Others say...

"Essential tool"
As others have said, this is not a glossy, colorful coffee-table book. In fact, you won't find any color pictures in this book at all. Just lots of black and white text and drawings. And yet, I have found this book to be one of the most useful astronomy guides. Why? Two main reasons.

First of all, the star charts. The author shows you how to "star-hop" from a bright star to an obscure deep sky object, which makes finding it so much easier. He also includes textual directions on how to find the object, step by step, star by star.

Second reason is expectations. As the owner of a 6" telescope, I used to be disappointed when I first started this hobby that the views of deep sky objects weren't as fabulous as I had expected from seeing colorful pictures of nebulae, galaxies, and star clusters. Frequently these items seemed like just fuzzy, ghostly grayish images to me. Well, as this book explains, that's how they look to most of us with medium (6" to 8" telescopes). And to the naked eye they will never look as colorful as they do in photographs. This book rates objects by how they would look in binoculars, small telescopes of 3" to 5", and medium telescopes of 6" to 8". He'll also tell you how easy or hard it is to find every object, and what you can expect to see in each type of instrument. He also includes his own sketches of how some of these objects look through his 8" reflector. Often they look not much better than how I see them in my 6" reflector, which is a great comfort.

Excellent book for amateur astronomers - it will tell you exactly how to find the most interesting objects and what to expect to see once you do find them, depending on what instrument you're using.

"It Goes With a Telescope or Binoculars."
The book has a big list of things you can see with only a pair of binoculars. So I gave the nerds both binoculars and a telescope.

Very good book.

"excuse me, a beginner's book?"
Maybe I am even less talented than I thought, maybe I am just downright stupid, maybe problem is in my expectations, as I expected something more visual and less technical.. but this book is not a beginner's book. I bought a telescope for my son this xmas, and I wanted to know what the heck we are looking at once skies clear over Croatia. This book will not serve that purpose. IF I WERE an astronomy / physics anthusiast (NEVER!), THEN this book would have been a beginner's book.

"Starwatch"
I used this book for my beginning astronomy class I took online and it was very user friendly and the information is quite understandable. I really liked this book and the information it entails. Enjoy this book

"Harrington's Star Watch Shines"
An excellent beginner's book or a back-to-basics guide for expeienced observers, Harrington meticulously lays-out the celestial sphere and ways to find and enjoy it's wonders.

This patient step by step approach not only teaches the fundamentals and skills of stargazing, but calibrates our expectation realistically regrarding what we can expect to see depending on the instrument we use and the local conditions.

Harrington selects for us 125 fascinating objects to observe
using them to develop techniques for finding and viewing.

I would recommend this work as a great primer for neophyte amateur astronomers.