Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a fast paced book about the universe and how it works. It is a very informational book sprinkled in with some humor that keeps the reader interested. For example, “If you are overweight on Earth, don’t blame dark matter.” By saying this, he states one of the basic facts of astrophysics and throws in some comedy with it. This book is meant for a college level group of people because of the complex work choice and the topic of the book. It is well worth the read, even if you are not in college, as the author writes in a very clear and concise way.

While this book is able to keep the reader’s attention, it becomes dry and drawn out starting at chapter nine. In this chapter the author discusses “invisible” light and how to see it. (Visible light refers to UV light, infrared, microwaves, etc.) This is because the authors mentions a handful of obscure places and scientists and does not explain their contributions. Additionally, the authors really focuses on telescopes and what seperates a well made telescope from a weaker telescope. What made this text much more boring than the rest, however, was the author was basically listing off the parts of a telescope and what makes a piece of a telescope good or bad. This could have been much more interesting if the author did not organise the text this way. Instead, he should have gave a topic and described it in detail, but he leaves the reader confused by not doing so.

While that was a relatively boring chapter, the rest are full of figurative language and information that is relevant to the subject. Tyson writes, “Its thousand galaxies orbit the cluster’s center, moving in all directions like bees swarming a beehive.” This is a marvelous simile because he gets the facts out to the reader while giving them a wonderful idea of what the galaxies look like.

To conclude, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil DeGrasse Tyson is an interesting book because it is filled with figurative language and has some humor sprinkled in. While it does have its downsides, like chapter nine with its listing, it gets the ideas out to the reader in a timely manner. The book is meant for high school graduates because the word choice can be difficult to comprehend at times, and the subject is rather complicated. I would rate it a seven out of ten and recommend it to people who are curious about the stars and space.