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[Bandoblue]

For my birthday this past week my wife gave me something truly different in the book line: a weighty 650-page tome called "Archives of the Universe: A Treasury of Astronomy's Historic Works of Discovery."

Edited with introductions by science writer Marcia Batusiak, this work is unique in my reading experience--it's a collection between two covers of the original reports, by the discoverers themselves, of astronomy's greatest advances from antiquity to the present.

We begin with the Mayan Venus Tables, Cleomedes on measuring the Earth's circumference, and of course Ptolemy's Almagest. In the Renaissance, we get generous helpings from Copernicus (De Revolutionibus), Brahe (On a New Star) Galileo (Starry Messenger), Kepler (the Epitome of Copernican Astronomy) and Newton (The Principia). So far so good, but these are the kinds of things one can find in any really good history of science anthology.

Of greater rarity and interest is the latter half of the book, which follows the accelerating pace of discovery and understanding through excerpts from Hershel in the 1700s right up to and through the Hubble Deep Field in the 1990s. All students of modern astronomy know of the Hubble velocity-distance relationship, the keystone to understanding the expansion of the universe at cosmological distances. But have you read Edwin Hubble's own slender 1929 paper announcing the discovery? We know of the Van Allen belts of radiation discovered by means of the first US satellite, Explorer 1, but have you ever seen James Van Allen's 1958 paper? Many of us have read Richard Preston's "First Light," but have you read the actual paper in which Maartin Schmid announces the discovery of "A Star-like Object with Large Red-Shift," demonstrating that quasars are the among the most luminous and distant objects in the known universe? This can be very heady stuff.

That said, a few cautions. Our guide, Ms. Batusiak, has deftly exerpted and abridged the papers to keep us out of the deepest thickets of mathematics. She also supplies each paper with a servicable introduction setting it in context and explaining the significance of the discovery. Even so, however, very little of this material is what one would call gripping reading for style or plot. With the ancient texts, you have to wrap your mind around archaic ways of understanding and expressing ideas about nature; the renaissance papers have their own distinctive style and syntax; the modern papers have the patented dryness and flatness of affect which is the hallmark of modern science publishing. You're unlikely to want to read it cover to cover from front to back. You may want to skip around according to your curiosity, your taste for math, or your patience with antique prose. In short, don't take this one along for light reading at the beach.

But if you really passionately care about the history of astronomy, you may find that there is a particular thrill in reading the actual words and looking at the actual data that ushered new understandings into the world. It is nothing less than a front-row seat as history is made.

So with appropriate cautions concerning the weighty content and the sometimes leaden prose, this book comes highly, if guardedly, recommended.

[Fiske]

Erik:

You've written a fine review of Archives of the Universe, deftly describing the book's contents and pointing out strengths and weaknesses. I enjoyed reading it.

Thanks for your contribution.

[desertstars]

Thanks for the review! I'm considering picking this one up myself, and the input will help with the decision.

[photonovore]

Sounds most excellent! Thank you for the review, it's added to my list.

I stumbled across what sounds like an excellent *companion* volume, The Celestial Treasury. What makes this Cambridge press book unique (to me) is it's many full and double page illustrations of some of the most remarkable cosmological maps in history; astronomical cartography you'd normally have to go to a museum to see. Cellarius, Bayer, Apian, Durer, Bode, LaHire, they are all here in beautiful full and double page plates. The text isn't bad either..it's written by two practicing french astrophysicists.

ps. i see Fiske mentioned this book last year about this time...