Astronomy Books

I use this book frequently, because I always find what I want and it's good. The authors state their facts accurately and clearly. Top notch.

This book has been a lifesaver for me many times when I needed authoritative information in a hurry. If you are a teacher of astronomy--at any level from undergrad on up--you will never regret having this on your shelf! Many times, after searching in vain through half-a-dozen textbooks for some item of information, I have turned to Facts-on-File Astronomy and found the answer directly, without further ado. I believe this is a "must" for every serious teacher, student, or researcher in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

In the preface, Rosen explains that apeiron "is the Greek word for what is `limitless,' `boundless,' or `indeterminate.' The apeiron is variously interpreted as `the unintelligible; the many; the moving; the ugly; the bad...the inchoate flux of opposites or contraries...the principle of disorder or disharmony." Why write an entire book about something that probably should be left in a dark closet of consciousness? Because embracing it gives humanity the opportunity to bring to fruition our centuries-long quest for individuation. It's relevant for nothing less than the growth and development of our species. This disorderly face of Nature has been hidden, negated, and "tamed" for a long time, perhaps for reasons similar to the way the unruliness of childhood is banished to make way for adulthood. True wisdom does not follow adulthood unless the some of that apeiron is given expression.

Rosen meticulously documents how many of the advances in scientific theory since the mid-1800s have been attempts to keep apeiron from bursting out and splattering itself all over science's neat, orderly theories. Although he does not use this image, the graphic depiction of the individuation process that came to my mind was a bifurcation plot from chaos theory (see [...]). The first few bifurcations (individuations of the many from the one) are neat, clean, and identifiable. After a certain point, however, they become too numerous, too chaotic, if you will, even to be distinguishable from one another. Individuation gone wild. Is this the apeironic crisis in which humanity now finds itself?

Rosen shows how the assumption of the continutity of space and time have been key to keeping apeiron under wraps. Each time the continuity seemed to be breached, science has rewritten its understanding of space and time to preserve the continuity. I won't go into the details here except to bring out the fundamental assumption underlying all such activities, namely the assumption of the object-in-space-before-subject. When space as the container started to show signs of rupturing (i.e., being discontinuous) it was turned into the object within a more comprehensive (and continuous) container called space-time.

Rosen then shows how the upsurge of apeiron affected the culture at large through the art of the time. A tour through almost any modern art museum will reveal the increasing fragmentation felt in Western culture and depicted by its artists such as the cubists who "objectified perception." No longer is the perspective of the artist inferred; rather all perspectives are shown. The artist must objectify himself, see himself as an object in space before the painted object and the painting in order to put all the possible perspectives on the canvas. Photography then brought its own disturbing discontinuity, namely, temporal discontinuity. To restore the continuity of time, moving pictures and then television were soon thereafter invented.

So where does all this angst of discontinuity and our efforts to "repair" it lead us? To a different type of unity than that which is continuous and undistinguished, to one that brings subject and object together in a recursive union signified, for example, by the uruboros, the snake swallowing its own tail.

Individuation in this regard doesn't require only the separation inherent in object-in-space-before-subject, it requires that such subjectivity observe itself without objectifying itself. Rosen describes how this was attempted by phenomenology and how that project ultimately failed because it required consciousness to divide itself into a part doing the investigating and a part being investigated. Part of the subject still had to be objectified.

We get closer to understanding apeiron in Merleau-Ponty's notion of "the flesh of the world," i.e., Being that is not the pristine unmoved mover but the goddess that gives birth to herself. As we open our arms to embrace apeiron, we get closer and closer to paradox. The project now becomes one of unconcealing, clarifying, shining the light of Being onto Being itself. Such light in itself radiates and brings itself to light (i.e., clarifies itself).

