Space Books

I very much agree with the previous reviews. This book is a rare gem, a treasure, truly a work of art.

It's the finest and most enjoyable mathematics book I've encountered to date, and that's taking into account the existence of many excellent math books. Certainly among books specifically on applied mathematics, this book is uniquely valuable.

The choice of topics, sequence of presentation, level of detail, use of examples, and clarity and elegance of exposition are all outstanding. Batschelet has crafted every chapter, section, paragraph, and even sentence with meticulous care and precision in the finest Swiss tradition.

If you've already studied mathematics through calculus, differential equations, probability, linear algebra, etc., this book is an especially good resource to review it all via a single coherent book.

To illustrate how much I cherish this book, I've bought two copies -- one to read, and the other in case the first is damaged and the book goes out of print.

If you love math, buy this book. If you just have an interest in math, buy this book and read it, and you may well come to love math.

This book is quite the best I've seen, the finest book on applied mathematics ever. This textbook puts to shame nearly all other attempts. Batschelet possesses a mastery of presentation that borders on genius. Chapter 7 --including basic concepts of logarithms-is worth the price alone. Book topics build progressively: Real numbers, sets,logic, relations and functions then power,periodic,exponential & logarithm functions; graphical methods, limits, differential & integral calculus; advanced log & hyperbolic functions,ordinary differential equations, multivariable functions; probability, matrices & vectors, complex numbers.Truly a pedagogical masterpiece.

This is one of the few books I have come across that more often than not will contain the solution to those mathematical problems encountered in the practical pursuit of biological investigation. It is written in a clear and entertaining manner, with many footnotes containing points of historical or general interest. Too often mathematical texts are dry and inaccessible to the non-specialist; Edward Batschelet's book represents a refreshing oasis that has reassured many a reluctant mathematician among the ranks of the life sciences. Buy it!!

I purchaised this book while I was doing my Ph.D. I am happy that I now have a chance to write about it. Few books on mathematics are so enjoyable to read as this one. It explains concepts with amazing clarity. It guides you through all the necessary mathematics and will infact motivate you to take up mathematics as your major. This book should never go out of print. The author has made a long standing contribution by writing this book. There will be thousands of students who will be appreciate this book for generations. I would say buy it, with your eyes closed. You will never regret it.

The pilot was a rude but polite man. He gave me shelter w/pay. They finally put him to rest 8 yrs ago. I need a copy of the book. @ 25 S lazona #18 Mesa AZ 85204

When Ernie Gann wrote this book in 1944 he had just come to realize that the love of flying was going to consume his life. Gann was a left-seat man and he was able to tranfer his need for perfection to the printed page. A veteran pilot will find no flaws or mistakes or stupid exaggerations in the technical descriptions in this book. Ernie Gann will put you in the left seat and make you sweat. He will give you the sense and the thrill of flying a four-engine transport under dubious conditions in 1944. I am sorry this book is out of print. That is truly a shame. GANN IS DEAD. LONG LIVE ERNIE GANN.

I would love to receive any comments on this book or the story - my grandmother tells me of him all the time!

Gann keeps you on the edge of your seat as Pilots of the WWII Aircraft Ferry Service search for one of their own that has strayed off course on the way to England. The search continues for the lost and presumed downed plane in the Canadian north. Good story of the fight for survival in bitter low tempartures and what can happen if your unprepared. This story made a good motion picture also. (Andy Devine, John Wayne) I would like to see/buy this story and "The High and The Mighty" ontape if someone has it. Tom Rogers, Boston, MA (Ford2592@ix.netcom.com)

I discovered this book searching for information on Cosmati designs and was delighted with it when it arrived. After looking at murky photos and trying to understand garbled descriptions of geometry in other books, I appreciated the fabulous painstaking in-plane illustrations. The "reader-friendly" (at least to an artist) explanations of mathematics and geometry were an enlightening bonus. This book will be particulary helpful to designers and others who want clarity, great presentation, and concise information.

