The other books in the Amazon teaser didn't seem to be exactly what I was looking for, although I don't doubt there is something out there. It just doesn't seem as compelling as when I was a kid.

There were two phenomenally good books I devoured when I was a kid, Clarke's "The Exploration of Space", and "The Challenge of the Spaceship". The latter, in particular, really made a deep impression on me, it concentrated on and made the case for the cultural (as opposed to technological or economic)benefits to be derived from space travel. But they both, as I recall, concentrate on solar system exploration.

The cover art of the paperbacks is still how I visualize a spaceship: a sort of flying oil refinery, all tanks, pipes and conduit hung on a frame of steel girders and struts, rocket nozzles at one end and a spherical crew compartment, bristling with antennas, at the other.

There was one book I read as a kid that did really leap ahead to interstellar travel, although it was of course highly speculative in nature, but as I recall, strictly faithful to the science of the 50s. I can't remember the name or the author now, but I vividly remember the cover art. It depicted a man's two hands, on either side of a porthole on a spaceship hull. Outside the ship, neatly framed by the edges of the port, is a contact binary star.

Wow. I still have dreams about that.