madbadgalaxyman
01-08-2012, 12:39 PM
Dear All,
Over the last few years I have taken the trouble to review 26 astronomy books at amazon.com (american amazon, not UK or canada)
Just google on the following search terms to find my amazon profile:
R.A.Lang + profile + madbioman
(At amazon, I am known as "R.A.Lang" and "madbioman")
The sorts of books I review are generally for people who want to really learn the intricate details about the objects we look at as amateur astronomers. In other words, I rarely review watered-down and over-simplified popularizations and I rarely review books at below the "intermediate-to-advanced amateur level" of readership.
There are, in any case, already plenty of reviews of basic-level astronomy books at amazon.com, so I am trying to fill in a gap where there have previously been few book reviews:
- books at advanced and super-advanced amateur level
- some popularizations which are nonetheless rigorous and detailed; not shirking complexity.
- books requiring at least a solid "algebra+physics" and "graphical display of algebraic relations" orientation on the part of the reader, which some of you may have got at school or early-university
- early-university-level texts for the physically oriented and/or for the amateur with a really excellent background in astronomy.
- upper-level undergraduate books which still contain a lot of prose descriptions interspersed with graphical display of numerical relations, and which mainly keep the mathematics and physics at only about 1st year university level.
- some of the easier graduate-level or "beginning professional"-level texts , containing substantial descriptive sections and also sections that utilize mainly diagrams, graphs and relatively simple algebra.
Over the last few years I have taken the trouble to review 26 astronomy books at amazon.com (american amazon, not UK or canada)
Just google on the following search terms to find my amazon profile:
R.A.Lang + profile + madbioman
(At amazon, I am known as "R.A.Lang" and "madbioman")
The sorts of books I review are generally for people who want to really learn the intricate details about the objects we look at as amateur astronomers. In other words, I rarely review watered-down and over-simplified popularizations and I rarely review books at below the "intermediate-to-advanced amateur level" of readership.
There are, in any case, already plenty of reviews of basic-level astronomy books at amazon.com, so I am trying to fill in a gap where there have previously been few book reviews:
- books at advanced and super-advanced amateur level
- some popularizations which are nonetheless rigorous and detailed; not shirking complexity.
- books requiring at least a solid "algebra+physics" and "graphical display of algebraic relations" orientation on the part of the reader, which some of you may have got at school or early-university
- early-university-level texts for the physically oriented and/or for the amateur with a really excellent background in astronomy.
- upper-level undergraduate books which still contain a lot of prose descriptions interspersed with graphical display of numerical relations, and which mainly keep the mathematics and physics at only about 1st year university level.
- some of the easier graduate-level or "beginning professional"-level texts , containing substantial descriptive sections and also sections that utilize mainly diagrams, graphs and relatively simple algebra.