Analytic thought gave us the object-in-space-before-subject. Rosen posits that proprioceptive thought in which consciousness becomes aware of its own activity (sheds light on itself) will enable Being to be aware not only of what it lights/clarifies but its own lighting process (loosely quoted). As Rosen clearly summarizes,

"When Being clarifies itself by concealing itself in this way [ie, in beings], it looks in the mirror of space and sees only beings, thereby confirming itself in the guise of the ontical. So it was that, in the second stage of Ontogeny, human life came to appear entirely dependent on the invariance of classical space, the seamlessness of the continuum. And with the breaching of this continuum in the middle of the nineteenth century, the mirror of ontical identity was broken. It was as if Being looked in the mirror fully expecting to see a being, an object-in-space, as it had for centuries before, and instead `saw its own seeing.' Regarding itself in this fashion, Being obtained a backward glimpse of what it really is: the dimension of process that first projects object-in-space-before-subject" (p. 163).

So now, like the wave that has crested, we move on, not by appealing to higher levels of abstraction, but by turning back on ourselves in what appears to be a reversal but which is a return that is not a regression. Such radical recursiveness is exemplified by the Mobius strip and Klein bottle. In the final chapter, entitled "Topology" (an appetizer for Rosen's latest book, Topologies of the Flesh), Rosen shows how Merleau-Ponty inaugurated the shift from Euclidean space to topological space, which enables us to find a way to hold together the "inchoate flux of opposites or contraries." First, Rosen shows the "mutual permeation of opposites" in the graphic work of M.C. Escher. Then he appeals to the paradoxical nature of the topological structure of the Klein bottle as a model to show how continuity/discontinuity, object-in-space-before subject, and the embodiment of Being can be integrated without being fused. This accomplishes the return of individuation (twoness) to its underlying unity (oneness) simultaneously and without its losing its distinctiveness. This ushers in the possibility for a new kind of logic that might indeed be a way out of the quicksand that our analytic thought practices have gotten us into (that's my reading and hope, at least).

As a tour guide of this phenomenal text, I have only done the minimum of saying "there's the Eiffel Tower and that's the Arc de Triomphe." At each reading, I find more detail, more depth, and more brilliance. I have done nothing here to convey the lovely nuance and thoughtfulness that Rosen brings to his exposition and argument. I invite you to experience that for yourself.

Apprehending any thought infinitely would lead to a proprioceptive self-surpassing, a turning of that thought upon itself and through itself to include its own origins and the infinite inter-relatedness that lies beyond. Apprehending any sensations infinitely would extend to the origins of those sensations and a turning-through to sensations of infinite immensities and scales of magnitude. Likewise, the infinite apprehending of feelings and intuitions-any functions of human consciousness-would lead to self-surpassing proprioceptions of origin and advance.

It is possible to describe such possibilities of embodied experience as topological by employing paradoxical structures like the Moebius strip and the Klein bottle. Philosopher-psychologist Steven M. Rosen, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, City University of New York, adeptly accomplishes such descriptions-and many more-in this book advancing more than thirty years of teaching and research. However, Rosen's achievements here are not only those of mathematical-philosophical abstraction. This book is an advanced guide to future consciousness, offering something of an emergency manual with tools for understanding the catastrophic global transformations the human race is now experiencing.

Rosen visits the origins of our consensus reality by integrating an ancient understanding all but lost to mental-rationalistic consciousness, namely, that of apeiron, which he defines thusly:

"To early Greek science and philosophy, nature in the wild is apeiron. This is the Greek word for what is 'limitless,'
'boundless' or 'indeterminate.'"

Applying this expression to the emerging integral consciousness (Jean Gebser) of our cataclysmic times and of times to come, Rosen observes that

"...from the outset Western culture has been spurred by the drive toward differentiated being or individuality, toward individuation. Achieving this end essentially has meant containing what at first appeared uncontainable: the boundless apeiron. The proposition I submit is that apeiron, after being held at bay for over two thousand years, has now returned with a vengeance.... What I intend to demonstrate...is that the upsurgence of apeiron-far from indelibly spelling the demise of human individuality, actually offers us the opportunity to bring it to fruition."


