Astronomy Books

The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics

Leonard Susskind

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

What happens when something is sucked into a black hole? Does it disappear? Three decades ago, a young physicist named Stephen Hawking claimed it did-and in doing so put at risk everything we know about physics and the fundamental laws of the universe. Most scientists didn't recognize the import of Hawking's claims, but Leonard Susskind and Gerard t'Hooft realized the threat, and responded with a counterattack that changed the course of physics. THE BLACK HOLE WAR is the thrilling story of their united effort to reconcile Hawking's revolutionary theories of black holes with their own sense of reality-effort that would eventually result in Hawking admitting he was wrong, paying up, and Susskind and t'Hooft realizing that our world is a hologram projected from the outer boundaries of space.
A brilliant book about modern physics, quantum mechanics, the fate of stars and the deep mysteries of black holes, Leonard Susskind's account of the Black Hole War is mind-bending and exhilarating reading.

Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA

Richard C. Hoagland, Mike Bara

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Total reviews: 98 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

For most Americans, the word NASA suggests a squeaky-clean image of technological infallibility.

Yet the truth is that NASA was born in a lie, and has concealed the truths about its occult origins. Dark Mission documents this seemingly wild assertion.

Why is the Bush administration intent on returning to the moon as quickly as possible? What are the reasons for the current “space race” with China, Russia, even India? Remarkable images reproduced within this book provided to author Richard C. Hoagland by disaffected NASA employees provide clues why, including information about suppressed lunar discoveries.

Mystical organizations quietly dominate NASA, carrying out their own secret agendas behind the scenes. This is the story of men at the very fringes of rational thought and conventional wisdom, operating at the highest levels of our country. Their policies are far more aligned with ancient religions and secret mystery schools than the facade of rational science NASA has successfully promoted to the world for almost fifty years.

Dark Mission is proof of the secret history of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the astonishing, seminal discoveries it has repeatedly suppressed for decades.

Richard C. Hoagland is the former science advisor to CBS News, author of The Monuments of Mars, and a frequent guest on the popular radio programs Coast To Coast and The Art Bell Show.

Mike Bara is a consulting engineer for Boeing aircraft. This is his first book.

Astronomy: A Beginner's Guide to the Universe (5th Edition)

Eric Chaisson, Steve McMillan

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Publisher Fails! 1 out of 5 stars.
33 of 37 people found this review helpful.

This textbook is an adequate basic astronomy text that covers all of the bases and as might be expected has many updates reflecting recent research in the field. However, much of the really cool photography, demonstrations, animations, and illustrations are not in the book but are supposed to be on the web-site to which purchasers are given free access for more than an academic year. Although the book was released months ago, the web-site will not be available before the end of May 2006. The Prentice Hall Product Support people took over three weeks to find this out and were unable to offer any other solution to the problem which was shared by half of my class section. Do not purchase this book; it is a ripoff. If you must buy it, buy an older edition that comes with the CD (which the rest of my section purchased.) You won't have to deal with Prentice-Hall. Even better, try "Discovering the Universe" which is better written and comes with a CD.

Awesome 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 18 people found this review helpful.

The book was just as i expected!!! it was new, no marks, and no bent pages! it was a great price and it looks like i just bought it from a book store!! shipped really fast! THANKS

Discovering the Universe

Neil F. Comins, William J. Kaufmann

By: W. H. Freeman Amazon Marketplace: 10 new & used starting at $120.82

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Great Textbook 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This beautiful, full-color, highly-informative textbook has been great for my Astronomy class. Completely up-to-date (well, with the exception of the possible two new planets, one of which has been confirmed only recently and definitely since the text's Spring 2005 publication), it teaches astronomy equally well to the physics major and the humanities student (such as myslef) who is taking the class for a science credit. The authors present the information in a fun way and introduce terms simply for the student. Supplemental material includes an excellent computer program, Starry Night, as well as web resources for reviewing the text material for tests. I highly recommend this text! (And so, of course, does my Astronomy teacher)

Editorial Review:

Discovering the Universe is the bestselling brief text for descriptive one-term astronomy courses (especially those with no mathematics prerequisites). Carried along by the book's vibrant main theme, "the process of scientific discovery," the Eighth Edition furthers the book’s legacy for presenting concepts clearly and accurately while providing all the pedagogical tools to make the learning process memorable.

