The Ways of the Planets

Though it has been supplanted by later scientific discovery, this 1912 volume is as much a love letter to the night sky as it is a compendium of the state of astronomical knowledge at the turn of the 20th century, and so it remains a lovely read for those who understand the romance of scientific inquiry. The observational advice of this little book is still entirely useful-its tips for finding Mercury, Mars, and Venus by the naked eye are clear and concise-but even more vitally, its ponderings on the beauty of the planets manage still, a century later, to bring us Earthlings a little closer to those distant worlds. MARTHA EVANS MARTIN (d. 1925) also wrote the classic guide to naked-eye astronomy The Friendly Stars.