A talented young planetary scientist traces our centuries-old obsession with a seemingly desolate planet
Sarah Stewart Johnson is an assistant professor at Georgetown University, where she teaches astrobiology and planetary science and leads a biosignatures laboratory. A former Goldwater, Truman, and Rhodes Scholar, as well as a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows, she received degrees in PPE and in Biology from the University of Oxford, and a PhD from MIT. She worked with President Obama's science advisor in the White House, and now serves on the science team for NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover.
Beautifully written, emotive - a love letter to a planet --
Dermot O'Leary * BBC Radio 2 *
Elegantly written and boundlessly entertaining * Sunday
Telegraph *
Beguiling * The Times *
Johnson's prose swirls with lyrical wonder, as varied and
multi-hued as the apricot deserts, butterscotch skies and blue
sunsets of Mars -- Anthony Doerr * New York Times Book Review *
The inside story of the exploration of Mars. A young woman
scientist shows what it is like to be in the thick of exciting and
ground-breaking research. -- Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Professor
of Astrophysics, University of Oxford
Exhilarating, informative, always engaging and at
times beautiful in its descriptions. -- Andrew Crumey *
Literary Review *
This elegantly crafted book conveys what it's like to be a
young scientist involved in the quest. -- Lord Martin Rees,
Astronomer Royal and author of On the Future: Prospects for
Humanity
A celebration of human curiosity, passion and perseverance.
Superb in its storytelling, majestic in its vision, The
Sirens of Mars will give readers a new appreciation for the
preciousness of life in the cosmos. -- Alan Lightman, author of
Einstein's Dreams
The Sirens of Mars provides the prospect of great discovery,
and an introduction to a writer of the first rank. -- Edward
O. Wilson, University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard
University
There's no better guide to what NASA's various Mars missions have
revealed ... A true love letter to geology, on this world and
others * Nature *
A must-read for fans of our Martian neighbour and humanity's
longstanding search for life elsewhere in the Universe * BBC Sky At
Night *
Mars is an exceptionally inhospitable place. The coldest Antarctic
winter, the windiest Everest December - each is as nothing compared
with an unremarkable day on the red planet. That is precisely why
Mars is such a good place to look for life. If it exists there,
Sarah Stewart Johnson writes, "the smallest breath in the deepest
night", then the only conclusion is there must be life throughout
the universe. This beguiling book is about the search for life
on Mars - from those who thought the planet was criss-crossed with
canals to those, like the author, who just hope for a microbe or
two. * Times (best books of the year) *
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