Part One explores the "The Rise and Fall of Classical Space" and "The Crisis of Discontinuity in the Broader Culture." With a disciplined narrative tracing early Greek ideas and their evolution through Descartes, the sciences, and the arts of recent centuries, Rosen tells the story of the emergence of modernity and its consequences. He finds that "the initial banishment of apeiron by the ancient Greeks was at bottom not the triumph of pure reason over an alien force, but signified instead apeiron's concealment of itself in the interest of its own maturation."


In Part Two, "The Return to Apeiron," Rosen masterfully attends to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Derrida, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Jung, process philosophy, and more, before expressing his own intuitions in the language of topology. His sense of topology joins place, proprioception, and life-in-the-flesh in an expression of the "poetical mathematics" that leads beyond the dichotomy of subject-and-object:

"It is our self-alienation then, I submit, that has brought us to the brink of catastrophe.... The reflective individual must break the centuries-old habit of moving away from himself toward his object, must move backward into himself to the prereflective source of his reflection. There he will find that he is not merely a free-standing subject after all, nor is he merely an object. Instead, 'he' is the embodied fusion of subject and object that constitutes the paradox of apeiron. So-if effectively addressing humankind's current crisis means gaining self-knowledge-it is apeiron we must come to know."

In this work, Rosen offers a highly disciplined and cogent approach to the future by a radical integration of the past with new consciousness of the limitless and boundless forces that are in fact ever-present and time-free. To understand apeiron is to understand that human consciousness has always and will always be ultimately indeterminate. While the forces that are overwhelming existing psychological and social structures are not completely predictable, they are describable with new awareness of the immense promises and grave dangers that are now emerging in personal and world life. Rosen's work serves that awareness.

Earlier essays in the progression of Rosen's life-work are available in the earlier companion volume, Science, Paradox, and the Moebius Principle; The Evolution of a "Transcultural" Approach to Wholeness (SUNY Press, 1994).

A detailed history of every accident with space hardware. From stratospheric balloon experiments and rocket planes to the space shuttle.

Includes extensive material on Soviet space history and accidents which may not be available elsewhere and may be worth the price of the book to those interested in space exploration.

The information is logically divided into training, launch, orbit and reentry with summaries and what was learned from it.

Is it possible to know too much about an accident? Well, I learned more than I wanted to about the Apollo 1 and Challenger accidents (I wanted to get past them because they were so tragic) but there is a great depth of detail to learn from here.

Stories of people reaching for that little extra bit of courage to deal with the worst case scenario. And what happens when space age technology doesn't quite work and what we can learn from it.

While the title of this book may seem a bit gruesome, I found this book to be one of the most interesting books related to manned spaceflight. Oftentimes, we hear about the great triumphs of the space program, but unless it is a great disaster, the problems encountered in spaceflight are often overlooked. This book covers all aspects of spaceflight (training, flight, EVA, etc.) from the early pioneering days right up to the present. The book includes a great deal on the Soviet space program that I have not seen before.

The book opens with the daring adventures of the early manned ballooning experiments and the goal of the setting a record altitude. I was quite impressed with what was accomplished in the 1920's and 1930's. The book then proceeds to the various experimental X-planes and the problems encountered with these projects.

After this brief, but very informative introduction, the book examines the era of manned spaceflight. The book is divided into four main areas: training, launch, space travel, and re-entry. Each of the main areas examines all the major and minor problems encountered with these aspects of spaceflight. As one would expect, the book covers the major spaceflight disasters, like Apollo 1, the Challenger explosion, Apollo 13, but it also includes even the smallest problems like the lunar explorers falling down or urine leaks in the shuttle EVA suits. It was interesting to see that the have been many more problems, though minor ones, in manned spaceflight than has been reported in the press.

The book contains numerous rarely seen photographs and drawings. If you're interested in manned space flight, this book provides a fascinating and unique view of the dangerous side of space travel.

