TILTING WITH WINDMILLS  (1951)

A SPHERE WITH A VIEW  (400-100 B.C.)
The Intellectual Spoils of War … A Sunlit Well at Syene …
Aristarchus of Samos … Hipparchus of Nicaea

HEAVENLY REVOLUTIONS  (100-1600 A.D.)
The Ptolemaic Carnival … Nicolaus Copernicus …
Moving the Earth … Undermining the Ptolemaic Universe

DRESSING UP THE NAKED EYE  (1564-1642)
“Skybound was the mind” … The “Starry Messenger” …
“Eppur Si Muove” … Weighed in the Balance

AN ORBIT WITH A VIEW  (1630-1900)
The Enormous Advantage of Being in Two Places at Once …
Deciphering Distant Light … The Triumph of Celestial Mechanics …
Reading Between the Lines

UPSCALE ARCHITECTURE  (1750-1958)
No End in Sight … The Capture of Light …
The Cepheid Yardstick … From Nebulae to Galaxies

COMING APART IN ALL DIRECTIONS  (1929-1992)
The Long-Delayed Demise of Constancy and Stability …
Beyond the Rainbow … The Big Bang Rakes in the Chips …
Confronting a Gordian Knot

DECIPHERING ANCIENT LIGHT  (1946-1999)
The Sputnik Legacy … Outside the Milky Way …
The Milky Way … Mapping the Universe … From Here to Infinity

THE QUEST FOR OMEGA  (1930-1999)
More Than Meets the Eye … A Glitch in Time …
Einstein’s “Blunder” Revisited … A Theory Struggles to Cope

LOST HORIZONS
When Time is Space … The Observable Universe Grows Tiny …
A Labyrinth of Universes

MAGNIFICENT ENIGMA

NOTES, GLOSSARY, INDEX