Alan Dyer

The touchstone for contemporary stargazers. This classic, groundbreaking guide has been the go-to field guide for both beginning and experienced amateur astronomers for nearly 30 years. The fourth edition brings Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer’s invaluable manual completely up-to-date. Setting a new standard for astronomy guides, it will serve as the touchstone for the next generation of stargazers as well as longtime devotees. Technology and astronomical understanding are evolving at a breathtaking clip, and to reflect the latest information about observing techniques and equipment, this massively revised and expanded edition has been completely rebuilt (an additional 48 pages brings the page count to 416). Illustrated throughout with all-new photographs and star charts, this edition boasts a refreshed design and features five brand-new chapters, including three essential essays on binocular, telescope and Moon tours by renowned astronomy writer Ken Hewitt-White. With new content on naked-eye sky sights, LED lighting technology, WiFi-enabled telescopes and the latest advances in binoculars, telescopes and other astronomical gear, the fourth edition of The Backyard Astronomer’s Guide is sure to become an indispensable reference for all levels of stargazers. New techniques for observing the Sun, the Moon and solar and lunar eclipses are an especially timely addition, given the upcoming solar eclipses in 2023 and 2024. Rounding out these impressive offerings are new sections on dark sky reserves, astro-tourism, modern astrophotography and mobile phone astrophotography, making this book an enduring must-have guide for anyone looking to improve his or her astronomical viewing experience. The Backyard Astronomer’s Guide also features a foreword by Dr. Sara Seager, a Canadian-American astrophysicist and planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an internationally recognized expert in the search for exoplanets.

Although historians have always studied towns, widespread interest in urban history as a specialised historical field is relatively recent. This new fashion has stimulated the development of a major controversy about the fortunes of towns in England between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some see them as prone to crisis and frequently subject to decay, while others have held that many of them prospered in these centuries. This book guides the reader through the controversy, summarises the opposing arguments, and adds new insights derived from the author’s own research. Alan Dyer argues that the problem lay in the rise and decline of regional economies rather than the rise and decline of the towns which lay in those regions. An extensive bibliography with notes helps the reader to come to his or her own conclusions.

Although historians have always studied towns, widespread interest in urban history as a specialised historical field is relatively recent. This new fashion has stimulated the development of a major controversy about the fortunes of towns in England between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some see them as prone to crisis and frequently subject to decay, while others have held that many of them prospered in these centuries. This book guides the reader through the controversy, summarises the opposing arguments, and adds new insights derived from the author’s own research. Alan Dyer argues that the problem lay in the rise and decline of regional economies rather than the rise and decline of the towns which lay in those regions. An extensive bibliography with notes helps the reader to come to his or her own conclusions.

Famed for his novels of the American frontier (notably the Leatherstocking Tales) and of the sea, and also the author of a large body of social and political writings, James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) received mixed reviews from his contemporaries, who generally enjoyed the adventure tales but abhored his social preachings. His posthumous reputation has fluctuated widely. Savagely trashed by, among others, Mark Twain in 1895 for his literary offenses, Cooper was resurrected in 1931 by critic Robert E. Spiller, who viewed him as a profound social critic. By the mid-twentieth century, Cooper was widely praised as a pioneer in the development of the American social and political novel, though his literary qualities remained subject to attack in some quarters. Cooper has continued to be studied from myriad points of views and critical stances both as a writer and as a critic. The immense body of criticism has been carefully channeled in this annotated bibliography of 1,943 reviews, journal articles, newspaper articles and editorials, dissertations, and books. The material is organized in chapters by broad subject category--Bibliography, Biography, General Studies, Frontier and Indian Novels, Literature of the Sea, Social and Political Writings, and Miscellaneous Publications; where appropriate the chapters are subdivided according to individual Cooper publications, with further divisions relatings to materials written before and after Cooper's death. This arrangement, together with a fascinating introductory survey of his critical reception and full author, and editor, and subject indexes, allows the researcher to trace the various topics and themes that have occupied a who's who of literary, intellectual, and social critics from 1820 to the present.