Wonderfully conceived, researched and illustrated, this is a book which beautifully answers some of the fundamental questions as to the why and how of paving. When I walk through the majestic spaces mentioned in Ms. Williams book I will do so with my curious eyes glued to the ground for a change. Truly a fantastic book; a good read be it for the layman or as a much needed point of reference for the learnèd. The illustrations are almost as good as being there.

This is a must book for history students of the Roman and Tuscan buildings. Contains 58 outstanding drawings of examples of Italian art pavemennt and the text explains them in detail. All architects and designers need a copy.

This stunning look into pavement design of the past 2000 years is brilliantly executed--from the detailed drawings to the in-depth analysis of mathematical principles and design principles/patterns, this book is a treat for my eyes and my mind. In working on my PhD in the stone and paving methods of Rome (and beyond), I've found Ms. Williams book fills a hole in academia left vacant for far too long. You love architecture/history/church building/math/ or design? You must have this gorgeous gift.

This author is one of the most briliant, the most optimistic, and the most enthusiastic writer in all of physics, and in this book, his competence as a physicist and his deep fascination with the physical world is brought out dramatically. He is clearly a man who is feeling a powerful sense of exhiliration of the discoveries now taking place in all areas of knowledge. His foundation and his theme in the book is a simple geometric principle, namely that the boundary of a boundary is zero. He then guides the reader, assumed to have a rudimentary knowledge of mathematics, in a splendid presentation of the power of this principle in gravitational physics.

The first chapter is an overview of the history behind the subject, via the work of people who contributed to our current understanding of gravity. And then, with a masterfull use of diagrams he gives the reader a taste of the simplicity of the equivalence principle and the need to tack on an additional dimension (time) to the 3-dimensional space of everyday experience. The Pound-Rebka experiment is discussed as one that illustrates the idea of the spacetime interval, and the role of time dilation is discussed via the possibility of practical space travel. And such enthusiasm in his dialog: "the universe will grow ever more exciting", he says, and looking at the developments now taking place in today's science, he is indeed correct.

Chapter 4 gives a fascinating overview of what the author calls the boomerang, which illustrates the action of curvature on nearby test masses. This thought experiment involves the motion of a spacecraft through an imaginary tunnel through the Earth. The author analyzes the motion from the standpoint of Newtonian physics and general relativity. Curvature as the "grammar of gravity" is the topic of the next chapter, with illustrations of the paths of ants on spaces of zero, positive, and negative curvature. A very intuitive treatment of parallel transport around a closed path on a curved surface is given. The tides are discussed as a natural manifestation of the gravitational influence of the Moon on Earth.

Must difficult for a layman to understand is how spacetime acts on masive objects, but the author explains it brilliantly in the next chapter, taught via the concept of "momenergy". This entity is a 4-vector, and the author uses it to show how its creation in a spacetime region can be written as the sum of 8 terms, reflecting the fact that the "boundary" of a four-dimensional block in spacetime consists of eight three-dimensional cubes. That the contents of these cubes sum to zero is the famous "boundary of a boundary is zero", which is discussed in the next chapter. This chapter is one of the best explanations ever given (at this level) of the physics behind spacetime curvature and massive objects. The actual mathematical quantification of curvature is detailed in chapters 8 and 9, using elementary mathematics. The author discusses nicely the famous Scharwzschild geometry.

Concepts of a more concrete nature are discussed in chapter 10, wherein the author discusses the famous Pound-Rebka experiment and planetary motion. This is followed by a discussion of the elusive gravitational waves in chapter 11. Again with a clever use of illustrations, the author explains the transverse property of gravitational waves, and compares gravitational waves with electromagnetic waves. The role of the quadrupole moment in the creation of gravitational waves is brought out briliantly by the author. He discusses briefly various attempts to detect gravitational waves.

