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I picked this up to better educate myself about the realities and fantasies of interstellar travel. The book largely confines itself to what we know or strongly suspect to be possible today, which makes it perhaps a bit disappointing since of course faster-than-light travel is completely and utterly theoretical at the present time. Nonetheless, it's an intriguing reference, not in the least because of the wealth of history presented in it. For instance, there have been extensive designs of several varieties of interstellar craft, and even a few prototypes built (a chemically-driven version of a nuclear-pulse rocket - which would be powered by shaped, controlled fusion explosions - was built and tested thirty years ago).

The strangest aspect of the book is the way they talk about accomplishing things in "only a few centuries", or "as little as two thousand years". While I realize that in galactic terms these are infinitesimal periods of time, it often seems as though the authors have not truly related these spans to the human element. Four hundred years ago the western world was still digging out of feudalistic society, and the printing press was still a pretty neat thing. Considering how hard it is to get even small segments of society to agree on how to run things for even a few decades, trying to manage even a smallish space ark for a few centuries is a massive task of social engineering - unless, perhaps, we perfect cryogenic technologies, or can efficiently push ships up to relativistic velocities (80% of light speed and higher).

Still, it's an extremely useful reference, not the least for the list of the closest 100 or so stars to our own contained in an appendix. Although the publication Proximity Zero by Terry Kepner is an even more complete resource on that count.