The book Discovery of Cosmic Fractals by Yurij Baryshev and Pekka Teerikorpi describes the yet unexplored fractal structure of the universe, which is hard to handle in the big bang theory. The idea of self-similarity is much deeper than it looks, suggesting a universe made of self-defined and hence fractal (self-similar) 3D spiral interactions as it is argued in the book THEORY OF INTERACTION The Simplest Explanation of Everything by Eugene Savov. The comic fractals can be viewed as just another convincing confirmation of the emerging theory of interaction. These two books and also James Gleick's CHAOS Making a New Science are harbingers of a qualitatively new, singularity free and complete understanding of the universe. That is why I highly recommend these essential books to everybody interested in the puzzles of nature.

I am sure that most of us have been intrigued and inspired by those remarkable geometric shapes called fractals. It is now 45 years since the Polish-born French mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot introduced the world to fractal geometry, the mathematical study of those beautiful and bizarre structures that have become the staple of much modern art and adorn millions of computer screens. Although the actual word "fractal" first made its appearance in 1975.

Fractals are objects that are rough or irregular, but can be broken down into parts. And each part is similar to the original object.

I have been following the development of fractal theory for the last thirty years, not as a mathematician or artist, but as someone who has had a deep intuition that these objects have deep significance for our understanding of many physical and biological dynamics.

This well-written book begins with a lengthy historical review of basic concepts in astronomy and cosmogony. Astronomy was one of those all-consuming hobbies that stayed with me throughout early adolescence, so it was good to return to those heady days.

But then we get into the real meat of the book: the discovery of the largest fractal structures in the universe, and an explanation about how fractals appear in cosmic physics, from our solar system all the way to the mega-fractals in deep space. These fractals structures appear to provide powerful new evidence for the emerging theories of interaction, implying that everything in the Universe is interconnected, and no one thing can be examined without considering its context in time and space.

This is a book that could be read with pleasure by anyone interested in alternative ways of viewing our Universe. These cosmic fractals may turn out to have considerable practical importance for us.

I recommend this to anyone interested in learning more about some of the cutting edge science that is helping inform us about the nature of physical reality.

A wonderful little book! The story of the discovery of the 8th planet reads like a cross between a detective story and a modern soap opera. Two brilliant mathematician/astronomers, one English (Adams) and one French (Leverrier); a conceited and arrogant astronomer Royal (Airy), and a host of observational astronomers. The Frenchman and Englishman do their calculations independently, to discover the position of the unseen planet beyond Uranus whose gravity is perturbing its orbit, and after a number of false starts and missteps, a German astronomer (Galle) finally points his telescope in the right direction and finds Neptune exactly where it was said to be. The Frenchman gets the credit because it was his directions the German was following. But the Englishman attempted, rightfully through the astronomer Royal, to have his calculations circulated and acted upon, only to be frustrated by Airy's neglect and outright incompetence, founded in arrogance. The ensuing debate pitted country against country and turned quite ugly. Fortunately, the two mathematicians never joined the struggle, but went on to become lifelong friends and mutual admirers. History was to grant Adams and Leverrier equal credit, along with the observer Galle, for the discovery of Neptune. Only 170 pages long, this is a quick read and very well written.

Since ancient times, it was known that there are six planets; no more, no less. This all changed in March 1781, when William Herschel serendipitously discovered and identified the first modern-era planet, which was subsequently named Uranus. This discovery shook the astronomy, and the rest of science with it, and it is comparable with Galileo Galilei's 1610 proof that the Earth is not the only planet with a satellite.

The new planet, however, did not behave entirely predictably, and evaded precise tabulation of its trajectory. (The emphasis here is on precise - the observed discrepancies in the order of ten arc seconds were well below the angular resolution of the naked eye.) Collecting more precise observations did not help - the tables were either correct for the older measurements, or for the newer. More than 70 years later, the planetary astronomy was still unable to explain the irregular motion of Uranus. Is it caused by the drag force of aether? Does Uranus have a massive, though unobserved satellite? Is there an yet undiscovered planet disturbing its motion? Did Uranus collide with a comet? Or, worse of all, does Newton's law of gravitation fail at such large distances?

