Take Me to Your Leader, Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter by Neil deGrasse Tyson is a witty, playful, mind-bending, and challenging combination of science, physics, history, sociology, psychology, and all the other ‘ologies combined. This world-renowned astrophysicist challenges everything from creation, UFOs, and religion to basic common sense deftly and with humor.
It starts off challenging the very concept of greeting an alien, assuming that the greetings we use for each other would be deemed appropriate. Presenting a hand to shake could be seen as aggressive. This isn’t a stretch, as even customs amongst different cultures have different meanings. He extends this concept to how animals greet each other for the first time. What if an alien culture uses the technique that dogs use to greet one another—sniffing each other’s butt? How would we know?
In chapter 3, the author talks about intelligence and how we assume that we stack up to other intelligent creatures in the whole entire universe. He points to the fact that we are only 2% more intelligent than a chimpanzee, yet that seems like a wide difference. So, if alien intelligence is more than 2% greater than ours, we would be mere buffoons to them.
The author goes from these kinds of simple analogies to the density of a neutron star, where he compares it to packing some unwieldy number of elephants into a small space. It underlines his graphic way of bringing very complex terms into simple language so that anybody can grasp them. He does an exceptional job of that throughout the book. One of the highlights of the book is the way he can take very complex information and break it down into smaller chunks of bite-sized nuggets for everybody to digest.
He doesn’t throw out a bunch of terms that only his fellow astrophysicists or astrophysicist wannabes could understand. He has the ability to tell you the size of the solar system and explain with ease how light-years really. In fact, he explains that anything we see in deep space happened so long ago that we are virtually seeing the past in present time.
This book is loaded with pop culture references on how we have perceived alien life, from Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (actually explaining the other two kinds of encounters), Independence Day, The Day the Earth Stood Still, to The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones and The Matrix. He even throws in a side note about Porky Pig’s full name…. I’ll leave that one to you to investigate.
Take Me to Your Leader is a good read for all ages. Tyson has a great sense of humor that he uses oftentimes to catch you off guard when presenting some unflattering facts about our civilization. For example, he poses the notion that aliens monitoring the history of planet Earth might be hesitant to disclose themselves based on how we treat different races on Earth. There might also be hesitancy, as Earth civilizations have a knack for wanting to conquer or subjugate one another. Or maybe it’s that 2% difference again, where they feel we just aren’t worth the time. Starting with the Epilogue will tell you everything you need to know about this book.