Hardcover. NY, Harry N. Abrams, 2nd pr., 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 320 pages, 9.9x1.2x12.3 inches. Color illustrations throughout. Michael Benson, one of the world's leading authorities on the visual legacy of space exploration and astronomy, tells a riveting story of the discovery of the universe through pictures. Selecting strikingly powerful and intriguing illustrations and maps, many hidden away in the world's great science libraries and virtually unknown today, he chronicles more than three thousand years of humanity's ever-expanding understanding of the size, shape and visual texture of the cosmos from the planets of our Solar System to the Milky Way and to the large-scale structure of the greater universe, with its teeming swarms of galaxies. These illustrations - some are maps, some are diagrams, some are speculative works of representation- are among history's most powerfully compelling works of data visualization, an art that is increasingly necessary in today's data-intensive world. NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. New York, Stewart, Tabori & Chang, Publishers, Revised Ed., 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 240 pages. Very minor dust jacket edge wear. Small crease on front dust jacket cover. SIGNED BY FORMER ASTRONAUT ALLEN on half title page and dated 1988. Lots of color photographs throughout. A very clean and tight copy.
Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2010, Haerdcover in a bright dust jacket. 354 pages, b&w illustrations. Galileo (1564-1642) is one of the most important and controversial figures in the history of science. Tackling Galileo as astronomer, engineer and author, the author places him at the centre of Renaissance culture. He traces Galileo through his early rebellious years onwards: his move to Florence seeking money, status, and greater freedom to attack intellectual orthodoxies; his trial for heresy and narrow escape from torture; and his house arrest and physical (though not intellectual) decline. Clean copy.
Paperback. Cinncinatti, American Book Co., 1st wraps, 1910, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 40 page booklet. Black & white illustrations. Clean, tight copy with minor wear to paper wrappers. A selection of three chapters on Edmund Halley and comets and meteors from "Todd's New Astronomy".
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 307 pages, 60 color illustrations. 81 halftones. Provides an in-depth look at one artist's intense fascination with the science of astronomy. Joseph Cornell (1903-72) has often been viewed as a recluse, isolated in his home on Utopia Parkway, lost in the fairy tales and charming objects of his collages and assemblage boxes. Less commonly known has been Cornell's vested and serious interest in the history of astronomy and the cutting-edge discoveries made during his own lifetime. In a bright, unclipped dust jacket.
Hardcover. London, Sherwood and Co., Later Edition, 1825, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, 463 pages. Hardcover. Reprint edition dated 1825 - "A New and Improved Edition, Adapted to the Present State of Science by C. F. Partington". Illustrated with black & white drawings, diagrams. Body of book rebound in current covers at some point. Front hinge cracked, cloth tape along spine is weak, with faint remains of title label. Top 2" of title page missing. Light to moderate foxing to some plates/pages. Sold 'As-Is'.
Hardcover. Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 199 pages, b&w illustrations, blue cloth covers with white lettering on spine, bright dust jacket. Edited by Stephen Brush, C.W.F. Everitt and Elizabeth Garber.
Hardcover. Boston, Lothrop & Co., 1st, 1878, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, color illustrated boards with a black cloth spine, 247 pages, b&w illustrations. Introduction by Leonard Waldo of Harvard College Observatory. An introductory study of Astronomy for the young reader. Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf otherwise clean. Corner chip to paper on bottom of front cover A fragile binding but still solid.
Hardcover. New York, McGraw-Hill, 2nd, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 298 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout. ames Oberg (Red Star in Orbit, Mission to Mars, etc.) is a spaceflight engineer at Houston Mission Control; Alcestis Oberg is the author of Spacefarers of the 80s and 90s. Here they offer an engrossing and vivid account of what life is like in an earth-orbiting spacecraft. Because relatively few American space-travelers have published tales of their experiences, the Obergs lean heavily on the diaries and memoirspublished in Russia and little known hereof pioneering Soviet astronauts, notably veterans of long-term Salyut missions like Ryumin and Berezovoy. Here is the human side of life in orbit. Few readers can fail to be grippedand occasionally amusedby revelations of the immediate problems (how astronauts contend with toilets, hygiene, sleeping), their technical perils (e.g., air contamination) and the psychological hazards they face, from crewmate incompatibility to depression and homesickness for Earth. Photos.
Hardcover. New York, Plenum Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 293 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures throughout.
Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 242 pages, b&w illustrations and diagrams. Light underlining to 3 pages in front, otherwise a clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 286 pages. In Science before Socrates, Daniel Graham argues against the prevalent belief that the Presocratic philosophers did not produce any empirical science and that the first major Greek science, astronomy, did not develop until at least the time of Plato. Instead, Graham proposes that the advances made by Presocratic philosophers in the study of astronomy deserve to be considered as scientific contributions. Whereas philosophers of the sixth century BC treated astronomical phenomena as ephemeral events continuous with weather processes, those of the fifth century treated heavenly bodies as independent stony masses whirled in a cosmic vortex. Two historic events help to date and account for the change: a solar eclipse in 478 BC and a meteoroid that fell to earth around 466. Both events influenced Anaxagoras, who transformed insights from Parmenides into explanations of lunar and solar eclipses, meteors, and rainbows. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 314 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Black and white pictures.
