Volume 44, Number 10 · June 12, 1997
Before the Big Bang
By Steven Weinberg
The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the Universe(s) Report
by Timothy Ferris
Simon and Schuster, 393 pp., $25.00
The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins
by Alan H. Guth
Helix Books/Addison-Wesley, 358 pp., $25.00
Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others
by Martin Rees. (to be published in the US by Addison-Wesley in fall 1997)
Simon and Schuster, 282 pp., $16.99
On a summer weekend a few years ago my wife and I visited friends at their ranch in the Glass Mountains of West Texas. After dinner we sat outside on lawn chairs and looked up at the sky. Far from city lights, in clear, dry air, and with the moon down, we could see not only Altair and Vega and the other bright stars that you can see from anywhere on a cloudless summer night, but also an irregular swath of light running across the sky, the Milky Way, as I had not seen it in decades of living in cities.
Review, 6156 words
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