Black holes are the topic of chapter 12, wherein the famous Penrose process for extracting energy from a black hole is discussed, and the "no-hair" theorem for black holes. A neat symbolic representation of the Bekenstein number of a black hole is given. The role of the Hawking process, connection quantum processes with the physics of black holes is briefly discussed. The author ends the book with a look at the expansion of the universe, the missing mass problem, and another very interesting topic that has gained much attention recently: the concept of gravitomagnetism. This is a "weak-field" prediction of general relativity, and predicts that the rotation of the Earth should influence the motion of orbiting satellites. This topic is currently bringing together ideas such as the quantum Zeno effect, Mach's principle, and the notorious "frame dragging" effect in general relativity. Experiments do measure it are currently in play and in the proposal stage, namely the LAGEOS and LAGEOS II experiments, which measure the gravitomagnetic orbital perturbation, which is known as the Lense-Thirring effect.

This is a beautiful, poetic, and generous book. I found that after reading and mulling over each section, I could eventually visualize how space was behaving under the influence of mass, and could also see why one needed to choose one's point of view carefully to understand the physics.

The book is intended as an introduction to general relativity, without much tensor formalism, but it does not neglect the geometrical underpinnings. It presents a very nice way to get at the physics, with creative and light-hearted diagrams.

I'm not so sure that Wheeler's own poems, which introduce many of the chapters, are a great success, but I admire and salute him for including them. Even his poetry helps to open additional doors to understanding general relativity.

A book that is truly beautiful.

This is truely an amazing book. Wheeler does for General Relativity what Hawking did for Cosmology in "A Brief History of Time", and in some sense they are similar books. However Wheeler has a unique, quirky style of writing that makes the book an entertaining adventure to read.

Wheeler is able to pull off a major accomplishment: He explains Einstein's General Relativity in a clear, straightforward manner, with a minimum of math. It's "conventional wisdom" that General Relativity is seriously serious stuff, the domain of hardcore Physics geeks. That doesn't faze Wheeler. He leads the reader along, gleefully pointing out the scenery, making it all look quite simple and understandable. And then all of a sudden, when you least expect it, you find he's derived and presented Einstein's field equations with only a teensy-tiny bit of algebra! Even if you know this stuff already, his presentation makes you think about it with a new perspective.

And did I mention the illustrations? They are really exceptional.

If you have any interest or dealings with GR, ya gotta have this book!

The interrelation of gravity and spacetime is a formidable subject to describe; the author does so with excellence. The diagrams and charts reinforce the understanding.

Unfortunately when a key subject left me rather clueless, (Boundary of a Boundary) I spent quite a few frustrated hours being uncertain on whether or not to continue reading without the support of the material on those pages. As it turned out, the subject became clearer once I read on and returned again. I never did grasp it as completely as the rest of the book.

The book contains the most enlightening description of transverse wave propagation I've ever seen. It also helps solidify one's understanding of interval and relativity.

Not a book to be read overnight.

I got this book at the library and when I started reading it I couldn't stop reading. I learned that it is about 480 million miles from the sun. I've read other Seymour Simon books but this is the best so far. I also liked Venus. If you want to learn more read the book.

Gorgeous color photos, most from NASA illustrate this book about Jupiter. I appreciate that Seymour Simon writes matter-of-factly, without a patronizing attitude. There are plenty of facts about Jupiter and each of itsý four closest moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

I am impressed by the entire series of picture books by Seymour Simon and our family has been enjoying his books, one about each planet, which we are using as part of our homeschooling. I have found that many of the books that attempt to cover all topics about space end up skimping on important general information that Simon easily communicates, such as the temperature and how it compares to Earth, why humans could not survive on the planet, and the general weather conditions and how they compare. The way these comparisons are made really helps children understand the conditions on the planets. This series by Simon is also superior to other books about Jupiter because the photos are in color; they are real, stunning photos, not lame illustrations drawn by hand.

I highly recommend that any parent read these books to their children. Teachers and homeschoolers would find this book a wonderful book to use while teaching about Jupiter.

This book is abut Jupiter.Did you know it has sixteen moons?There are other books in this series.They are all about the solar system.I gave this book four stars.Read it if you want to find out more about Jupiter.

