STARS AND CONSTELLATIONS

The successful if quirky formula of Limburg's What's-in-the-Name round-ups runs into trouble here. The biggest drawback is the inclusion, in an appendix, of only two small sky charts (for the northern and southern hemispheres). Nowhere is there any indication of, say, why Orion was thought to look like a hunter, a circumstance which makes Limburg's history of the hunter's mythological origins rather pointless. Similarly, his clear, non-technical explanation of the zodiac comes as the last entry when it would have been much more useful earlier on, and the scientific information is buried among miscellaneous astrological chitchat. We still find Limburg's eclectic good humor stimulating and although his star lore and origin tales are related in bits and pieces, there is much material here previously unavailable except in scattered, hard-to-get sources. An extra, but one that confirmed star-gazers will want to pore over.