I agree with Jo, that Burnham had a mental disability. Probably he was autstic, judging from his lack of deep personal relationships and heavy focus on certain obsessions -- obsessions that actually served him and ourselves very well indeed. But he was capable of splendid work, as his Handbook proves. It's three volumes have always had, literally, a special place on my shelves -- not mixed with other books, but set apart, because they are unique and I treasure them. That he was fired by Lowell Observatory is shameful, if we are to believe the account by Tony Ortega in the Phoenix New Times. That firing ruined his life. I think there was professional jealousy from the start, when a non-academic was hired to carry out an important star survey. I suspect it reached the boiling stage when he produced a really magnificent book that eclipsed everything anyone else at the observatory was doing. After all, Clyde Tombaugh, another amateur working for Lowell, had discovered Pluto -- and now this book. What made it worse is that Lowell Observatory had refused to publish the Handbook and Burnham somehow put it out himself. I was struck by the article's account that Burnham suggested the observatory develop a gift shop and that they accommodate visitors better with a slide show; that he even paid for curtains (or was it blinds?) for the slides show out of his own pocket. The observatory rejected his efforts, fired him, and ten years later, did everything he had suggested. Ignoring his suggestions and firing him was just mean-spirited. He was a sensitive person who reached out through his disability in the best way he could, by writing about the things he loved, and he produced a masterpiece. Nothing before or since is equal to his Handbook, and I hope someone does update it. Years ago I called Astronomy Magazine about something, and found myself talking to Robert Burnham. Wow, Robert Burnham! I was floored to be speaking with this writer I so admired. I told him how much I loved his book. But it was the wrong Robert Burnham -- he was only the magazine's senior editor. I was pretty disappointed. There are souls who are a little different from the rest of us, and who deserve to be nurtured and honored. I think Robert Burnham Jr., the Handbook's author, is a perfect example of this. It's crappy, says something unpleasant about our society, that such a valuable person was trashed. Thanks for letting me shoot my mouth off -- Joe