The constellation Cetus, from the sky atlas by Bayer (1603), as reproduced in Jay M. Pasachoff's The Peterson Field Guide to the Stars and Planets (Houghton Mifflin, $18 (pbk)). It joins several other recent astronomical and cosmological primers, including Arthur Upgren's Night Has a Thousand Eyes: A Naked-Eye Guide to the Sky, Its Science, and Lore (Plenum, $27.95), T. Padmanabhan's After the First Three Minutes: The Story of Our Universe (CUP, £35, $59.95, (hbk); £12.95, $19.95 (pbk)), Marcelo Gleiser's The Dancing Universe: From Creation Myths to the Big Bang (Dutton, $25.95) and Timothy Ferris's The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report (Weidenfeld/Simon and Schuster, £20, $25).