It is written in the stars

I've often thought that, if there was an area of knowledge that I could suddenly gain understanding and excel in, it would be physics and astronomy.

This goes back a bit, to the days when I was fascinated with the planets. When I was 8 or so, I received a book about the beings that inhabit different planets. As it turns out, this book was fiction. I didn't realize that, and was amazed and delighted that the book gave me numerical call signs to actually make contact with the planets--yes, really!! I spent many hours in my room, on the floor facing the window, with my walkie-talkie in hand, patiently tapping out (in Morse code, of course) these call signs. Hours. To no avail. No matter, though, I moved on...I had a period of fascination with Mars, and ordered as many books from the Weekly Reader as I could get my hands on. Then movies about space and aliens and time travel and the future. Books about string theory (started, rarely finished) and the cosmos. Pictures from the Hubble.

As it currently stands, I have a really hard time grasping some (most) of the basic principles, but I am still fascinated by it all. Is the universe expanding? What happened before the Big Bang? What is at the bottom/on the other side of a black hole (a thing we know exists not because we see it, but by the disappearance of everything else around it, that is crazy!)? Do all points in time really exist at the same time, all the time, and if so, can I somehow go back to the 23-year-old me and say 'hey, maybe don't take in 8 cats'? And most importantly, the question that comes to my mind whenever I read something about some distant star, why are we just now seeing the light from something that happened millions of years ago, and does the thing even exist anymore?? I don't understand Einstein's theories, I can't really visualize multiple dimensions, and light years are mind-boggling. I just can't.

Imagine my pleasure upon discovering The Universe: an illustrated history of astronomy. Pictures! Concise explanations! A fold-out timeline! 100 brief and interesting tidbits about astronomy explained for someone like me. If you're like me, and you desperately want to ponder the mysterious stars and expanse of space and matter, but just can't quite manage it on your own, you'll want this book. Or, if you're a little more advanced than I, but want something beautiful and very interesting to read, you just might want it as well.