Cosmology - The Best First Text

Societies create universes, not only do these universes reflect their societies, but each universe controls the history and destiny of its society.
Edward R. Harrison, Cosmology - The Science Of the Universe, 1981, p.18

Books on cosmology are pretty thin on the ground. The best one you can order from Amazon and not go wrong on is by Edward R. Harrison who spent most of his professional life in the United States and was greatly admired and respected by his students and his peers.

Edward R. Harrison

The Oracle of Ottawa has been holding onto his copy of Cosmology - The Science Of the Universe for decades. The first edition came out in 1981, published by Cambridge University Press, which I have found is always a great start if you are into reading the best science books money can buy. You can't go wrong with anything from good old Cuppers.

It was only recently that I finally had the time to finally read the book. And as I turned each successive page I was pretty glad that I kept hold of it all these years. The major strength of this text is the perfect balance of what I consider to be the three pillars of cosmology. And those three pillars are philosophy, physics, and mathematics. It certainly is not surprising that has a 4.8 out of 5 rating by Amazon customers.

Another great strength of the work is that all the major theories of the Universe are treated respectfully without any detectable agenda for or against any of the major plausible theories. And all the background information that you must be aware of such as time and curvature and expansion are handled brilliantly in their development to the reader, whether a student or a lay person of above average curiosity.

There are no glossy pictorial barrages of Hubble Telescope images like many undergraduate astronomy textbooks, and you soon come to realize that in cosmology this is a good thing. There are elegant line illustrations were they are really required. Best of all the text is fully cited which means you can use it for future reference and further exploration. All in Dear Reader, this is the one to start on, and one that will really stick with you.

Even though the first edition came out in 1981 and the second came along in 2000, the whole work is by no means dated, even at the time of this writing. But what is really interesting is how far our view and confirmed facts of cosmology have progressed and how a very favorite theory of the Universe is under great pressure. Edward R. Harrison, no doubt, would have loved that...