• Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Early relativistic cosmology; 3. The observational revolution; 4. The observational trail 1931, the determination of H0 and the age dilemma; 5. Changing times 1945–1965: New techniques and new people; 6. The extension of the redshift apparent magnitude diagram to faint galaxies 1956–1995; 7. The classical steady state cosmological model and its observational tests; 8. The cosmic microwave background, an historical account; 9. The origin of the light elements; 10. A new primordial calculation of Y and D/H; 11. The new observational evidence and its interpretation: (a) quasi-stellar objects and redshifts; 12. The new observational evidence and its interpretation: (b) ejection phenomena and energetics; 13. Modern Friedmann cosmology; 14. Standard cosmology; 15. New cosmological models; 16. The observational evidence explained in terms of the quasi-steady state model; 17. The intrinsic redshift problem; 18. Creation centers and black holes; 19. Modern observations of faint galaxies and related objects; 20. Large scale distribution of matter; 21. A brief account of the radiation fields in the universe: the observations and their interpretation; 22. Summary; 23. Some unsolved problems.

'Professor Sir Fred Hoyle, Britain's greatest living astrophysicist … launches his most comprehensive attack against the Big Bang theory, in a book with the archly subversive title A Different Approach to Cosmology. … when Hoyle makes a cosmic pronouncement, it is invariably worth hearing … Together with two other respected astrophysicists, Hoyle systematically reviews the evidence for the Big Bang theory, and gives it a good kicking … it's hard not to be impressed by the audacity of the demolition job. The supposedly impressive evidence for galaxies being more crowded together in the past, they argue, emerged from woefully incomplete surveys of the night sky. Now the surveys are complete, the results tally nicely with the Steady State theory. As for the cooking of hydrogen into other elements, Hoyle and his colleagues show that ordinary stars are quite capable of doing this. And when they do, moreover, they fill the universe with a feeble amount of heat - just as observed. … I can only hope that I possess one-thousandth of Hoyles' fighting spirit when I, like him, have reached my 85th year.' Robert Matthews, The Sunday Telegraph