Cosmic Perspective, The (5th Edition)

Jeffrey O. Bennett, Megan Donahue, Nicholas Schneider, Mark Voit

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

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Building on a long tradition of strong pedagogy and comprehensive presentation, The Cosmic Perspective, Fifth Edition includes an enhanced art program. This student-friendly book is now even more accessible through robust visual pedagogy via new Cosmic Context two-page figures, which walk readers through key processes and summarize the major points of each Part, and via updated zoom-in figures which provide students with a sense of orientation, scale, and relation between images. Renowned for its up-to-date, expert coverage and strong pedagogical support for student learning, the Fifth Edition retains and builds on all the features and supplements from previous editions that have helped to make it the #1 most adopted astronomy book.

Our Place in the Universe, Discovering the Universe for Yourself, The Science of Astronomy,

Making Sense of the Universe: Understanding Motion, Energy, and Gravity, Light and Matter: Reading Messages from the Cosmos, Telescopes: Portals of Discovery, Our Solar System, Formation of the Solar System, Planetary Geology: Earth and the Other Terrestrial Worlds, Planetary Atmospheres: Earth and the Other Terrestrial Worlds, Jovian Planet Systems, Remnants of Rock and Ice:Other Planetary Systems, Our Star, Surveying the Stars, Star Birth, Star Stuff, The Bizarre Stellar Graveyard, Our Galaxy, A Universe of Galaxies, Galaxy Evolution, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Fate of the Universe, The Beginning of Time, Life in the Universe.

For all readers interested in learning the basics of Astronomy.

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking

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Total reviews: 346 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history, wrote the modern classic A Brief History of Time to help nonscientists understand the questions being asked by scientists today: Where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and if so, how? Hawking attempts to reveal these questions (and where we're looking for answers) using a minimum of technical jargon. Among the topics gracefully covered are gravity, black holes, the Big Bang, the nature of time, and physicists' search for a grand unifying theory. This is deep science; these concepts are so vast (or so tiny) as to cause vertigo while reading, and one can't help but marvel at Hawking's ability to synthesize this difficult subject for people not used to thinking about things like alternate dimensions. The journey is certainly worth taking, for, as Hawking says, the reward of understanding the universe may be a glimpse of "the mind of God." --Therese Littleton

The Essential Cosmic Perspective

Jeffrey O. Bennett, Megan Donahue, Nicholas Schneider, Mark Voit

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Essential Cosmic Perspective, Fourth Edition has been thoroughly revised to include more quantitative coverage, an enhanced illustration and photo program, and an unparalleled new media package. Built from the ground up on our new understanding of the universe, the Fourth Edition retains all of the features that have made this text so popular, while adding new features and supplements that enhance the book’s pedagogy to make it the strongest text in the one-semester astronomy market. The Fourth Edition features optional quantitative reasoning boxes, basic equations throughout the text, new end-of-chapter problems, and a consolidated math appendix to emphasize quantitative understanding. Key figures have been annotated to guide reader interpretation of difficult concepts. New two-page illustrations throughout the text, and at the end of every part, visually tie together key concepts from across chapters to drive home main ideas in a meaningful way. Developing Perspective: Our Place in the Universe, Discovering the Universe for Yourself, The science of Astronomy. Key Concepts for Astronomy: Making Sense of the Universe: Understanding Motion, Energy, and Gravity, Light: The Cosmic Messenger Our Solar System and Its Origin, Earth and the Terrestrial Worlds, Jovian Planet Systems, Remnants of Rock and Ice: Asteroids, Comets, and the Kuiper Belt. Stars: Our Star, Surveying the Stars, Star Stuff, The Bizarre Stellar Graveyard. Galaxies and Beyond: Our Galaxy, A Universe of Galaxies, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Fate of the Universe, The Beginning of Time. Life on Earth and Beyond: Life in the Universe. AUDIENCE: For all readers interested in astronomy and a new understanding of the universe.

