Archives of the Universe: A Treasury of Astronomy's Historic Works of Discovery [Hardcover]

Marcia Bartusiak (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 23, 2004

An unparalleled history of astronomy told through 100 primary documents—from the Maya’s first recorded efforts to predict the cycles of Venus to the 1998 paper that posited an accelerating universe.

Award-winning science writer Marcia Bartusiak is a wonderfully compelling guide in this sweeping overview. Her authoritative, accessible commentaries on each document provide historical context and underscore the more intriguing and revolutionary aspects of the discoveries.

Here are records of the earliest naked-eye celestial observations and cosmic mappings; the discovery of planets; the first attempts to measure the speed of light and the distance of stars; the classification of stars; the introduction of radio and x-ray astronomy; the discovery of black holes, quasars, dark matter, the Big Bang, and much more. Here is the work of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Halley, Hubble, and Einstein, as well as that of dozens of lesser-known scientists who have significantly contributed to our picture of the universe.

An enthralling, comprehensive history that spans more than two millennia—this is essential reading for professional astronomers, science history buffs, and backyard stargazers alike.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though Bartusiak prefaces this anthology of astronomy-related documents by lamenting the fact that astronomy books often leave out "the voices of the scientists themselves," it soon becomes clear why such voices are regularly silenced. Among the many famous authors presented here—Galileo, Einstein, Kepler, Newton, Copernicus, etc.—no voice shines through as accessibly as that of Bartusiak herself. The author of Thursday’s Universe and Through a Universe Darkly has sewn together this collection of historical reprints with an admirable number of original, explanatory essays that situate each document within a larger scientific history, clarifying each paper’s importance and showing how each discovery set the foundation for the next. For serious astronomy enthusiasts, this book will surely become a well-loved resource. But many of the original documents are dense and dry, and casual readers will prefer to turn to one of Bartusiak’s previous books to learn more about the workings of the stars and planets.
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From Scientific American

Here the reader gets not only a clear and concise history of astronomy but also excerpts from many of the memorable papers written by the scientists who made the pivotal astronomical discoveries. The history comes in Bartusiak's fine introductions to the eight periods she describes and to the individual papers. The authors include such eminent figures as Ptolemy, Copernicus, Albert Einstein and Alan H. Guth. Bartusiak, a science writer who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, set as her focus "the discoveries that came to define the universe as we now know it: its composition, its various members, its structure, its evolution."

Editors of Scientific American

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 720 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1St Edition edition (November 23, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037542170X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375421709
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,793,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The History of Astronomical Discovery, September 6, 2005

By 

RV (California, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Archives of the Universe: A Treasury of Astronomy's Historic Works of Discovery (Hardcover)

Archives of the Universe is a phenomenal book which tells the history of astronomical discovery. The book starts at the very dawn of astronomy and explains how the very first calendars were invented. It runs through medieval times explaining the discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus and many others, and concludes with the latest discoveries in cosmology, including the accelerating expansion of the universe and the discovery of extra-solar planets. This book covers it all, and more importantly, it covers discoveries in chronological order in many cases clearly showing how one discovery leads to the next.

One of things which I found most appealing about this book is the fact that it is broken into relatively short chapters. Each chapter begins with a short explanation by the author, followed by an excerpt from the original research paper in which the discovery was first announced. How great is it to read about Galileo's discoveries in Galileo's own (translated) words?

A word of caution: this is a 700 page book, and some of the research paper excerpts included in it are very technical (especially some of the most modern ones). These are very hard, if not impossible, to understand. In many of the chapters I wished that the author's explanations were longer and more detailed, while the research paper excerpts were shorter.

Bottom line, if you are an amateur astronomer, like me, you will LOVE this book. However this book is heavier than most popular science books and I would probably not recommend it for the casual reader of popular science.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seeing the past and present in the heavens, April 4, 2006

By 

FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Archives of the Universe: A Treasury of Astronomy's Historic Works of Discovery (Hardcover)

Back during my undergraduate days, one of the most interesting courses that I took was the history of astronomy, and I wish this book had been available. While that course was very good at introducing the different ways in which the universe was perceived and conceived through the different cultures and periods of history, we were often reading second-hand or third-hand accounts. So much of education these days seems to consist of second-hand and third-hand analyses and retellings, working on the assumption that the original texts are too difficult, too arcane, or too 'something' to be useful and understood. Sometimes this might be true; however, making allowances for translation from different languages, I still believe, as obviously the author of this text does, that there is much to be gained by reading the actual words of scientists and philosophers themselves as they first formulated and wrote down their ideas.

This is a text of excerpts from primary documents that have had significant influence in the direction of astronomy and astrophysics in particular, and science and philosophy more generally. These are grouped into eight broad categories: The Ancient Sky, Revolutions, Taking Measure, Touching the Heavens, Einsteinian Cosmos, The Milky Way and Beyond, New Eyes, New Universe, and Accelerating Outward. These each include a half-dozen to a dozen different documents.

Bartusiak introduces each document with a brief essay that sets context both in general history as well as the progress of science, and discusses the importance and influence of the documents for later developments. The groupings are not set in stone, but can be useful: 'The essays introducing each moment of discovery were written to stand alone, inviting the reader to peruse his or her interests in no particular order. Yet it can be profitable to read the sections in sequence to perceive how the questions that observers asked of the heavens evolved over time.'

Some of the readings are heavy going. 'Many of the papers, particularly those from the modern era, are hardly narrative literature. The mathematics can often be unwieldy and the issues fairly complex.' Despite this, astronomy remains one of the more popular and captivating of the sciences, and Bartusiak has made a concession to the more general reader by simplifying some of the papers, omitting detail that might be of interest to professionals, but serve to cloud the view for the more general reader.

This is a great volume for those who are interested in astronomy, the history of science, or cosmological development more generally - particularly the early part, when philosophy and science were not so separate as they are today, general readers may find a great deal of insight and interest.