... part graceful memoir and part plea for keeping an open mind about the possibilities of what is out there in the universe — in particular, life.

I have a lot of time for Loeb. He has a joy in conjecture and an omnivorous spirit of inquiry that are more reminiscent of 20th-century thinkers such as Freeman Dyson or Carl Sagan than most of his peers. His readiness to stake his reputation on such an unconventional hypothesis is a mark of uncommon bravery...But this is a pretty thin book. It’s thin in a literal sense: the core thesis, which does not amount to more than a Scientific American cover feature, is padded out about 200 pages with excursions into memoir, the Sherlock Holmes stories and the imponderability of black holes.

[Loeb] offers strong evidence to support this conclusion, but perhaps more valuable is how he uses this as a jumping-off point for much broader musings on the state of science.

Like an astronomical Sherlock Holmes, a character often invoked in the book, Loeb concludes that 'the simplest explanation for these peculiarities is that the object was created by an intelligent civilization not of this Earth.' You don’t have to share his conviction to be impressed by the breadth of his argument.

... [a] contentious manifesto.

It’s hard to argue with the author’s claim that it’s the 'height of arrogance to contend that we are unique,' and he even speculates that life on Earth may be of Martian or interstellar origin.