Calendrical Calculations Millennium edition (Paperback)

by Edward M. Reingold (Author), Nachum Dershowitz (Author) "A learned man once asked me regarding the eras used by different nations, and regarding the difference of their roots, that is, the epochs where..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, French Revolutionary, Kali Yuga (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"The work is attractively produced and well written, in a crisp and lucid style, its earnest content lightened by touches of humor and details of history that communicate most effectively the authors' enthusiasm for and knowledge of their subject. The book's major contribution is that, for the first time, it places an authoritative computational specification of all these calendars in the public domain. Indeed, this book supplies the essential tools to enable us to proceed cogently and efficiently toward correlation of all these derivative calendrical systems, and Dershowitz and Reingold are to be congratulated on making such strides toward this goal." ISIS

Product Description
This new edition of the successful calendars book is being published at the turn of the millennium and expands the treatment of the previous edition to new calendars and variants. As interest grows in the impact of seemingly arbitrary calendrical systems upon our daily lives, this book frames the world in a completely algorithmic form. The book gives a description of twenty-five calendars and how they relate to one another: the Gregorian (current civil), ISO (International Organization for Standardization), Egyptian (and nearly identical Armenian), Julian (old civil), Coptic, Ethiopic, Islamic (Moslem), modern Persian (both astronomical and arithmetic forms), Baha'i (both present and future forms), Hebrew (Jewish), Mayan (long count, haab, and tzolkin), Balinese Pawukon, French Revolutionary (both astronomical and arithmetic forms), Chinese (and nearly identical Japanese), old Hindu (solar and lunisolar), and modern Hindu (solar and lunisolar). Easy conversion among these calendars is a by-product of the approach, as is the determination of secular and religious holidays. Calendrical Calculations makes accurate calendrical algorithms readily available for computer use with LISP, Mathematica, and Java code for all the algorithms included on the CD, and updates are available on the Web. This book will be a valuable resource for working programmers as well as a fount of useful algorithmic tools for computer scientists. In addition, the lay reader will find the historical setting and general calendar descriptions of great interest.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 454 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 2nd edition (August 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521777526
• ISBN-13: 978-0521777520
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,100,087 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything you ever wanted to know about calendars!, July 20, 2000

By	Helmer Aslaksen (Singapore) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The first edition was a masterpiece, but this one is evenbetter! I've been involved in proof reading the new edition, and I'veread the final draft. There are lots of popular books out there about calendars and the history of calendars. Unfortunately, most of them are filled with mistakes, especially when they talk about non-European calendars. The purpose of this book is to both give reliable information about the different calendars and to provide software for calendrical computations. My own field is the Chinese calendar, and this is one of only two books that gets it right (the other is the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac). If you want to get the facts, there's no other comparable book. Remember to check out the web site of the authors to get the software and check out the applets. END

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for calendars - Legal issues in using code, March 22, 2004

By	Stephen Kirby (Missoula, MT USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I highly recommend the book if you are interested in calendars as a hobby. If you are using this book for a project I suggest you look at this soley as a reference, since you will have to look elsewhere to have something you can use. The bibliography included is a good source.

The details and discussions of how they approach problems like the visibility of sunset are amazing and really opened my eyes to the difficulties of creating an accurate calendar under different systems. This book covers everything I could think of and quite a few ideas I would never consider.

I would give it 5 stars, except that the code and algorythms provided in the book are copyrighted and can not be used without explicit permission of the authors. I contacted the authors for a project I had, but it was determined that I could not use their algorithms since I intended to release under GNU license.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anonymous's criticisms baseless, October 26, 2004

By	Edward M. Reingold - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The previous review criticizes us for having a lengthy document reporting errata--but most of that document is not errata at all, but notes with extra material! C.U.P. introduced 10 spots where some lines were lost in the 2nd printing; when that was discovered they withdrew the printing and filled all orders with the hardback first printing.

Perhaps "anonymous" would have been happier if we did not share the details of errors with readers, but we feel it is in the reader's interest to have the errata open to public.