James Trefil has conjured up an excellent exordium to current cosmology and its puzzles in "The Dark Side of the Universe." Due to its simple and easy to understand nature, it is an excellent starting point for the lay cosmologist. For such a person, the Massive Neutrino Caper chapter is the only segment that is a bit of heavier science... in my own opinion at least. Each chapter starts out with a personal attention grabber to help you grasp on to the concept that he is about to connect to from the previous chapter. The book is predominantly about the paradox of galaxies (clusters and voids), dark matter and it candidates, and the Big Bang cosmogony, and also the perspective of our (humanity's) study of the cosmos from the primitive ancients to the scientific present age. He makes our eldritch and mysterious kosmos easier to understand in plain English better than many authors whom I have encountered. This here is a bona fide stepping stone into astronomy and cosmology!

As a business major, satisfying a Science requirement, I have found this book to be informative, interesting and great fun. I believe it to be will written and thorough. Information is wonderfully balanced by illustrations, fyi's and interesting supplemental facts. I have one significant complaint to register with the authors/publishers of this text. The review and discussion questions should be answered either at the end of the book or in the review book. It is extremely disappointing that these answers are not available. As a student with a 3.86 average, I take my education very seriously and find it discouraging and somewhat insulting that I can not check my own work. I would STRONGLY suggest that those answers are made available within the text or on web. Thanks!