Comets: Creators and Destroyers

David Levy brings these "ghostly apparitions" to life. With fascinating scenarios both real and imagined, he shows how comets have wreaked their special havoc on Earth and other planets. Beginning with ground zero as comets take form, we track the paths their icy, rocky masses take around our universe and investigate the enormous potential that future comets have to directly affect the way we live on this planet and what we might find as we travel to other planets.

In this extraordinary volume, David Levy shines his expert light on a subject that has long captivated our imaginations and fears, and demonstrates the need for our continued and rapt attention.

Comets have long dwelled in our imaginations as harbingers of fortune, good and bad, and this very human interest lies at the heart of the book. Comets, by astronomer and science writer David H. Levy (one of the discoverers of Comet Shoemaker-Levy, which battered Jupiter in 1994). He proves that you don't have to be a stargazer to succumb to the allure of the comet, inspiring the novice and satisfying the curious with up-to-date scientific fact, speculation, history, literature, and his own obvious enthusiasm for the subject. Whether exploring comets' role in seeding Earth with the building blocks of life or their link to mass extinctions, Comets consistently engages the reader with a conversational tone that provides just the right level of detail. These visitors from the fringes of our solar neighborhood are sure to rise on everyone's Top Ten Lists as the millennium approaches; this book outlines their relationship with our past and our future. --Rob Lightner