THERE are two ways of approaching astronomy. Either you congratulate the
scientific world on the huge amount of information it has amassed about the planets,
stars and galaxies. Or you revel in the challenge presented by a host of celestial
mysteries, confident that there is a mass of work still to be done before everything
has been sorted out—and that there are plenty of reasons for employing more
astronomers and using bigger and better telescopes, spacecraft and computers.
Dina Prialnik’s An Introduction to the Theory of Stellar Structure and
Evolution (CUP, £15.95, ISBN 0521650658) lies in the first camp.…
