This is a time when it’s great to settle in with a good book and just read, and we have excerpts from three new books in this issue. One takes you through our galactic neighborhood, known as the Local Group. The second explains the search for mysterious dark matter. And the third takes you back to the early days of the Apollo program, when a lone engineer was lobbying on behalf of a better path to the Moon. We also have short items about a couple of other books, including one that’s filled with amazing illustrations from Soviet magazines about space exploration (including the one featured on our cover).