Foreword by Benoit Mandelbrot
The authors have asked me to present to the reader this most attractive and wide-ranging book of theirs. But this book hardly needs being presented! It is so well-informed of the history of its subject that it stands by itself and deserves to be appreciated from at least two viewpoints. Firstly, as the second word in the title suggests, it introduces to a very wide potential readership many facts and theories of cosmology. The style is precise but highly personal, a relief after too many introductions beholden to a stylistic formula. Secondly, as the remainder of the title suggests, this book has the unusual distinction of being a notable contribution to the history of ideas.

Prologue
The 20th century was a great time for the science of the Universe – it was an era of true voyages of discovery, when both the covert shadows of the microworld and the breath-taking depths of the galaxy universe were penetrated. In the new realm of galaxies three totally unexpected cosmic phenomena were found: the cosmological redshift, the cosmic background radiation, and the large scale structures in the universe. These are cornerstones of modern cosmology.