This is a remarkable book. It's beautiful from the outside, embossed with gold text and with faux marbled endpapers. Inside is a fascinating and surprisingly easy-to-read work of annotation, commentary, and context on a landmark cosmic atlas of the early 18th century. We've all read histories of astronomy that print one plate from such atlases with a brief comment on what they got right and what they got wrong. This book is quite different. It prints Doppelmayr's plates full size, then follows the full-size print with details cropped from the original and captioned with explanations and context. Illustrated essays before each plate add even more historical and cultural context, and explain the development of scientific thought that led to the science portrayed in it. Martin Rees's foreword briefly and effectively places the Atlas Coelestis into its contemporary context -- after Kepler and Newton explained the motions of the planets, but before the expeditions to observe the transit of Venus established the scale of the solar system. It's intimidating at first (it weighs more than 2 kilos!), but the text is very accessible and the images lavish; I was sucked in instantly. This book is not just for lovers of astronomy. I'd also recommend it to anyone interested in the history of science or even to anyone studying 18th century literature, which is packed with references to new understanding of the heavens. ( )