Book reviews - Big ear

John Kraus is a world-renowned scientist/engineer in the fields of antennas and radio astronomy. This book is a scientific adventure story of his experiences. His career started as a young boy attempting to listen to a distant radio station with a crystal receiver, and it led to the discovery of the most distant known object in the universe. The author gives a clear description of the book in his forward: Big Ear is our adventure story of the search for other men and the exploration of the universe-a universe so vast and mysterious it boggles the mind: an astounding, baffling, stranger-than-fiction universe of pulsars, quasars, and black holes. Big Ear is a personal, behind-the-scenes account of astronomers, engineers, inventors-humans all-and of their successes and failures. Ita isst ory about the steel and aluminum structures we have raised to probe the cosmos and of our attempt to answer the question ??Are we alone."