Jupiter, by Seymour Simon is a very educational, easy to read book talking about our Solar System's largest planet. I especially liked all the interesting facts mentioned i this book and it was an informational and short read. Some of the facts that I found fasciating in this book were that Jupiter is one-and-one-half times as big as the other eiht planets put together, Jupiter's atmosphere is mostly made up of hydrogen gas, and the temperature is 250 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. This book also has some really good pages describing Jupiter's moons, an extremely informative page describing the Great Red Spot- Jupiter's super-hurricane more than twice the size of Earth-, and a page on the thin ring encircling this super-planet. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants detailed information on our largest planet. The color photographs in this book are amazing and really cool to look at.

I am studying to be a certified teacher. I found this book easy to comprehend and chock-full of sensible, practical advice. The three authors really know what they are talking about. Highly recommended.

Key Elements is well organized and easy to read. It addresses so many of the frequent issues that come up in a classroom from seating to planning a lesson to intervening with a student to locating resources both on and off campus. Ideas are given for meeting the needs of the teacher, students, and parents. It is obvious that the authors know education as only teachers can. What a great help this will be for new and experienced teachers. Thanks to Joyce, Ginny, and Jan for this valuable resource!

This is a useful guide to changing/improving the way you run your classroom, speak to your students and manage your teaching.
It revolutionised my relationship with a class that had gone feral. They and I benefited from the range of practical advice available in this book. The results of reading it are obvious in all my teaching and learning strategies. Thank goodness for such hands-on help from teachers who still work at the coal face!

Two of the authors, Jan Fisher and Ginny Hoover are regular posters on teachers.net. They have been unfailingly helpful with their advise in the areas of classroom management and teaching strategies. This is what led me to read their book. Their talents,, along with Joyce McLeod's, combine to make a very informative, helpful book. After 33 years in the classroom, I wasn't sure that there was anything left in these areas that I had not already been exposed to. I was pleasantly surprised to learn new "tricks of the trade" to add to my repertoire. I would recommend this book to teachers-to-be, beginning teachers, and seasoned teachers alike.

Children's literature, like all other types, is full of conventions. Successful books can use those foundational conventions with enough originality to make the story seem at once comfortable and exciting. Emily Rodda has achieved such a balance in THE KEY TO RONDO. This fantasy tale employs the familiar "quest by unlikely heroes who have stumbled into another world" in a fresh and compelling package.

When Leo inherits an antique music box from his kind but dull great-aunt Bethany, he is flattered to be responsible for an object that has been in his family for generations. Little does he know that the beautifully painted box will be the source of an adventure that will bring him closer to understanding all the Langlander family stories that Bethany loved to share. Leo planned to respect the rules for the music box that had been handed down: don't wind it more than three times, don't turn the key or pick up the box while the music is still playing, and don't close the lid until the music has stopped. But when his annoying and defiant cousin Mimi comes to stay with him and his parents, she breaks the rules right away, thus setting in motion a perilous and exciting adventure that tests their loyalty, reveals much about the Langlander clan, and challenges Leo and Mimi to find strength and confidence in their true selves.

When Mimi winds the music box an additional turn, it brings to life the Blue Queen, one of the figures painted on the box. She snatches Mimi's dog Mutt and heads back to Rondo, the world painted on the box's sides. Despite Leo's warnings, Mimi is determined to follow the queen into Rondo to rescue Mutt. And against his better judgment, Leo goes with her. They find themselves in the street scene painted on one side of the box, but things are different from what they remember: there has been an earthquake in Rondo and much disorder.

A shady character calling himself Tom offers to help the two youngsters find their way to the Blue Queen's castle, but he is scared away by the police. Now Leo and Mimi are on their own and distrustful of everyone they meet. Do Conkers and his talking duck Freda really want to help them? What about the strange-looking Tye, who has the body of a woman and the face of a tiger? What are they to make of the tales of Jim and Polly, who tell them all about the Dark Times and a hero named Hal who thwarted the queen?

As they move closer and closer to the queen's castle, Leo and Mimi must work together to hatch a plan that will free the dog and get them home safely. They team up with a talking pig named Bertha and decide to confront the queen face to face. Along the way they learn about Rondo and begin to comprehend how Rondo and the Langlander family are connected.

