FROM THE EARTH TO THE UNIVERSE describes the current state of astronomy, both the fundamentals of astronomical knowledge that have been built up over decades and the exciting advances that are now taking place. The writing style is friendly and carefully detailed. It serves as a valuable reference for both beginners and astronomy enthusiasts. This book is organized as a number of stories. Individual chapters often tell what used to be known, how space and other modern observations have transformed our understanding, and then what is scheduled for the future. This is done with each planet. Consequently, an instructor can easily add photos (available as slides, overheads, CD-ROMs, and on the World Wide Web) and movies and keep a student's interest for a whole lecture on each planet, if desired. Students learn about astronomy through concrete examples, rather than merely being given overarching concepts without enough underpinning.
As the Mama of a Life Scout, I am quite familiar with BSA badge books - in fact I was a Badge Counselor for a handful of badges for my son's Troop when he as a Scout. Now I am working toward certification as a middle school teacher and think that these books are great as reference materials. While I was reading this as part of a 'trade book' assignment for one class, another class was teaching me Astronomy and the BSA book did as good, and sometimes better job of explaining some of the astronomical subjects as my college course. I need to search through the books we have at home and supplement from the BSA store for all of the subjects likely to come up in MS science!
In one side of hand, if you are a student in the field of astronomy, it will be so easy for you. But on the other hand, this is a book that a stargazer must have, it will be very useful. It quite difficult in terms of this and that, but I gained a lots of knowledge from this book!