How I Killed Pluto (and Why It Had It Coming)

The book I have started reading is called "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming", written by the astronomer Mike Brown.

The story behind my decision is rather curious and funny. We must go back to the first day of class of this semester, precisely on Monday, January 7^th. The first lecture on my schedule for that day was astronomy at 2 pm. While going over the syllabus of the course, Dr. Rhodes, my astronomy professor, came across the topic of the Solar System and its planets. The syllabus had the name “Pluto” printed on it, so Dr. Rhodes informed us that Pluto used to be classified as the ninth planet of our system, but since 2006 is no longer considered as such. He also told us that one of the main advocates in favor of this decision was an astronomer who then decided to write a book about his life.

It goes without saying that the book’s title is “How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming” and the astronomer is Mike Brown.

On the spot, I thought “well, it might be interesting to read this book one day!”, but then I didn’t care about it anymore, not for a long time though. About two hours later on that same day, indeed, I attended my first writing class of the semester and it was at that point that I had my second encounter with this book. Half-way through the lecture, I was very surprised to find out that “How I Killed Pluto” was within a list of books suggested by our professor among which I had to pick one to read during the following weeks. Obviously, it didn’t take me too much time to make my decision and you already know what my choice was.

I find it difficult to give a label to the genre of this book. It is not at all a scientific or academic manual, rather I would say it is the autobiography of an astronomer who spent most of his life looking at the sky. Since the beginning of the book, the author talks about the discovery of the tenth planet of the Solar System, Xena, dedicated to his first daughter, Lilah, who was born just a few weeks earlier. However, instead of adding one more planet to our system, this finding culminated in the relegation of Pluto from planet to “dwarf” planet. Ultimately, “How I Killed Pluto” is not only a book about science and astronomy, it is the personal journey of a man through his working and private life, whose events are extremely correlated to each other and merge into an engaging story.