THE KEY TO RONDO is great fun to read. Leo and Mimi make a fantastic pair, especially as they come to know each other better and work together to balance their strengths and weaknesses. The supporting characters are sympathetic, and the bad guys are just bad enough without being unbelievable. Young readers will enjoy the twists, turns and surprises; the writing is fresh and the adventure thrilling. Rodda's contribution to this otherworldly quest is a worthwhile one, and she definitely has ended the book with room for sequels. There are still many mysteries of Rondo to be revealed!

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

I really liked this book. The characters were very fleshed out and I enjoyed having a strong female with a cautious male, it is nice to have things switched. It had alot of suspense, twist of characters, and some surprising discoveries. I felt like I could see the world she was creating and thought that bringing in so many fairytales, but with a unique play on them was fun.

Let's see... a magical world where messages are sent by owl... whoops, I mean by mice... The evil White Queen has ruled this world of Narnia -- sorry, I mean the evil Blue Queen, and the world is called Rondo -- and tries to lure Edmond and Lucy, I mean Leo and Mimi, into her magical lair where she can entrap them by freezing them. They spend much of the book wandering through the magical forest with a vain lion, no, a vain pig, as a sidekick. A trusty forest-dweller with a big axe comes to their rescue. They ultimately find their way back to our world through the wardrobe portal, actually, platform 9 and 3/4, wrong again, through a music box, and all is ultimately well. You get the idea. Not as good as the prototypes but still fun to read nevertheless.

This is a book for all ages. The plot develops at a fast pace and brings many surprises. The reader will not be able to lay the book down before the end! It tells of friendship, loyalty, courage and magic. It also tells of the fight to overcome the feelings of solitude and dejection.
A beautiful book, a beautiful story. For all ages.

When I was about 3, my parents took me to see "2001" and I was told that, by 2001, we could buy tickets to the Moon. Later on, I was just old enough to understand that the Moon landing was a "big thing". Close to 40 years on, I've watched 2 shuttles blow up, the Hubble near-disaster and loss of spacecraft due to software confusion between imperial and metric units. Most of all, I am appalled by the ongoing waste of money, including Canadian tax money, that is the International Space Station. NASA seems to have lost its touch, despite occasional successes. Why?

As a layman, this is as good a place as any to find out, though the book gives no easy answers and is rather dry reading. The author, a scientist, worked on the project for 20 years till it launched. He is clearly frustrated by project's duration, constant reviews, cost-cutting and changing agendas. Nevertheless, he also recognizes the need for both cost cutting and reviews. Spaceships are unique in that they are extremely complex machines that are produced only once, using essentially skilled artisan techniques rather than mass-production engineering. Worse, once launched, there is little that can be done to correct defects. A wonder they work at all. That gives you some sympathy for the amount of administration, reviews and documentation at NASA. Ideally, every possible contingency needs to be anticipated and accounted for. Unfortunately, that costs lots of money.

Despite suffering from its fads, Mr. Rieke does not dismiss "better, cheaper, faster". What he seems to say is that, up until a certain level of cost, complexity and novelty, a space mission can be carried out with streamlined management and control. Especially if the project is not put under undue time pressure. Past that level of complexity and cost, more formal and thorough management is needed to palliate mission risks. He also highlights interesting misconceptions about where the real mission risks are, statistically. Overall, you are left with the impression that managing spaceflights is not amenable to easy answers. Personally, I think more extra-agency competition would help in avoiding groupthink.

Reading this book, it seems that there are really 2 NASA. One, the unmanned scientific branch, is extremely competitive (in the old sense of the word), quite short of money and almost too careful in funding scientific missions. It fails, often, but also advances scientific knowledge. The other one, which is only glancingly mentioned, but not without veiled contempt, is "big NASA" (my nickname).

"Big NASA" badgers scientific missions into using their pretty shuttles, whether that makes sense or not. "Big NASA" spends $100 billion on the shuttles and the International Space Station, with dubious scientific returns, but takes 20 years to fund a $700 million satellite. "Big NASA" wants to put men on Mars and a station on the Moon, whether they are useful or not.

