C B Newham

This book was originally given to me by my parents in 1980 and over the years I read it several times. My Dover edition is long gone now, but the text is freely available online as it's out of copyright (written in 1898). All of the early stuff is excellent and stands up well, over 100 years later. However, the book shows its age in the last chapters - nuclear physics was still in its infancy and, as I recall, the book puts forward the gravitational contraction theory for how the sun derives its energy - quaint, but totally wrong! It's still a great book and a lot better than what passes as history books these days. Highly recommended.