Planet Killers: A Spine-Tingling Look at Near-Earth Objects, Mass Extinctions, and the Controversial Science of Planetary Defense

It's the stuff of summertime popcorn films: rogue asteroids threatening the obliteration of Earth, and plucky scientists and astronauts scrambling for ways to destroy or deflect them. Now here's the kicker: it's all real. Welcome to the fascinating, controversial, and sobering science of planetary defense, where NASA tracks thousands of the near-Earth objects hurtling toward us (any one of which could annihilate a city or continent), and a cadre of obsessed men and women rush to send gravity tractors and kinetic impactors into space in the hopes of saving humankind from mass extinction.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tad Friend is the author of the memoir "Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor." Since 1998, he has been a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes the magazine's "Letter from California." He is married to Amanda Hesser, the co-founder of Food52.com; they live in Brooklyn with their twins, Walker and Addie.

PRAISE FOR "PLANET KILLERS"

"'Planet Killers' is a riveting and hair-raising a story about the race to stop a doomsday asteroid from hitting the earth. It is the kind of story that everyone should read—while we still can!" —David Grann, author of the bestseller "The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon"