Great books of the Western World, V16 Ptolemy, Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler

(Ptolemy's Almagest) This is one of the most difficult books I have ever read. Ptolemy's system is beautiful, and it boggles my mind to think that he was able to conceive of a model that fit nearly all the observable phenomena. He wrote the book for people with a well developed sense of Euclidean

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geometry as well as some conics, and does not over-exert himself in explaining the steps of his logic. This is probably the main reason for its being so difficult for me. In any case, it is a work of astounding genius and worth becoming acquainted with if you can bring yourself to work through it, though you may need to do so as part of a group. Taliaferro's translation is fairly good, though there are some annoying errors. As far as I know, there is only one other English translation of the book, and it has a comparable number of errors.

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