• Western cosmology arises, textually, from two different traditions, the Greek and the Hebrew. It is the latter, the "biblical" tradition, that gives us a world which is spoken into being and bespeaks its Creator.

• Two of the first philosophers of nature embody an enduring antithesis: the cosmology of change versus the cosmology of permanence.

• Empedocles uncovers the roots of all physical things and tells how Strife entangles them, but Anaxagoras declares that Mind rules the cosmos.

• The Atomists forge two ideas breathtaking in their simplicity and influence: indivisible units (atoms) and places where nothing is (space).

• The voice of Timaeus tells a story of how the physical cosmos began.

• Aristotle's writings on physics and the heavens establish concepts that undergirded much of humankind's understanding of the world for almost two millennia.

• A great ancient mathematician tells of the strange theory of Aristarchus, according to which the sun, not the earth, stands at the center of the world.

• "To measure the earth" defines geometry, and indeed Eratosthenes shows how to calculate the size of the whole earth.

• In a dialogue, Cicero lays out a smorgasbord of Roman cosmologies: Epicurean, Academic, Stoic.

• Plutarch's dialogue on the moon's "face" sets the agenda for lunar speculation for the next fifteen hundred years.

• The most influential astronomy textbook of all time smashes some enduring clichés about geocentrism.

• A late ancient follower of Ptolemy asks us to apply "a critical mind" to the Ptolemaic model.

• Two influential shapers of medieval learning bequeath their treasures of cosmic awe and delight.

• The greatest Jewish teacher of the Middle Ages articulates a non-naive monotheistic doctrine of creation and takes a critical view of geocentrism.

• Does the medieval poet adumbrate the four-dimensional geometry of the Big Bang?

• A medieval churchman, astronomer, and minister of finance considers the "economical" idea that the earth rather than the rest of the universe rotates every twenty-four hours.

• A cardinal envisages both an infinite universe that has no center and an earth that moves.

• With reluctant courage, and recognizing the "novelty and absurdity" of his own opinions, the founder of postmedieval cosmology dares to divulge his ideas on the motions of the earth.

• Two historians, one of literature and one of science, interpret Copernicus’s hymn to the sun.

• Two great reformers, one of theology and the other of astronomy, lay out similar principles for interpreting God's "books."

• The greatest of the naked-eye astronomers describes an event that for the first time proves the heavens themselves are in the grip of Time.

• Copernicus's first English translator presses his teacher's ideas towards infinity.

• The boldest of Copernican speculators, later burned at the stake for his ideas, shatters the Aristotelian doctrine of space.

• An ambitious professor inaugurates the age of the telescope by telling how he discovered the true face of the moon, the moons of Jupiter, and the secrets of the Milky Way.

• The first explorer of the moon's surface was not only a scientist observing data but an artist who understood painterly principles of light and space.

• An awed (and envious?) mathematician responds to Galileo's discoveries with speculations about moonmen and the inhabitants of Jupiter--and about the best orbiting space station of them all.

• A Catholic theologian mounts a spirited defense not only of Galileo but also of the kind of science he represents.

• A learned lay observer of the seventeenth-century intellectual scene is both entertained and bewildered amid the swirl of cosmological speculation.

• A twenty-four-year-old, standing on the brink of a brave new universe, boldly takes up the question of extraterrestrial life.

• The great philosopher, abhorring a vacuum, turns to celestial whirlpools to explain the structures of the heavens.

• A meditative mathematician peers anxiously into the twin abysses of the infinitesimal and the infinite.

•The epic poet presents our universe as a little point of light, our earth as a planet, and Satan as a vengeful astronaut.

• A dialogue about love and other worlds by the greatest French popularizer of Copernicus is translated by the first female English novelist.

• The physicist/mathematician against whom all others are measured lays down the principles that would govern the motions of bullets, buckets, apples, planets, and stars for more than two centuries.

• An inquisitive theologian and correspondent of Newton's asks a question that still refuses to go away: Why is there a cosmos?

• A groundbreaking seventeenth-century scientist looks back on the progress of the Copernican revolution, and his imagination takes flight.

• An enthusiastic defender of the Copernican system within an expanded, perhaps infinite universe recounts this system's theological advantages.

• Newton's rival and Newton's defender impugn each other's physics, logic, and piety.

