Here comes the sun and its 'Heartbeat'

THE SUN'S HEARTBEAT: And Other Stories From the Life of the Star That Powers Our Planet, by Bob Berman. Little, Brown, 290 pp., $25.99.

Into this sweaty season lands "The Sun's Heartbeat," a deeply enjoyable book by astronomy writer Bob Berman that sheds light on "the sole source of our life and energy." Berman (no relation) begins his narrative with the sun's birth and ends, billions of years hence, with its eventual fate as a cold, dark globe "smoother than a billiard ball." In between, he explores the star's history, its impact on our daily lives and how we have viewed it through the years. He comes across as the world's most enthusiastic science teacher, writing infectiously about how humans went from the geocentric days of Aristotle to the current heliocentric understanding.

The sun brings death as well as life. In exploring the "biological mechanism by which the sun commits murder," Berman discusses skin cancer and methods of prevention. It isn't as simple as just staying out of the sun; our skin needs those ultraviolet rays to produce cancer-preventing vitamin D. (Humanity has never spent as much time hiding from the sun as we do today, thanks to cars, air-conditioning and fear of skin cancer.)

Berman writes that "everything about the sun is either amazing or useful." It's hard not to enjoy a book when someone says that and does their cheerful best to back it up.