Dava Sobel's "The Glass Universe"

In case you didn't receive this book as a Christmas present (as I did), I enthusiastically urge you to get/order it now!  Dava Sobel is the award-winning author of best-sellers such as Longitude and Galileo's Daughter.  In this book, she documents (in the words of the book's subtitle) "how the ladies of the Harvard Observatory took the measure of the stars" -- including variable stars.  For those of you brought up in the CCD era, "the glass universe" refers to the half-million photographic plates which were amassed by the Harvard Observatory, and which were measured and interpreted by "Edward Pickering's women".  Pickering was the "co-father" of the AAVSO, which took root at the Harvard Observatory over a century ago.  But this is more than a book about stars: I was aware of most of the "facts" in this book, but Sobel, with her superb story-telling ability, makes the facts and the people come alive.  This book was named one of the best books of the year by several prestigious publications and, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, is "a joy to read".  It really is.