Quoting p.25 "The space station was starting to eat up a huge part of NASA's budget. An attempt to rally scientists and others to oppose the station in Congress led to a dramatic demonstration of the power of the professional aerospace lobby over the amateurish scientific one - the station was easily victorious." Not dated, but circa 1994 apparently. p.88 - "It appears the $14 million we got extra was really a way for headquarters to hide money they wanted to spend on the space station" (1998).

For those interested in management techniques, the author dissects how the project was managed. It certainly shows that _good_, respectful and technically savvy management is a huge help - something many of my fellow software programmers forget all too easily.

What is a bit left out in all this are the scientific aspects of the Spitzer telescope. That wasn't a big deal for me however, because I was more interested in understanding one view of NASA's problems.

The Last Of The Great Observatories: Spitzer And The Era Of Faster, Better, Cheaper At NASA is the story of the last of the four "Great Observatories" that tell modern scientists more about the stars, planets, and galaxies beyond our own; the other three are the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Developed over twenty years and nicknamed the "Infrared Hubble", Spitzer launched in 2003 to resounding scientific success. The Last Of The Great Observatories tells of the long history and creation of Spitzer, from its lengthy planning to its reflection of the desire to get it done "better, faster, cheaper" to complications plaguing its launch and more. An excellent, smartly written contribution to astronomy history shelves.

The Hubble is the most famous of the satellite observatories. But it was actually only one of four, the so called 'Great Observatories.' This excellent book tells the story of the last of the four, the Spitzer Space Telescope. The Spitzer operates in the infrared part of the spectrum (Hubble - Visible Light, Chandra - X-Ray, Compton - Gamma Ray).

The idea for the Spitzer began in 1983 with a proposal that NASA spend $2 billion for the project. The key to this book is the twenty years that it took to get it to fly in 2003. Here's the inside story of what it takes to get one project through the NASA system. It makes for excellent reading.

There isn't much in the book about the astronomy that the Spitzer does, and just a few color pictures would help. After all, it is the pictures that have kept the Hubble in the public's eye. But you can fix this by browsing to [...]

Dr. Rieke, a professor at the University of Arizona, was one of the people who worked on the original proposal in 1983 and is still with the project. He also knows how to spin a good tale.

As a former IR astronomer and author of several space mission proposals, I already knew some of the information in this book. But I still found it to be a fascinating window into the arcane and Byzantine process by which NASA produces complex scientific spacecraft. SIRTF/Spitzer took 20 years from announcement to launch, and it went through more fundamental changes in design and survived more NASA management fads than any spacecraft in history. Somehow Professor Rieke managed not to lose his sense of humor during this torture.

The impression one gets from reading this account is the whole system for selecting and funding NASA missions is fundamentally broken and needs to be totally overhauled. The amount of effort and money wasted on mission concepts that were abandoned is astonishing. Spitzer only worked because IR detector technology improved by a factor of 10,000 during its development cycle (mostly due to military-funded research).

I also was surprised at the number of dumb mistakes made by experienced engineers. The main contractor for the Spitzer instrument package was Ball Aerospace, who have a mixed reputation for competence. Clearly this mission was not one of their high points. Ball's pre-launch testing program seems to have caused more problems than it cured.

A lot of trouble was caused by defective components supplied by sub-contractors (which under the insane rules of the time could not be tested by the prime contractor or NASA). It seems incredible to me that after 40 years of building space probes, it is not possible to obtain basic parts like wiring harnesses and gas valves that aren't riddled with defects. There is no indication that the vendors of these defective parts were sued for damages, denied award fees, or placed on some NASA blacklist.

Everybody interested in space mission planning should read this book. You may laugh, you may cry, but you will learn a lot.

Needed this for a college class, the bookstore on campus didn't sell the textbook and workbook (this product) separately, so I bought it here. It isn't the best book for learning or supplemental material for that matter, but if you need it for class, you need it for class

This item was in excellent condition and came in a timely manner. It helped a lot with my class.

