Jupiter: The Fifth Planet: (Countdown to Space)

Jupiter is the giant of our solar system. Banded clouds of frozen gas surround the huge planet. Large circular storms swirl through these clouds, and lightning one hundred times more powerful than that on Earth flashes through Jupiter's atmosphere. Michael D. Cole presents exciting details of Jupiter and its moons. Readers will learn about the largest of the moons, the Galilean moons, including ice-covered Europa, volcano-laden Io, and Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system. From Jupiter's powerful magnetic field to its shrinking core, the exciting discoveries from the Galileo spacecraft have uncovered some of the mysteries of the giant gas planet, Jupiter.

Review :
The series attempts to provide an overview of selected topics in the quest for understanding the universe. Each book presents 8-12 rather stunning photographs of the particular topic under discussion. The photographs range in quality, but in general are not typical of shots presented in various venues. The text however, does not match the quality of the photographs. Each topic within a given book wanders without an apparent theme with numerous asides and random tangents from the author. For instance, in Earth-The Third Planet a discussion of volcanoes moves from "volcanoes are another result of the movements and pressures within the Earth's interior" to magma welling up within the mantle bursting through the Earth's crust as lava, to forming the Hawaiian Islands to "scientists trying to study volcanoes sometimes have a dangerous job". The author then describes a group of scientists studying an eruption of Mt. Pinatubo "At first, the scientists fled the area. Then, they realized this was a chance of a lifetime. They turned back, intent on witnessing the major eruption up close. They realized they could die! They wisely decided to retreat to a safer distance to monitor the frothing volcano." There are numerous examples of this sort of distracting commentary throughout the series. In addition, the author's choice of words is somewhat peculiar, e.g.. "frothing volcanoes" or "Yellow flames suddenly gushed from the engines of the mighty Vostok rocket." Another distraction is the random inclusion of quotes from scientists that add nothing to the discussion at hand. Much of the text seems repetitive in that similar analogies are offered repeatedly to convey the size differences or that humans could not survive a close encounter with the Sun because it's too hot, they couldn't breath, we couldn't walk on the constantly shifting mass of gas or the gravity would crush them. Overall this series is a cursory presentation of these exciting topics with little in the way of knowledge driven exploration of the solar system. There are better sources of the information scattered throughout these books. The limited value of the photographs does not justify the cost at $19.00 a book!, Appraisal Summer 2001 (SPECIALIST)