Hardcover. New York, The Monacelli Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 127 pages, color plates. Like new in publishers shrink-wrap. Lynn Davis, known for surveys of natural and man-made wonders, has long been fascinated with the objects and venues of space exploration. Her photographs of the architectural icons, cornerstones, and abandoned sites of the space race reflect the many facets of a historically complex industry: the beginnings of space exploration; the changing nature of technology; and a fascination with otherworldly ruins. She emphasizes the bold modernism of these sites while evoking the presence of obsolete technologies. Davis traveled to historic sites in Kazakhstan, Russia, Germany, French Guiana, and the United States. She received special permission to visit Baikonur in Kazakhstan, a leading launch site shrouded in secrecy since the 1950s, and her photographs offer one of the first inside glimpses of launches, transmission towers, fuel lines, and satellites.
Hardcover. NY, G. E. Stechert & Co., 2nd Ed., 1936, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers with gilt lettering on spine, 563 pages. The work is a collection of the origins of stars and constellations along with their meanings. The book also details various myths and folklore connected to the stars from a number of traditions including Greco-Roman, Arabic, Babylonian, Indian and Chinese. Includes indices in Arabic and Greek alongside the General Index. Originally published in 1899. Previous owner's name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean. Light fading to blue cloth spine.
Hardcover. NY, Garden City Publishing, 1st, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, pictorial boards in a edgeworn dust jacket, unclipped (1.00). Notable for the illustrations by Ralston Crawford. Ralston Crawford (1906-1978) was an American abstract painter, lithographer, and photographer. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association, reprint, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 253 pages. The interesting life of a remarkable person- America's first woman astronomer, who lived from 1818 to 1889. Yet Maria Mitchell's life in Nantucket Island was not devoted entirely to astronomy. She was a librarian of the Athenaeum for twenty years, and she came to know many of the famous men of the age who came to lecture there. When the Vassar College Observatory was founded in 1865, Maria Mitchell became its first Director. And finally, Maria Mitchell was an ardent leader in the woman's rights movement and President of the Association for the Advancement of Women. No dust jacket, clean copy.
Hardcover. Amsterdam, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray cloth stamped in black and white, 433 pages. When it was published in 1543, Copernicus's new astronomy had an enormous impact on intellectual life in early modern Europe, but the reception of his new ideas differed fundamentally from one country to another. Rienk Vermij discusses how--unlike in Roman Catholic lands--discussion in the heavily Calvinist Dutch Republic was initially dominated by humanist scholars who judged Copernicus's work on its mathematical merits. Yet even in this environment, it could not escape eventual philosophical, religious, and political controversies. This book shows how Copernicus's astronomy changed from an alternative cosmology into an established worldview in the Dutch Republic. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise bright and clean.
Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 172 pages. The story of the discovery of the 8th planet reads like a cross between a detective story and a modern soap opera. Two brilliant mathematician/astronomers, one English (Adams) and one French (Leverrier); a conceited and arrogant astronomer Royal (Airy), and a host of observational astronomers. The Frenchman and Englishman do their calculations independently, to discover the position of the unseen planet beyond Uranus whose gravity is perturbing its orbit, and after a number of false starts and missteps, a German astronomer (Galle) finally points his telescope in the right direction and finds Neptune exactly where it was said to be. The Frenchman gets the credit because it was his directions the German was following. But the Englishman attempted, rightfully through the astronomer Royal, to have his calculations circulated and acted upon, only to be frustrated by Airy's neglect and outright incompetence, founded in arrogance. The ensuing debate pitted country against country and turned quite ugly. Fortunately, the two mathematicians never joined the struggle, but went on to become lifelong friends and mutual admirers. History was to grant Adams and Leverrier equal credit, along with the observer Galle, for the discovery of Neptune. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Dodd, Mead & Co., 4th pr., 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, half leather maroon binding over white boards, ribbed spine with gilt lettering. 368 pages, drawings, diagrams and b&w photographs. The 200-inch Hale Telescope at Mount Palomar was one of the great achievements of the 20th century. Long the largest reflector (eclipsed eventually with new technology and the Hubble). this book chronicle the difficulties of construction and the many discoveries made with the aid of the Hale. No dust jacket. Gift bookplate on inside front cover, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Garden City Books, BC Ed., 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Book Club edition, 192 pages. Bright, clean copy.
Softcover. Albany, State University of New York , 1st thus, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 332 pages. Bayle, arguably the primary intellectual predecessor to the Enlightenment, sought in this text to undermine the influence of "superstition" in politics, particularly the superstition brought about by religious beliefs, and it is here that he first made his suggestion that a decent society of atheists is possible in principle. Translator Robert Bartlett provides extensive notes and an introduction to Bayle, his influence, and the intricacies of his thinking.