Independently, two young astronomers, John Couch Adams in England and Urbain J. J. Leverrier in France tackled the problem by postulating a new planet in the orbit outside that of Uranus, as predicted by Titius-Bode Law, and calculated its gravitational pull on Uranus for different positions of the new planet. Fitting the positions to the experimental data, they were narrowing down the possible positions. By the end of September 1845, Adams finished his calculations, and tried delivering them personally to Sir George Airy, the Astronomer Royal. Airy was unavailable at the moment and later, when he read the report, he was skeptical about it. Adams felt rebuffed. Meanwhile, Leverrier presented his preliminary calculations on November 10, 1845. On June 1, 1846, he presented his completed analysis, Recherches sur les mouvements d'Uranus. Once Airy read this report, he realized that the predicted position of the new planet agreed with result of Adams' paper (which he kept in the drawer all this time) within a couple of degrees, and directed England's most powerful telescope, that of the Cambridge Observatory, to start searching for the new planet in July, 1846. For various reasons, the search didn't yield any results. At the same time, Leverrier was unsuccessfully trying to convince any French observatory to participate in the search of the new planet. Not wanting to miss any chance to instigate a search for the hypothetical planet, Leverrier sent his report also to Johann Galle at the Berlin Observatory. Galle received Leverrier's letter on September 23, 1846, and after convincing his superior, Johann Encke, proceeded with the observations that same night. Equipped with the excellent Berlin Academy's Star Atlas and Leverrier's data, he discovered the new planet within hours. Now, however, the question of who was first one to calculate the predicted position of the new planet, and whose name should it bear, really broke out...

The discovery of Neptune is perhaps the most famous story in the annales of astronomy, a story where the key individuals, without doubt gifted by talent and industrious, were also struck by luck. Not only Galle, also Adams and Leverrier were lucky, as Neptune happened to be favourably positioned and allowed simplifications of the otherwise intractable many-body problem for part of the orbit where the perturbations of Uranus were measured. The postulate they both used in their calculations, the empirical Titius-Bode Law, also later turned out not to hold for Neptune.

Grosser shows a great mastery of the subject, and the tiny book is a delight to read. Accompanied with a short glossary of astronomical terms used, an extensive list of notes to each chapter, an impressive bibliography list containing everything from the primary sources to every paper on this topic published by the time when the book was written (1962), and finally an extensive index, The Discovery of Neptune sets a high standard of a thoroughly-researched and excellently written popular science history work, one I only desire to see more often in the more recent works of this kind.

The Early Universe provides an excellent introduction to the topics it covers, including the standard big bang cosmology, baryogenesis and inflation. I read Dodelson's Modern Cosmology before this text, and the two compliment each other. The Early Universe provides a more complete and physically intuitive description of the standard big bang cosmology, including the role of thermodynamics, nucleosynthesis and out-of-equilibrium dynamics. Because of the attention to the "background" dynamics, and also to baryogenesis, phase transitions, inflation, and other applications of high energy physics, one gets a better sense of the "bigger picture" with Kolb and Turner's text. On the other hand, The Early Universe lacks any technical discussion of metric perturbations and CMB analysis, which are important components of much current research. These are highly emphasized in Dodelson's text. For appropriate topics, I have found The Early Universe to be a very good reference.

To the publisher I would appreciate it if the publisher could produce an audio adaptation of this book. I would love to listen to this while I drive to work and to let my 16 month old son listen to it as a bedtime story. Arnold D Veness

This has turned into a useful book. I homeschool our five children using a classical approach. Following the recommendation of The Well Trained Mind, I purchased this book. Initially, I was not as thrilled with this as with some of my other school purchases. References to macroevolution, the Big Bang, etc,,, as if those theories are fact don't seem suitable to a science book when you are training children in the beginnings of the scientific method. Unfortunately, this is a common approach. For those concerned about Biblical creation, the evolutionary detail is limited and can be easily skipped or discussed in light of the Bible.

