Besides having an excellent and clear description of how our current theories think stars are being born, this book has the most spectacular set of photographs I've seen collected in one book. The photographs are from virtually every major telescope on Earth and those that we have put into space. Further the photographs are in every frequenty from radio waves to x-rays.

This book is aimed at the casual, non-technical reader. It is 'math free.' But it still manages to convey the tremendous magnitude, majesty, and mysteries of the universe we can see. Its main subject is the birth of stars, and mostly within our own galaxy, the Milky Way. With the birth of the stars, there is also the death of stars. The book was published in 2006. That was back when Pluto was still a planet -- and that's OK with me, I still think of it as a planet in spite of how the vote went. In its discussion about planets around other stars, it is pretty up to date, but of course new ones are being discovered all the time.

Publisher Review