Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from ...

RECOMMENDED READING
No book on astronomy could possibly cover every topic in every detail
without stretching from here to the Moon and maybe even back again.
The following list represents just a few books and web sites that might
help you pursue the topics covered in this book a bit further. Many of
them helped me a great deal when researching Bad Astronomy.
Books
Carl Sagan did so much for public outreach in astronomy and science that
scientists everywhere owe him an enormous debt. Of his many works, by
far the finest—and the most fun to read—is The Demon Haunted World:
Science as a Candle in the Dark (Ballantine Books, 1997, ISBN 0-345-
40946-9). It’s a brilliant look at skepticism in many disciplines, and can
be easily be applied to everyday life outside the observatory.
Stephen Maran has also helped the public understand astronomy for
many years. His book Astronomy for Dummies (IDG Books Worldwide,
2000, ISBN 0-7645-5155-8) is a fun and helpful guide to the universe.
I turned to Joel Achenbach’s Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life
and Truth in a Very Large Universe (Simon & Schuster, 1999, ISBN 0-
684-84856-2) expecting to read a silly exposé of people who think they
are channeling aliens from another dimension, but instead found a thoughtful
but still funny book about people trying to cope with modern times.
John Lewis’s Rain of Iron and Ice (Helix Books, 1996, ISBN 0-201-
48950-3) is a fascinating look at asteroid and comet impacts. It’s riveting,
and might scare you a little. I have always said that no one has ever been
documented to have been killed by a meteor impact . . . but that was
before I read this book.
In this short book I could only scratch the surface of the Velikovsky
affair. Numerous books have been written about it, but you can start
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