Includes bibliographical references (p. [173]-182) and index.

Prologue: the big picture -- Standard cosmological model -- The first gas clouds -- The first stars and black holes -- The reionization of cosmic hydrogen by the first galaxies -- Observing the first galaxies -- Imagining the diffuse fog of cosmic hydrogen -- Epilogue: from our galaxy's past to its future.

Abraham Loeb starts from first principles, tracing the theoretical foundations of cosmology and carefully explaining the physics behind them. Topics include the gravitational growth of perturbations in an expanding universe, the abundance and properties of dark matter halos and galaxies, reionization, the observational methods used to detect the earliest galaxies and probe the diffuse gas between them--and much more.-- Source other than Library of Congress