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How We'll Live on Mars (TED Books) by Stephen Petranek Award-winning journalist Stephen Petranek says humans will live on Mars by 2027. Learn more | See related books
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Product Details
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams; 1 edition (October 14, 2014)
This book is one of the most lavishly illustrated books I have seen. It's a history of cosmology, showing 4000 years of attempts to picture the Universe. It has illustrations mostly based in art, but also science. As the author says "starting with Myth and ending in science".
One of the coolest sets is from the 16th century, by Francisco de Holanda, a student of the great Michelangelo. Stunning. It's great that the the author is also showing us stuff from lesser known and recently re-discovered artists.
Michael Benson is the well known Space photographer and filmmaker, including Predictions of Fire and work on The Tree of Life. Author of Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes , etc.
More than just illustrations, it is also a history of cosmology. Highly recommended for either the Space or Art buff.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
As an unashamed academic, even in my 60's I still find some books to stand out, and this is one of them. Lavishly illustrated, but with good organization and explanations, this is a tome not to be read at one sitting but to be savored in smaller bits. It is a massive undertaking and an amazing work, bringing documents into the light that would be unavailable to individuals but that can now be shared in this volume. Highly recommended for those who are interested in the history of how humans have either understood the heavens and tried to visualize it, or how they worked to force the heavens to match their pre-conceived notion of how they believed it should be. One can turn to any page and be enlightened, or choose to follow an unfolding understanding as the author lays out the flow of understanding through time of certain events and celestial phenomenon.
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What a exquisitely beautiful book! There is awesome art I have never seen before reproduced. Especially for me, these are the paintings of the cosmos from the medieval era. They stir my imagination!
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I've long looked for a book *just like this*...and it doesn't disappoint now that I've found it; it exceeds what I had hoped for. Wonderful reproductions of fascinating images that trace out artistic and intellectual history, with some excellent (if a little limited) commentary. Some of the images will be familiar to many readers, but many were new to me, even though I've been an avid amateur astronomer and science history buff for decades.
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This spectacular book features artwork and illustrations that depict all aspects of the universe from ancient to modern times. If you love astronomy, especially historical astronomy, or if you enjoy collecting old astronomy books, you’ll be very pleased to add this volume to your library. The quality of the reproductions is excellent and in my opinion, the book has only one flaw, and it’s a fairly significant one. In an effort to achieve a larger image-scale, the publisher has printed 48 of the illustrations across two pages, so they are cut in half by the spine of the book. This severely damages the aesthetic beauty of those particular pictures, which is a real shame because they are all so magnificent! Hopefully, in future editions, the publisher will consider using fold-out pages instead, or simply limiting the reproductions to single, full-page illustrations. This flaw is the only reason why I dropped my rating from five stars to four.
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It's Cosmic! I tend to look at photos and read captions more than text. Because these images truly are fantastic, it is annoying that at least 20 images were spread over two pages that interfere with overall impact. I would have preferred those images to have either been a fold-out; or to have also been presented in a smaller size without division. As a reviewer critical of over-sized coffee table books, this is one worthy of its size, and I would not have been critical even if it had been a bit larger.
I'm ordering another copy to give as a gift, perhaps repeatedly!
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A very interesting book, extraordinarily well illustrated, that increases one's awareness of how far we have come in understanding the universe and cosmology. If you have a library of astronomy or history this book is a nice complement and would make a well-received gift.
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This book is a comprehensive, beautifully presented look at civilizations' world-view at various points in history, with abundant illustrations in high quality printing.
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