A good representation of the state of astronomy, that's a little repetitious at times (I believe this is due to multiple authors and overlapping topics). It gave the overview that I wanted, and in a pleasant conversational style, so it well serves its purpose. (I know more about quasars and element creation-by-fusion now.) However, as a science major with an astronomy curiosity, I would have liked it to have been more in depth. One bad aspect is the section titles are all juvenile and pun-like (in keeping with 'The Idiot's Guide' theme, I suppose), so they're useless if you want to scan the table of contents and find a topic in a chapter. (As an example, the section describing blackbody radiation is called 'Home on the Range,' because of the metaphor to an electric range that they use. Cute, sure, but not exactly helpful.) ( )