Books on Cosmology of Stellar Objects

[peteb]

I have been reading Kip Thorne's marvelous book ""Black Holes and Time Warps" to familiarize myself with general relativity. Along the way, I have found he discusses many fascinating cosmological topics that I would like to explore further. I am looking for books about the various types of stellar objects in the universe, such as black holes, white dwarfs, quasars, pulsars, supermassive and stellar mas black holes, gamma ray bursters, etc. Here are two of this type of book representative of what I have bought so far:

"Cosmic Catastrophes: Exploding Stars, Black Holes, and Mapping the Universe"
Author J. Craig Wheeler
Cambridge University Press (2007), Edition: 2, Hardcover, 356 pages
Publication date 2007
ISBN 0521857147 / 9780521857147

and

"Cosmological Enigmas: Pulsars, Quasars, and Other Deep-Space Questions "
Author Mark Kidger
The Johns Hopkins University Press (2007), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 264 pages
Publication date 2007
ISBN 0801884608 / 9780801884603

These are the types and level of books I am looking for to add to my library and to educate myself on these topics, but although I have browsed all the usual internet book sites, I am unable to really find much else along these lines. So I am asking if any of the folks here have any other suggestions for me to review that are in line with the scopes of these books, which are right in line with what I seek. Incidentally, I am a retired BSEE so I can handle (and prefer) books that are a step above the no-math general public level, IOW books on a level similar to those I list above, books that would be, say, introductory level for university undergrads and so on. However, I am not a physicist so nothing too advanced like grad-level math-intensive stuff. This is just for myself to continue learning during my retirement years.

Does anyone here have any further suggestions of books I might find interesting? I am surprised that there are not the huge variety of books on this such as there are for, say, relativity itself or QM.

Thanks for any advice.

Pete B

 

[Almsco]

I would recommend looking into "The Universe in a Nutshell" by Stephen Hawking. It's a great introduction to modern cosmology and covers topics such as black holes, the big bang, dark matter and dark energy, and more. It also has some math, but it's mostly accessible for readers without an advanced background in physics. There's also "Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity" by James Hartle which is more of an intermediate-level book and provides a good overview of the mathematics of general relativity.