The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium

by Jay M. Pasachoff, Alex Filippenko

Jay Pasachoff and Alex Filippenko combine extensive research experience, teaching experience, and textbook-writing experience to offer a book that is unparalleled in its ability to present the latest science in a way that students can understand. This brief, beautifully illustrated text - one of the briefest available for the course - offers concise coverage of a wide range of astronomical topics. The authors have struck a balance between the fundamental concepts and the exciting topics at the forefront of astronomy, conveying the spirit of contemporary astronomy within a big picture context. The authors emphasize the central theme of origins in this text, first by singling out specifics in the headings of each chapter and then by dealing with a variety of relevant material in the text itself. An early discussion of the scientific method stresses an importance on the verification of observations, and sets the stage for the text's consistent focus on astronomy as a science.

Genres: Science, Astronomy, Nonfiction, Textbooks, Reference

500 pages, Paperback

First published July 12, 2000

Reviews

[Abdul-Hameed Shukri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Huge but simple

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

An introductory astronomy book, the cosmos is extremely well edited with beautiful pictures artfully well placed in such a way that they flow well with the reading format. The same can be said with the additional information text boxes: in lots of non-fiction text books, the text boxes disrupt the general chapter so one has to skip back and forth-in this book, that rarely occurs. Most pages end with a period and the end of a paragraph, and rarely does a text box disrupt that. This book does give a general survey of all available pertinent introductory astronomy information at present.