Start with the wonder
Cosmos · Carl Sagan (1980)
Forty-five years old, some of the science superseded, and still the book that turns more people into amateur astronomers than anything else in print. Sagan is doing something other popularisers rarely attempt: connecting the physics to the history of how we found it out, and to what it might mean to be the thing doing the looking.
Pale Blue Dot · Carl Sagan (1994)
The later, sadder, more argumentative Sagan, on why we should go and what the going would cost. The passage about the photograph is famous enough to have become a meme; the rest of the book is better than the passage.
Then the physics
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry · Neil deGrasse Tyson (2017)
Twelve short chapters, no equations, and by some distance the fastest route to understanding what astrophysicists are actually talking about. Deliberately shallow and honest about it. Read it in a weekend and the other books on this list stop being opaque.
A Brief History of Time · Stephen Hawking (1988)
The famous one, and famously unfinished by its buyers. It is harder than its reputation because it is doing real conceptual work on relativity and quantum mechanics rather than describing results. Come to it after Tyson and it goes down considerably better.
Then go outside
Turn Left at Orion · Guy Consolmagno and Dan Davis (1989, repeatedly updated)
The observing book. Every object drawn as it will actually appear in a small telescope rather than as Hubble photographed it, which is the single most useful thing a beginner's guide can do, because the gap between the two is where most new telescope owners give up. Consolmagno is a Vatican astronomer, which is a fact people enjoy.
The Backyard Astronomer's Guide · Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer
The reference volume for the practical side: what equipment does what, what light pollution costs you, how to actually plan a night. Buy it before a telescope, not after.
Buy the book before the telescope
The commonest beginner mistake is a cheap department-store telescope bought on magnification claims, which produces a wobbly smear, which ends the hobby. Binoculars and Turn Left at Orion will show you more for less, and will tell you whether you actually want the telescope.
Fitting the universe into a real life
Astronomy rewards the same rhythm as everything else worth learning: a little, often, rather than a heroic month. That is the whole argument behind our 365 Days of World History and the rest of the 365 Daily Reads series, one page a day for a year. For the neighbouring shelves, see psychology for beginners and the best nonfiction books.
Common questions
What is the best astronomy book for a complete beginner?
Neil deGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry if you want the ideas fast, or Carl Sagan's Cosmos if you want to fall in love with the subject. Most people should read both, in that order.
What book should I buy before a telescope?
Turn Left at Orion. It draws every object as it looks through a small telescope rather than as a space probe photographed it, which is the expectation gap that ends most beginners' hobbies.
Is A Brief History of Time too hard for beginners?
It is harder than its sales suggest. Read Tyson first and Hawking becomes manageable; go straight to Hawking and you will probably stall around the chapter on the arrow of time.
Is Cosmos out of date?
Some of the specifics, yes, particularly on planetary science and cosmology. The reasoning, the history and the argument for why any of it matters have not dated at all.