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Summary: The Variable Star Menagerie
Review: This book is written for professional astronomers as a compendium of what is known (and unknown) about variable stars. (A lot of the "unknowns" are categorized as "poorly understood.") I consider the book very useful for amateur variable star observers, but general readers (it will be worth the effort) will likely need to refer to an introductory astronomical tutorial to interpret much of the material. The "menagerie" of variables is subdivided into six natural groups bearing the following names with the numbers of sub-classes in each group as shown. Eruptive (5), Pulsating [including Cepheids] (7), Rotating [including Pulsars] (5), Cataclysmic [including Novae] (5), Eclipsing binaries (4), and X-Ray binaries (1). The stars in the first four groups are presented as single stars that do "poorly understood" but weird and wonderful things such as radial pulsations. One subclass of pulsating variables is alternatively explained as a close binary with a common envelope. (Gamma-Ray bursters are not covered but many light curves of these enigmatic objects bear strong resemblance to those of some X-Ray binaries.) The book discusses a total of 279 different variable stars and provides light curves and graphed color information for 164 of them. The bibliography contains 521 references. Two pages of neat "addresses of interest" are given for new researchers to use to obtain further information. The book faithfully reflects a longstanding astronomical tradition of publishing very few "phase-coordinated" light curves and spectroscopic line profiles in the same study. If phase coordinated line profile information were to be incorporated with the light curves, the book might well become a paradigm flipping tool.
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