If you were ever interested in what is going on above in heavens, but didn't want to trouble yourself with too much equations and other non-esential stuff, then this is the book for you. It is a textbook, and it reads as a textbook. You'll find that everything is included: from our Solar system, to the nuclear processes in the stars, to the black holes. Descriptions are as they should be for the non-pros: comprehensive and simple (yet not trivial), well presented (love those many color pictures) and to the point. Great for an occasional star-gazer as well as astronomy students to revise their knowledge. And the Night Spectra Quest is a neat beginner's tool to examining star spectra. If you get more interested after studying this book, I recommend "An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics", which goes more deeply into the study of astrophysics and cosmology.

Don't bother with this book. I used it for an intro-level astro course, along with Frank Shu's Physical Universe. In the exact words of my professor, the only reason we even had to buy this book was because Shu's was written 20 years ago and is slightly out of date.... we used Shu for important concepts and this for basically nothing other than revising what is in Shu with more up-to-date information. This book is kind of expensive to be simply a tool for updating Shu (which, btw, is a great book)... also, the high number of errors and typos really make this book a "don't bother"

This book is a good compromise between the less analytical texts and some of the books geared toward astonomy majors. It is not a great book but I felt it was up to date and comprehensive. One note though, the authors assume you have a good grounding in undergrad math and physics. On several occasions I had to pull out one of my math or physics texts to review a subject so I could understand the material being presented.

This is not a MEATY text. It is a good INTRODUCTORY text that provides a decent overview of general astronomy, including: basic celestial mechanics, the solar system, absorption/emission, stars, H-R diagram, galaxies, interstellar medium, evolution, Hubble's law, active galaxies, cosmology. The level of detail seems appropriate for a survey course. For example, the authors do a good job of describing basic spectral issues (absorption, emission, line broadening, Boltzmann, the Saha equation, optical depth, etc), but they do not provide a detailed discussion of stellar atmospheres. If you have had an introduction to astronomy and want more depth, then look at Bohm-Vitense's books, Elmgreen's Galaxies & Galactic Structure, etc.