(And Then I Wrote...) In order to let my backlog of "Across the Universe" columns build up a bit, I am republishing a selection of other articles that I have written and published in various places... 

This is the cover of Volume II, available on eBay

Keeping up my pattern this month of book reviews, I include here a review of a The Observer’s Guide to Astronomy, Volume I. edited by Patrick Martinez in the late 1980s; translated by Storm Dunlop into English in 1994. My review ran in Icarus volume 117, pp. 216–217, in 1995. So why bother reading about a book that is now more than thirty years old? As I argue at the end of the review, "This book, written for the amateur today, may find its greatest long-term professional importance in the future as a lucid and detailed record of how astronomy used to be done, way back in the 20th century."

It also shows my typical style of book reviewing. All book reviews are personal opinions; and so I am not shy about injecting personal stories into the review!

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