Weird and wonderful space books

[purpleivan]

The post that @Nivee~ made a few minutes ago got me thinking. What weird and wonderful books do people have related to spaceflight, astronomy etc.

The oldest possessions I have are a couple of little books, The Observer Book of Manned Spaceflight, and the equivalent for unmanned. Nothing particularly strange about that, except they were published in 1977, so the space shuttle was something in the future spacecraft section.

My family also used to have an illustrated encyclopedia from 1913, that had a description of the solar system without Pluto in it.

[p1t1o]

I picked up some nice 70's and 80's literature on space weapons

Ironically from a CND charity bookshop

 

Tiny bookshops are the best. Often the science books are quite obscure because nobody that routinely go to charity shops recognise them, or are interested. And some of them can be quite rare - Those books I mention, I think I spent £20. I looked them up on amazon and the total was closer to £200.

 

Oh and I picked up a quantum physics primer published in 1946 just the other day. Its not even my field but its just really interesting to have/see literature from the history of science.