The Complete Idiot's Guide to Astronomy, Third Edition

A good representation of the state of astronomy, that's a little repetitious at times (I believe this is due to multiple authors and overlapping topics). It gave the overview that I wanted, and in a pleasant conversational style, so it well serves its purpose. (I know more about quasars and element creation-by-fusion now.) However, as a science major with an astronomy curiosity, I would have liked it to have been more in depth. One bad aspect is the section titles are all juvenile and pun-like (in keeping with 'The Idiot's Guide' theme, I suppose), so they're useless if you want to scan the table of contents and find a topic in a chapter. (As an example, the section describing blackbody radiation is called 'Home on the Range,' because show more of the metaphor to an electric range that they use. Cute, sure, but not exactly helpful.) show less