On a practical level, this book is great. On numerous pages it offers little ideas to follow or use as mini-experiments or further research. It is easy enough for my youngest scholar to follow, and my oldest, a third grader, on busy days can read to the others.

We school for six weeks and take a break the seventh. The format of the book fits this perfectly. Each of the six sections can be read in a four-page spread weekly in six weeks, totalling the 36 weeks needed for school. This schedule allows one or two days a week for reading and a second day a week for experiments, field trips, or alternative reading/studying. (I usually read Tues. and Thurs. and do field trips and experiments on Saturday with Dad).

Overall rating of this book is positive.

As soon as the book was unwrapped and opened for inspection, my 5 year old wanted to dive right in. A mother can't help but love a book like that. Usborne's many pictures and small paragraphs of information are ideal for children. The content is astonishingly good, and the presentation is even better. I absolutely love the experiments throughout the book. They are easy to do and only require items I normally have around my house. My only regret is that I didn't have this book to read when I was younger. After this book, I believe Usborne could make a book on the anything seem interesting.

Earth, Evolution of a Habitable World by Jonathan I. Lunine

Review by Philip Eklund

Dr. Lunine is a Professor of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona, and a NASA advisor. His new book describes Earth's evolution in a fresh perspective, in relation to its sister planets, particularly Mars and Venus. This 319 page textbook covers Earth's origin, the development of its atmosphere and oceans, the variations of its orbit and climate, and at what point we are enmeshed in its long and lively history. The reader can see how we can be unwittingly in the teeth of an ice age and why the number of species has crescendoed now, in our time.

The vast territory that Lunine succinctly covers is all that anyone with a bit of gumption needs to become an authority on the state of our planet. Guideposts to this territory include the sciences of measurement (basically, math, the metric system, and dating methods), and of physics as applied to geology and biology (and some chemistry). Unfortunately Lunine sometimes lapses into off-topic diversions of astronomy (Doppler shifts, lunar phases, Stonehenge, eclipses, and aging planets by the density of their craters). Also, there is no glossary, but the index is adequate. (A few undefined jargons, like "cratonization", sneak in.)

The book is profusely illustrated by Jonathan's wife, Cynthia. There is a color section, mostly of refugees of some astronomy book showing various wonders of the universe. But one color map of the Southwest occupied my attention for a long time. It compares vegetation regimes during the Pleistocene and the Present, the ancient record being derived from pollen counts meticulously gleaned from old packrat middens. I amused myself by examining these data to see whether elephants could be reintroduced into Arizona. Another color figure shows fantastic computer sequences on how the moon must have been formed by an impact between Earth and a Mars-sized billiard ball.

The description of the origin of life is a gem. Lunine's compelling prose springs out as lively as the quasi-stable whirlpools of life he describes (basically an autocatalysis model describing a mode of life existing before reproduction). An alternative model depicting an RNA origin of life is provided mainly for comic relief. Although the role of biology in forming Earth's almost explosive atmosphere covers several subsequent chapters, life is depicted as along for the ride, and the Gaia "biofeedback" theory is dismissed in a sentence.

Unfortunately, the origin of sentience, an event indisputably more profound than the origin of life, is not mentioned. However, the fossil evolution rise of humanity, particularly the Neanderthals, is wonderfully covered. Lunine mentions the "blitzkrieg" theory of his neighbor, Dr. Paul Martin, who postulates the extinction of American megafauna, such as the great elephants and saber-tooths, as being the result of the invasion of "native" Americans with spears. A nice contrast to the increase in American bio-diversity that accompanied the post-Columbian invasion of technologically advanced humans.

Lunine was identified by Time magazine as one of its 1994 "50 for the Future" list of emerging American leaders. Lunine himself would prefer the term "policy-maker" to leader, in the sense of presenting knowledge that self-led individuals can organize into principles of purposeful and long range action. The power of a comprehensive book such as this is that current issues such as global warming can be put in the perspective of past "atmosphere crises" of Earth, such as the super-high greenhouse prevailing at the end of the dinosaur era.

