Perspective

"Coming of the Age in the Milky Way" by Timothy Ferris is the history of astronomy from the early stargazers who were inexplicably drawn to the stars through the major advancements made by astrophysicists and other scientists who ventured into untouched territory from Newton's law of gravity and to Einstein's theory of general relativity and into the subatomic world of quantum physics.

The book is narrated by its author and is told generally in the third person, although there are some flashes of first-person narrative interspersed throughout the book. There probably could be no better source to write this book. Ferris is considered the best popular-science writer in modern times according to the Christian Science Monitor. The Washington Post referred to Ferris as "the best science writer of his generation." His background in journalism helped him to maintain a reporter's unbiased approach to the subject matter.

Ferris is...