This is a book review of The Short Story of the Universe: A Pocket Guide to the History, Structure, Theories & Building Blocks of the Cosmos by Gemma Lavender.
The Short Story of the Universe: A Pocket Guide to the History, Structure, Theories & Building Blocks of the Cosmos, by Gemma Lavender (Laurence King), 2022. Pp. 224, 21.5 × 15.5 cm. Price £14.99 (paperback, 978 0 85782 938 2).
The many chapters are collected into four parts: "Structure" (two pages per chapter), "History and Future" (one), "Components" (usually two) and Theories (one). Some examples: "Spacetime", "Stars", "Elements";"Forging the Elements", "Birth of the Moon", "The Future of the Universe"; "Elliptical Galaxies", "Wolf-Rayet Stars", "Uranus"; "Multiverse", "Stellar Spectroscopy", "Galaxy Evolution"; the second part is by far the longest. This is a beautiful and well produced book and would provide not only a good introduction to astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology but also, despite the lack of full traditional references, enough information so that the interested reader could easily find further information on the topic.