss could post on the company blog. Usually what I write for the blog is somewhat different from what I would usually write or tell people but this time I rather like the original and chose to post it unchanged (excluding the editing of a minor typographical error). Here it is:

Most people of my generation would agree that the perfect word to describe what happened to the planet Pluto a few years ago actually arose into use after the fact. Pluto was plutoed. It means it was demoted without due cause or reason. Pluto went from being the last planet to be discovered, an icy but beloved oddball among the nine planets of our solar system, to being nothing more than a “dwarf planet” in truth just the second-largest Kupier belt object among hundreds of others. Mike Brown, author of “How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming” and also one of the people who stood to gain the most from Pluto remaining a planet, paints a different picture of events. Pluto wasn’t demoted without due cause or reason, it wasn’t plutoed, not according to Mike Brown anyway.

Despite being written by a respected astronomer the book is far from dry and boring. It doesn’t read even remotely like an article you might find in Sky & Telescope or some other scientific journal. Mike Brown sets out to tell you a story- not a story of an abandoned planet now cast out of the pantheon but a story of an entirely different kind. It is a story about a man convinced that there were more planets out there in our solar system waiting to be discovered. It is a story about astronomy, about values, about falling in love, and about rivalry but most of all it is a story about science. Even if you disagree with the verdict eventually issued about Pluto’s status among celestial bodies (Mike Brown even disagrees) I’m sure you’ll find that you enjoy this story.

The book was very enjoyable to read and difficult to put down. There’s a lot to be learned about astronomy in this book without having anything forced down your throat. The book is also surprisingly humorous and very compelling. It does not require a very high reading level or contain a lot of complex language. It does include some complex ideas about science and astronomy in particular but the author does a fantastic job of breaking them down and explaining them in an accessible manner. I would recommend this book to anyone old enough to appreciate (and maybe be a little outraged by the demotion of) the former planet called Pluto.