By chance I came across an astronomy book published in 2008 titled
Shrouds of the Night: Masks of the Milky Way and Our Awesome New View of
Galaxies, by David L. Block and Kenneth C. Freeman (ISBN: 978-0-387-78974-3).

It is an absolutely beautiful book, not just for its impressive photographs, many
of which date back to the earliest days of astrophotography and have not been
shown widely before, but for the quality of its writing. As with the images, you
will learn many things about astronomical history you may not be familiar with.

For example, it seems that Edwin Hubble took quite a bit about classifying
galaxies from a Mr. John Reynolds. Hubble ended up being the one with a space
telescope in his name, while Reynolds is a historical footnote. An entire chapter
is devoted to this event.

The price of the book is $40, but for once I feel it is entirely justified and in fact
you are getting a bargain when you see how rich in detail this work is. Shrouds of
the Night harks back to the way astronomy used to be and the way they
presented it to a curious world.

More information may be found on this Web page:

http://www.springer.com/astronomy/practical+astronomy/book/978-0-387-78974-3