Adam's "Lecture Tutorials" collection is an excellent suppliment to any astronomy textbook. While most text books include a couple of introductory chapters on naked-eye astronomy the material included is often surface deep at best and downright confusing at worst. Much of this is because the topics covered (i.e.-the celestial sphere, daily and yearly motions of the stars, sun and moon, etc) are highly abstract and require activities that force the student to move away from memorization towards an understand of the apparent motions and what causes them.

The Lecture Tutorials are a test ed set of just such activities based on a wealth of astronomy education research. They can be used in both large scale classes and smaller groups to get students to work through the difficult misconceptions and misunderstands that oftentimes beset the subjects being studied.

The activities range throughout the standard astronomy curriculum but, in my opinion, the best activites are those that focus on the apparent motions of the Sun, Moon and stars.

I recommend this to any student trying to better understand the subject and for any educator who wants help moving their students from "fun facts" to deeper understanding.

It's been a long coming, but it's finally here! Astronomy instructors and authors have produced a wonderfully readable and thoroughly comprehensible introduction to the science of astronomy. Each topic in this book really is a mini-tutorial as proclaimed by the cover title. The book format is actually written in a laboratory worksheet fashion (the sheets can be detached from the book along their perforated edges) with each worksheet dedicated to a specific astronomy concept (e.g., position, motion, Keplar's Third Law, etc.). One pass through this ingeniously designed "book of tutorials" and the beginner to the wonderful world of the cosmo is truly ready to move on to more advanced astronomy books and/or astronomy courses. My congratulations (and gratitude) to the Pearson Addison-Wesley Publishing Company for making the concept of learning enjoyable once again.

If you are at all interested in astronomy, but recoiled away from the subject after opening a typical "introductory" college textbook, then you would do yourself a tremendous favor by purchasing this book. You won't be disappointed!

As an artist with a small loft-type appartment and limited budget I have been looking for inspiration for loft decor. I find Living in Space Lofts an excellent source because of the stunning photos and details, and the informative yet friendly language used to describe several aspects of loft living, from its history, its situation in space, its decoration to what loft living implies and whether it is for you. The range of loft decorations described and shown with stunning photos and details is refreshingly varied, so you can draw inspiration whether your decor preferences verge on the minimalist simple, colorful-furniture abundant or indutrial-ascetic just to think of a few. A welcome change from books I read that show one after another beautiful cookie cutter loft decorations so perfect they made me wonder whether someone really lived there. (How many Van Der Rohe Barcelona chairs can one have?)

I live in a loft in NYC and this compilation of loft photography is one of the very best I have purchased and viewed over and over.

Excellent book showing great photos of spaces that its what I was looking for, it shows you how to save space and great floor, windows, bathrooms designs for all your needs in a loft.

The book is terrific, no doubt about that. However, I am so disappointed about the 2 reviews, which missed the whole point: What makes this book terrific? The answer? Not the pictures! Definitely not. It is the text.

First, it is a good textbook. It tells you exactly what lofts are. Lots of books about lofts only show you tons and tons of "amazing" pictures without a clear definition. Pictures are great. But it is also easy to miss the soul of lofts behind those pictures. Some people after viewing all the pictures still do not get the idea of what makes certain space a loft. Besides this, this book also tells you the history and the future of lofts.

Technically, this book is a manual for someone who wants to build a loft from a shell. It covers all the practical information you need to know ranging from location, structural issues, money, time, to soft decorative ideas and even feng-shui. It provides not only the good and exicting stuff about lofts but also the drawbacks, pitfalls, things to noice. It gives you a realistic and balanced view. The authors really knows lofts and are very very hands-on. Due to its pragmatic nature, the book focuses more on the hard side (i.e., building process) than the soft design process.

Ironically, one thing I am not quite satisfied is the pictures. Though they are nice, they are fragmented and are selected to make the pages look nice. I prefer showing some cool lofts (from those pictures), their total layout, design, and floorplan to get a complete view.