The penultimate chapter, titled "Limited Resources" fails this potential, being anecdotal without the factual rigor of the preceding chapters. (I was told that this chapter was written at the last minute at the request of the publisher.) Lunine starts by treating limited resources and overpopulation as arbitrary assertions, in defiance of his tradition of listing the assumptions of every dating method or limitations of climate modeling.

On the plus side, Lunine does take a rational stand against the Luddites. But where are the charts on air pollution, famine frequencies, human fertility, wetland or forest land acreage, etc. over time? The charts that do appear, on projections of population, energy use, kilos of grain per person, and "undiscovered" oil, have none of the error bars, validation, or context of previous chapters. Bemoaning the tiny amount of land urbanized each year to support farmers moving to the cities as a result of a world-wide food glut is an example of the surreal non-sequitor grab-bag of alarmist insinuations of which fill this chapter.

Particularly nasty is the bromide that less industrialized nations need a "reasonable" standard of living, with the implication that the U.S., (which creates most of the resources that feed and run the world), somehow deprives them of this even as the U.S. demonstrates the technological and political blueprints on how to achieve abundance. Since humans are too greedy or stupid to be allowed the freedom to despoil their own nest, only coercive regulation, or supra-governmental "cooperation" is required to tell their citizenry what is in their own best interests at gun-point. The nadir of these politics is an inexcusable sanction of coercive sterilization in China.

Other than the coverage of our most recent millennium, Lunine has written a tightly integrated and ambitious book. Particularly evocative is the imagery of the continents, floating and jostled into each other like froth on the churning oceanic plates of the Earth, teeming with a surprisingly robust and assertive biological component, laughing yet seesawing through cosmic disasters, extinctions, and self-induced crises of a scale that reduces the palimpsest of human intervention to ripples from a plunked stone.

This beautiful and vigorous accomplishment surmounts what has heretofore been a dry subject, and it literally groundbreaks the placement of our planet and ourselves in the objective context of existence and history.

If you're looking for a book that is a great read and even a better reference book about the geosciences, this is the one. I refer to it often in my scientific education. The references at the end of each chapter are also a great way for people to get further information on each subject, if they need it.

This was the first book of Asimov's that I read, and I think it give you a good grasp of what the late great writer's thought was like. You have some of the best short stories included, especially "Nightfall", one of the all-time SF classics, and some enduring favorites of mine, such as "Belief" (which asks what happens when a physicists finds out he can fly)and "Breeds There a Man?" (a rather unsettling tale about mankind's origins and future).

Asimov is at his best form with the short story (the famous Foundation Trilogy began as short stories), and these are the pick of the litter. I'm not sure how many people are aware of Asimov's interests in science history, and he has many delightful essays giving one a window into some of the lesser-known characters in scientific history, and some of Asimov's thoughts on the role of science. Of particular note is also his thesis that technology made slavery obsolete.

Only Asimov could write a book like this. It combines science fiction stories with real science without telling the reader which is which. You could almost use this book as a pocket reference if it weren't such entertaining reading. Of all the Asimov short story collections, I like this one best. Unfortunately my copy was misplaced, (I'm blaming my wife), and I can't seem to find it. Take care of yours!

I own dozens of books on the subject and this is by far my favorite. It is clearly written with a fine selection of problems. An excellent supplement to this book is THE VARIATIONAL PRINCIPLES OF MECHANICS by Lanczos. I highly recommend these two books for a firm understanding of classical mechanics.

This is the best book on introductory Newtonian mechanics that I've read. The examples aren't shown just for "plug-and-chug" purposes as in many others; the authors use them to further develop an idea. As such, each example is important, and there are several. Each exercise is also useful in a way that many undergraduate mechanics exercises aren't. The authors also in their prose express a passion for the subject--always appreciated, and sometimes humorous. [My favorite example is on page 359 of the paperback version. Near the top of the page, following a discussion of Newton's law of universal gravitation: "The greatest achievement in the history of man was completed."]