Geocentric model work, the "Almagest", was the culmination of centuries of work by Hellenic, Hellenistic and Babylonian astronomers. For over a millennium European and Islamic astronomers assumed it was the correct cosmological model. Because of its influence, people sometimes wrongly think the Ptolemaic system is identical with the geocentric model. Ptolemy argued that the Earth was a sphere in the center of the universe, from the simple observation that half the stars were above the horizon and half were below the horizon at any time (stars on rotating stellar sphere), and the assumption that the stars were all at some modest distance
Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency if he would instead be interested in writing an encyclopedia detailing the history of the CIA. Smith agreed as he felt the CIA was highly relevant to military history. "Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency" was first published in 2003 by Facts on File. It was released in both hardcover and paperback formats. An eBook edition was published the same year. Additionally an eBook was also published in 2003 in Great Britain. In the "Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency", Smith discusses and defines key concepts relating to intelligence gathering, including "clandestine mentality", a colloquial term used to characterize what