I'm an amateur astronomer of over 40 years. With my 20 inch scope all I will ever see of Pluto is a speck. Its small and so incredibly far away. I have hundreds of minor space object interests. Pluto and Charon are one of my minor interests. Mars is my major interest.I'm doing a review of this book not my views of new spending of taxpayers money for Pluto probes.I read Clyde Tombaugh Discover of Planet Pluto (Sky and Telescope observers series) and really liked it as an introduction of Pluto and Clyde Tombaugh. 5 stars see my review. That book got me interested to learn a little more about Pluto. Moon Charon was a pleasant extra.I wanted to reach a mid level understanding of Pluto and Pluto and Charon by Alan Stern and Jacqeline Mitton does that very well.There is no heavy math in the book. The authors do a great job of keeping the book light, crisp and interesting without getting clogged down with heavy math. There are nice pictures of the various scientists and administrators through the years of different parts of Pluto and then Charon discovery. The book is laid out in a well documented time table of discovery. We learn why it took decades after Clyde Tombaugh's discovery of Pluto get more information and details of Pluto. We just didn't have the technology then.We see increasingly more sophisticated technology invented and the use of better instruments through the decades.Its extremely difficult to get an image of Pluto. Even with a huge 200 inch scope we still have to fight the atmosphere and "seeing", plus the disadvantage of Pluto being so far away.Now we have CCD cameras with multi mega pixel resolution and the Hubble telescope, plus now we have huge radio telescopes. Years back there was just crude photographic plates.We learn how moon Charon was discovered and how the size of Pluto and Charon were obtained as well as the extremely weak atmosphere of Pluto. We see how the atmosphere changes as Pluto gets closest to the sun and farthest away ( Pluto has a gigantic elliptical orbit). Even so its extremely cold only 40 to 70 degrees K above absolute zero.We learn why Pluto has such a high brightness reflection percentage and Charon not as much. We learn Pluto is laying on its side even more so than Uranus. I found it very interesting them confirming their findings of Pluto having an extremely weak atmosphere by observing Pluto occluding a star. Fascinating stuff. Spectral analysis of Pluto is also used.We see the 3 theories of Pluto's creation more or less disproved and the major theory of a large impact by a large body helped create Charon. Its incredible that Charon is almost half the size of Pluto and they are in effect binary worlds.Also the discovery that there hundreds perhaps thousands of small bodies between Neptune and Pluto and hundreds of thousands in the Oort cloud way past Pluto. So we learn Pluto has many tiny sisters. Much more is discussed and presented in the book in a logical orderly way.This book got me to a mid level knowledge level and appreciation of Pluto and Charon and the various scientists that gave so much time and effort exploring and getting data on such a difficult planet and moon. Hats off to them! Thanks Alan and Jacquelin for getting me up to speed on Pluto and Charon. I'm sure much more will be learned in the future. 5 stars