Offered to the reader's attention, the book of the famous American astronomer is a fascinatingly written popular exposition of the foundations of planetary astronomy, taking into account all its successes until the beginning of 1963 inclusive. Recall that by this time we already had rich material accumulated by artificial Earth satellites, flights to the Moon of Soviet space rockets, photographs of the far side of the Moon, the Mariner-2 span near Venus. Over the years, new successes have been added to this list, so the book is somewhat outdated. However, now this is inevitable for any book on planetary astronomy, no matter whether it is popular or "serious" - this branch of science is developing too quickly.