Celestial Treasury: From the Music of the Spheres to the Conquest of Space [Hardcover]

Marc Lachièze-Rey (Author), Jean-Pierre Luminet (Author), Joe Laredo (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521800404 | ISBN-13: 978-0521800402 | Publication Date: July 16, 2001 | Edition: 1St Edition

Throughout history, the mysterious dark skies have inspired our imaginations in countless ways, influencing our endeavors in science and philosophy, religion, literature, and art. Filled with 380 full-color illustrations, Celestial Treasury shows the influence of astronomical theories and the richness of illustrations in Western civilization through the ages. The authors explore the evolution of our understanding of astronomy and weave together ancient and modern theories in a fascinating narrative. They incorporate a wealth of detail from Greek verse, medieval manuscripts and Victorian poetry with contemporary spacecraft photographs and computer-generated star charts. Celestial Treasury is more than a beautiful book: it answers a variety of questions that have intrigued scientists and laymen for centuries.

How did philosophers and scientists try to explain the order that governs celestial motion?

How did geometers and artists measure and map the skies?

How many different answers have been proposed for the most fundamental of all questions: When and how did Earth come about?

Who inhabits the heavens--gods, angels or extraterrestrials? No other book recounts humankind's fascination with the heavens as compellingly as Celestial Treasury. Marc Lachièze-Rey is a director of research at the Centre National pour la Récherche Scientifique and astrophysicist at the Centre d'Etudes de Saclay. He is the author of The Cosmic Background Radiation (Cambridge, 1999), and and The Quest for Unity, (Oxford, 1999 ), as well as many books in French. Jean-Pierre Luminet is a research director of the Centre National pour la Rechérche Scientifique, based at the Paris-Meudon observatory. He is the author of Black Holes, (Cambridge 1992), as well as science documentaries for television.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Astrophysicists Lachieze-Rey (Cosmology: A First Course) and Luminet (Black Holes) take a more technical tack in this serious yet engaging and accessible coffee-table book, first published in France in 1998 to accompany a BibliothŠque nationale exhibition. With 380 color maps and charts from all ages and lands, computer graphics and Hubble Space Telescope photos, the two deftly trace astrophysical fact and myth as it changes over time.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Cambrdige University Press presnets an English edition of [B[B[Bachieze-Rey and Jean Pierre Luminet's gorgeous Celestial Treasury. This big book collects historical documents, drawings, maps, and photographs--everything from painted Greek vases to computer simulations--to offer a timeline of our understanding of the cosmos. Some of the pages are breathtaking foldouts, while sidebar topics are printed on small insert pages. The quality of production, accuracy of science and history, and sheer beauty of Celestial Treasury make it my favorite book this month" s/ Amazon.com: Science Delivers Digest

"Celestial Treasury: From The Music Of The Spheres To The Conquest Of Space is an impressive coffee- table book surveying the history of man's exploration of the stars." Wisconsin Bookwatch

"The book is clearly a labor of love, combining a considerable depth of scholarship with an accessible text that should appeal to a broad range of readers...The great value of Christie's book is the step she has taken toward making all this very clear indeed." American Scientists, VOL 89

"French astrophysicsts Marc Laqchieze-Rey and Jean-Pierre Luminet juxtapose historic images of the heavens with mofren ones produced by telescopes, satellites and X-rays. Readers can wander from one sumptuous illustration to another. Or they can follow the text on man's efforts to understand the cosmos and the way celestail charts have evovled as a result." Thwe wall Street Jrnl

"Readers can wander from one sumptuous illustration to another." THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Nov 2001

"a stunning and unique book" STAR Dec 2001

"The volume's beautiful pictures and quirky page sizes made it closely resemble a museum exhibition in a coffeetable book...Thanks to translator Joe Laredo, all of the mystique is preserved in the English edition. Now readers can get the full effect of this illustrated tour of the origins of the physical sciences, the views on the birth of the universe, celestial mapping and the changing societal views of humankind's place in the universe." - Sky & Telescope

"This book is complete with interviews with 10 people faced with the decision of living or dying and 21 experts from the medical, religious, psychology, hospice and consumer fields...If you are like me and can't resist a great coffee table book,"Celestial Treasury" by Marc Lachieze-Rey and Jean Pierre Luminet measures more than two feet by one foot. It's big enough to hold more than 400 astronomical photographs, maps and global, as well as surveys of mythology and the science of the cosmos." Gaithersbury, MD Feb 2002

"brings together the countless ways humans have tried to comprehend the heavens...allows is to see contrasts and cross-influences in human understanding." Dallas Morning News

"I highly recommend this book for astronomers, amateur or professional alike, at any level." Orla Aaquist

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 217 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1St Edition edition (July 16, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521800404
• ISBN-13: 978-0521800402
• Product Dimensions: 14.4 x 10.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #732,875 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully enhanced with 380 full-color illustrations, November 11, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Celestial Treasury: From the Music of the Spheres to the Conquest of Space (Hardcover)

Celestial Treasury: From The Music Of The Spheres To The Conquest Of Space is an impressive coffee-table book surveying the history of man's exploration of the stars. The informative and engaging text is wonderfully enhanced with 380 full-color illustrations as the reader is treated to a full spectrum history of astronomy from antiquity down to the present day. Along the way such questions are addressed as how philosophers and scientists approach explaining the order that governs celestial motions; how geometers and artists measure and map the skies; when and how the Earth came into being; who inhabits the heaves; and more. Celestial Treasury is especially recommended as a "Memorial Gift" acquisition for both academic and community library astronomy and history of science collections.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Big and beautiful, April 11, 2002

By 

bastoch (Montpellier, France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Celestial Treasury: From the Music of the Spheres to the Conquest of Space (Hardcover)

This is such a book as would have the most hardened reviewer reaching for the overworked superlatives. Impressive in size and sumptuous in production, for what is actually quite a reasonable price in present-day terms, it contrives to set forth much of the aesthetic attraction of astronomy both ancient and modern.

The authors have marshalled a stunning array of historical and modem imagery under the general headings of "The harmony of the world", "Uranometry", "Cosmogenesis", and "Creatures of the sky". Not the least of its virtues is that as the original edition was jointly published by the Bibliothèque Nationale, the authors have been able to obtain readier access to the treasures of that institution than many other researchers find possible.

Many of the illustrations from conventional astronomical rare books are familiar, though the hand-colouring of different copies makes a fascinating comparison, but others are less so - apart from the unique manuscript sources, the authors have made appropriate use of decorative embossed book covers, illustrations from l9th and 2Oth century books, especially early science fiction, early space art and even comic books. It can be a trifle disconcerting to find, for example, a modern map of the cosmic microwave background radiation juxtaposed with a l4th century manuscript, but such comparisons can be quite reasonable as long as they are not taken too literally.
Although the innumerable illustrations are the most prominent feature of the book, the authors' impeccable credentials as high officials of the CNRS and as successful popularizers of astronomy lend the text authority and style. The authors have carefully described the significance of the thought behind the historic images, and the whole book will make a marvellous crib for captions and exhibitions, as well as being ideal fodder for picture researchers.
The whole book is a striking demonstration that the most valuable use of historical imagery is to provide an accessible entry point to the subject; such beautiful images, intelligently explained, can engage the interest and commitment of the mathematically challenged in a way that the Schwarzschild Radius or the Chandrasekhar Limit will never do. A book that anybody with the slightest interest in the subject would be delighted to find .