The Universe in a Mirror: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It

Robert Zimmerman

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Hubble Space Telescope has produced the most stunning images of the cosmos humanity has ever seen. It has transformed our understanding of the universe around us, revealing new information about its age and evolution, the life cycle of stars, and the very existence of black holes, among other startling discoveries. The Universe in a Mirror tells the story of this telescope and the visionaries responsible for its extraordinary accomplishments.

Robert Zimmerman takes readers behind the scenes of one of the most ambitious scientific instruments ever sent into space. After World War II, astronomer Lyman Spitzer and a handful of scientists waged a fifty-year struggle to build the first space telescope capable of seeing beyond Earth's atmospheric veil. Zimmerman shows how many of the telescope's advocates sacrificed careers and family to get it launched, and how others devoted their lives to Hubble only to have their hopes and reputations shattered when its mirror was found to be flawed. This is the story of an idea that would not die--and of the dauntless human spirit. Illustrated with striking color images, The Universe in a Mirror describes the heated battles between scientists and bureaucrats, the perseverance of astronauts to repair and maintain the telescope, and much more. Hubble, and the men and women behind it, opened a rare window onto the universe, dazzling humanity with sights never before seen.

This book tells their remarkable story.

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality

Brian Greene

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Total reviews: 204 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

As a boy, Brian Greene read Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and was transformed. Camus, in Greene's paraphrase, insisted that the hero triumphs "by relinquishing everything beyond immediate experience." After wrestling with this idea, however, Greene rejected Camus and realized that his true idols were physicists; scientists who struggled "to assess life and to experience the universe at all possible levels, not just those that happened to be accessible to our frail human senses." His driving question in The Fabric of the Cosmos, then, is fundamental: "What is reality?" Over sixteen chapters, he traces the evolving human understanding of the substrate of the universe, from classical physics to ten-dimensional M-Theory.

Assuming an audience of non-specialists, Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. For the most part, he succeeds. His language reflects a deep passion for science and a gift for translating concepts into poetic images. When explaining, for example, the inability to see the higher dimensions inherent in string theory, Greene writes: "We don't see them because of the way we see…like an ant walking along a lily pad…we could be floating within a grand, expansive, higher-dimensional space."

For Greene, Rhodes Scholar and professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, speculative science is not always as thorough and successful. His discussion of teleportation, for example, introduces and then quickly tables a valuable philosophical probing of identity. The paradoxes of time travel, however, are treated with greater depth, and his vision of life in a three-brane universe is compelling and--to use his description for quantum reality--"weird."

In the final pages Greene turns from science fiction back to the fringes of science fact, and he returns with rigor to frame discoveries likely to be made in the coming decades. "We are, most definitely, still wandering in the jungle," he concludes. Thanks to Greene, though, some of the underbrush has been cleared. --Patrick O'Kelley

NightWatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe

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Total reviews: 87 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

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The third edition of Nightwatch continues its tradition of being the best handbook for the beginning astronomer. Terence Dickinson covers all the problems beginners face, starting with the fact that the night sky does not look the way a modern city-dweller expects. He discusses light pollution, how to choose binoculars and telescopes, how to pronounce the names of stars and constellations, telescope mounts, averted vision, and why the harvest moon looks especially bright. Most of the lovely photographs in the book were taken by amateurs, which gives the section on astrophotography a particularly inspirational gleam.

Dickinson's star charts are very handy, each covering a reasonable field of view and mapping the most interesting amateur objects. He gives good advice for planet watching, which he notes "is one of the few astronomical activities that can be conducted almost as well from the city as from dark rural locations."

Altogether, the watchword for Nightwatch is indeed "practical"--this is a book to be used, not just read. Spiral-bound to lie flat or to fold back undamaged, it's a field guide that pulls its own weight in the field. Author Timothy Ferris says, "Like a good night sky, Nightwatch is clear and wind-free. Try it and see for yourself." --Mary Ellen Curtin