Grant Heiken

This book draws on the online, substantially "complete" Apollo Lunar Surface Journals. For the book, these are edited down into more or less coherent narratives. You may find the "erm, huh, well" nature of some of the transcripts a little difficult to get used to, but once you do, this flows well.

Although it has the requisite number of dumb Springer typos, this is really good stuff. The early missions are fairly perfunctory, but that's mainly because the EVAs themselves were more perfunctory early on -- important and of course historic as they were. And therefore the book really kicks into gear once you hit Apollo 14, with the long (and frustrating) climb to Cone Crater. The later, "J" missions, with the Lunar Rover, are especially exciting.

If you were too young to see any of this live, this is an especially good way to get a flavor of what went on. And if you remember watching some of this, it's an enjoyable way to relive some of it.… (mais)

Dangerous Neighbors is short book that uses case studies of various cities' situations to discuss the dangers people face living near volcanoes and how they have (not) learned to live alongside these geological time-bombs. Featuring volcanoes on six continents and from ancient Santorini to the modern day, Heiken manages to tell a lot about volcanic eruptions in less than two hundred pages. His text is very readable but suffers from a lack of notes. This may make it more accessible to the lay-reader but I would have found it interesting to view some of his sources. Instead, there is a short list of further reading at the book's end. Highly recommended for anyone interested in volcanoes and human interactions with volcanoes.… (mais)