The kingdom of the sun

This is Asimov’s first foray into the history of astronomy (at least, at book length), and is, like all the Abelard-Schuman science juveniles, a top-notch job. Here he outlines the advancing knowledge of the solar system from ancient times through the 1950’s. There is much not touched on here—indeed, it is largely an account of observations of the solar systems, planetary positions and satellite counts, and little about the physical nature of the planets or their moons. Still, what is here is interesting, is clearly explained, and is a good introduction to much of the history of astronomy for the young reader. Unfortunately, astronomy is a science which has advanced enormously in the last thirty-five years. (Indeed, the book ends with the vision of men on the moon in a few years, and rockets exploring the planets, leading to all sorts of exciting discoveries, which has definitely come to pass.) As a result, Asimov’s astronomy books suffer more from being out-dated than many of his other non-fiction books, and this one in particular misses out on all the exciting things which have been found since 1960. There is little here which later observations have proven actually wrong, and as a history, it still passes muster, so this is not a book to be avoided by any means—but neither, alas, is it a completely current introduction to the adventure of discovering the solar system.