• An astute application of Newton's physics transforms one celestial phenomenon from mystery to something déjà vu.

• A Puritan scientist-theologian allows science and religion to share their discourse.

• A theorist with a big imagination moves by way of poetic analogy from the Copernican solar system to a model of the Milky Way.

• The great philosopher not only imagines the Milky Way as a star system but also speculates upon innumerable "Milky Ways" in an infinite universe.

• A pioneer mathematician and theorist of light rhapsodizes upon the not-quite-infinite clockwork universe and its wheeling systems within systems.

• The leading astronomer of the eighteenth century "collects" nebulae and lays the foundation for the idea of stellar evolution.

• Napoleon's mathematics teacher describes the development of astronomy and his theory of a mechanistic universe.

• A clergyman offers the classic statement about a universe with purpose framed by a watchmaker God.

• A master of astronomy and logic explains why the night sky ought not to be dark.

• A learned physicist makes gravity sound like poetry.

• A pioneer of the science of ecology explores the principle of interconnectedness in the heavens as well as the earth.

• The poet and storyteller of the bizarre sketches a theory which, combining the realistic and the fantastic, sounds a lot like the Big Bang.

• America's first female professor of astronomy discovers a "telescopic comet," and speaks movingly of the astronomer's life--and of her observations of an eclipse.

• The first person to analyze starlight using a spectroscope recounts the moment when he solved the riddle of the nebulae.

• A scientist-historian shows how astronomy's advance as a science and its progress as a popular interest in the nineteenth century fueled each other.

• The "discoverers" of Martian "canals" ignite the world's imagination with speculation about life on the red planet.

• The second son of the evolutionist carries his father’s torch and his father’s methods beyond this earth.

• A writer of detective stories cherishes the universe as a great might-not-have-been.

• A mathematics professor makes cosmic mathematics beautiful for the non-mathematician.

• The greatest physicist of the twentieth century explains his world-bending concept: relativity.

• A legendary physics teacher explains, with a touch of satire, what relativity does and does not mean.

• The man who "invented" black holes conducts an intra-terrestrial thought experiment to illustrate the behavior of spacetime.

• A a groundbreaking astronomer and human "computer" classifies the stars.

• An astronomer who epitomizes the search for universal knowledge expounds the "construction" of the stars.

• A towering literary figure toasts Einstein, and the result is incisive and hilarious.

• A boxer-turned-astronomer presents a pattern of "red shifts" that supports a stunning conclusion: The whole universe is expanding.

• The most eloquent astronomer of his generation discusses entropy, time's arrow, and the mystery of order in the universe.

• A cleric proposes a "fireworks" theory of heavenly origins.

• The astronomer who coined the term "big bang" defends the other model of the expanding universe: steady state.

• A specialist in information theory devises analogies to help the imagination grasp cosmic scales, magnitudes, and mysteries.

• One of the most imaginative science fiction writers of the twentieth century writes the last chapter of the sun’s real-life biography.

• A reflective intellectual historian takes us into space for a look back at our own blue planet.

• An unconventional scientist re-animates an old conception: The Earth is a "she," and she is alive.

• Its foremost popular proponent expounds "the standard model" of cosmology.

• Two expositors of the anthropic principle offer their audacious "final" theory.

• The most famous cosmologist since Einstein creates a universe that needs no creation.

• A musician-turned-science-writer descants beautifully on black holes.

• An investigator of cosmic background radiation recounts how he and his team found the seeds of galaxies.

• Britain’s Astronomer Royal explains how a universe as astonishingly "fine tuned" as ours might actually be rather unsurprising.

• Darwinism (again) goes cosmic; Big Bang and Big Apple emerge as twins.

• A founder of "inflationary" cosmology explains his spectacular idea: how to get a universe for nothing.

• A scientific and literary gadfly offers an irreverent view of one of the orthodoxies of modern cosmology.

• A astronomer shares insights into the invisible: the dark matter of the universe.

• Two physicists muse upon the cosmological significance of mysterious, tiny, ten-dimensional things called superstrings.

• A planetary scientist and story-teller recounts the (perhaps exemplary) biography of our solar system.

• A mathematician explores the role of one of the most important elements that exist in the universe: mind.

• A historian of astronomy looks outward at the cosmos and inward at "our own nest," and meditates on their message.