I have never been a fan of a book that has more pictures than words, that being said I believe this book is more directed to those people who are adamant that life is out there, not skeptics like me.
At first I was shocked when I heard about a book on the subject of Astrobiology (there are quite a few), saying that life, or even the hint of it's possibility, has yet to be discovered. Any leads we have ever had on it's possibility turned out to be either:
1. Wrong/mistaken
2. Hype
3. Unprovable without a rocket that can travel faster than the speed of light to take us places within our life-time.
But I bought this book, thought it might hold something I cannot learn in 5th grade. I was wrong. This book really only goes though the possibility of life out there, which is all it really can do saying that there is no actual evidence that life really does exist off earth as of yet. The book is short, half of the book or more is composed of images, and just about all of the information you can find in the "Is there life out there?" section of just about any large astronomy book. And much of the information is just a vomit of basic knowledge on the subject.
I really don't think a explanation of how the universe was made, how the moon was made, how comet Shoemaker-levy 9 his Jupiter in 1994, space mission names, all the missions to Mars or the description of all the planets in our solar system, has anything to do with the possibility of life on other celestial bodies. At least in the epilogue it agree's that there are no guarantee's when it comes to life existing out there.
This book just seems to have been written too early for it to actually be of any help at all. Like writing a book about the cell-phone 100 years ago. This book may be of some help later on, but right now it's all just hypothetical.
I give this book a 3/10, it could be much better, and it was written at a bad time.
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