The links below will take you to the amazon.com pages for each of the
listed books.
Popular Cosmology Books
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"The Big Bang" by Simon Singh. History of cosmology from the ancient
Greeks through the cosmic microwave background.
-
"The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene. A non-technical look
at all the hard problems in physics and cosmology, by a very good writer.
Greene also wrote
"The Elegant Universe" which is all about string theory,
-
"Echo of the Big Bang", by Michael Lemonick. A non-technical history of
the WMAP mission.
-
"The Extravagant Universe" by Bob Kirshner. A "useful and polite"
and always entertaining look at the
supernova evidence for the
cosmological constant and the
accelerating expansion of the Universe.
-
"The Origin and Evolution of the Universe" edited by Zuckerman and
Malkan. A UCLA Center for the Study of the Evolution and Origin of Life
(CSEOL) Symposium. 1996, Jones and Bartlett Publishers. I wrote the
leadoff article in this collection.
-
"The Very First Light", by John Mather and John Boslough, 1996.
BasicBooks. The true history of the COBE project written by the Project
Scientist.
-
"Afterglow of Creation" by Marcus Chown. Good science journalism.
-
"The Five Ages of the Universe : Inside the Physics of Eternity"
by Fred Adams & Greg Laughlin. -- The very distant future of our
Universe.
-
"Our Evolving Universe" by Malcolm Longair. -- A book with
beautiful pictures and a good non-technical introduction to cosmology.
-
"Einstein's Greatest Blunder? : The Cosmological Constant and Other
Fudge Factors in the Physics of the Universe" by Donald Goldsmith.
I haven't read
"The Runaway Universe : The Race to Discover the Future of the Cosmos"
by the same author, but it covers the accelerating expansion
seen in the recent supernova data.
-
"Quintessence : The Mystery of the Missing Mass in the Universe" by
Lawrence Krauss. An update of "The Fifth Essence". Dark Matter.
-
"The Origin of the Universe" by John D. Barrow. Covers a wide range of
topics: inflation, including the chaotic and perpetual versions,
wormholes and space-time foam, the anthropic principle, with nice
illustrations.
-
"The Origins of our Universe" by Malcolm Longair. A small book based
on the Christmas lectures at the Royal Society. Out of print.
-
"Before the Beginning : Our Universe and Others" by
Martin Rees. There are no equations, but also no graphs, figures or
illustrations of any kind.
-
"Ripples in the Cosmos" by Michael Rowan-Robinson. Has the same
erroneous T vs t graph as "Shadows of
Creation". Out of print.
-
"The Shadows of Creation", by Michael Riordan and David Schramm.
Dark matter. Has the same
erroneous T vs t graph as "Ripples in the
Cosmos". Out of print.
-
"Coming of Age in the Milky Way" by Timothy Ferris. A more
extensive coverage of the material in the "Creation of the Universe"
show on PBS.
-
"The Alchemy of the Heavens: Searching for Meaning in the Milky
Way", by Ken Croswell. A good book about our
Galaxy.
-
"The First Three Minutes" by Steven Weinberg. Old but good treatment
of light element synthesis. Out of print.
-
"The Big Bang" by Joseph Silk. Many typos, unfortunately.
-
"A Short History of the Universe" by Joseph Silk.
Many typos, unfortunately.
College Introductory Astronomy Textbooks
College Astrophysics Textbooks
College Cosmology Textbooks
Graduate Cosmology Textbooks
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Edward L. Wright.
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