The Planets - Dava Sobel

Sobel's approach is to devote a chapter to the major bodies of the solar system, moving from the Sun outward. Each chapter takes a different tack, related either to a particular characteristic of the world, or some spiritual or mythological importance humans have placed on it. 

The Jupiter chapter describes events with many references to astrology and what relation Jupiter's position was believed to have to a particular person or particular day relevant to our study of the planet. Mars' chapter is related through the story of a meteorite found in Antarctica that was originally part of Mars, and appears to have fossilized remains similar to very early bacteria. Mercury's speaks to the mythological Mercury, his traits and specialties, and how the planet reflects them.

Most curiously, the chapter on Uranus and Neptune together is mostly presented as a letter (that I'm assuming is fictional) between Caroline Herschel, sister and assistant to William Herschel, to Maria Mitchell, an American astronomer who discovered a comet in the mid-1800s. It talks all about the disputes over what they'd call Uranus (and similar disputes that were emerging about Neptune), and how they were discovered, and how they were confirmed, and how the discrepancies in Uranus' orbit prompted the search for Neptune through mathematics. As history lesson dressed in a top hat and fancy spectacles. Clever enough I guess, but it felt a little too cutesy for me.

So some chapters are more effective than others. I'm not really reading a book on the planets for astrology or mythology, so that's less interesting to me than just seeing if I can learn something new about the planets themselves, or the story of how they, or their moons, or some other unique characteristic, were discovered. None of the chapters are terribly long, though, so if one didn't catch your fancy, it's a quick jaunt to the next.

'Shriveled and ridiculed, Pluto was altogether stripped of its reason for being after Voyager 2 passed Neptune in 1989. The need for a ninth planet vanished in the realization that Neptune and Uranus balanced each other's orbital anomalies. The calculations that had led Lowell to the prediction of Planet X apparently held no more water than his Martian canals.'