Many of these books are in-print and available new. Some, however, are out-of-print but available used. All are available through libraries.

• Explorer of the Universe: A Biography of George Ellery Hale, by Helen Wright, READ THIS ONE FIRST

• Pauper & Prince: Ritchey, Hale, & Big American Telescopes, by Donald E. Osterbrock

• The Legacy of George Ellery Hale: Evolution of Astronomy and Scientific Institutions, in Pictures and Documents, edited by Helen Wright, Joan N. Warnow, and Charles Weiner

• The Mount Wilson Observatory: Breaking the Code of Cosmic Evolution, by Allan Sandage

• Ten Years' Work of a Mountain Observatory; The New Heavens; Beyond the Milky Way; The Depths of the Universe; Signals from the Stars , by George Ellery Hale (five short books by Hale written between 1915 and 1928)

• Walter Baade: A Life in Astrophysics, by Donald E. Osterbrock

• Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae, by Gale E. Christianson

• James E. Keeler: Pioneer American Astrophysicist and the Early Development of American Astrophysics, by Donald E. Osterbrock

• The Master of Light: A Biography of Albert A. Michelson, by Dorothy Michelson Livingston

• Days of Vintage, Years of Vision, by Midge Sherwood (contains a biography of Benjamin Davis Wilson after whom Mt. Wilson is named)

• Pasadena: Its Early Years, by Henry Markham Page (covers up to 1900)

• Men, Mirrors, and Stars, by G. Edward Pendray (ca. 1935)

• The Glass Giant of Palomar, by David O. Woodbury (ca. 1939 with later editions)

• The Perfect Machine: Building the Palomar Telescope, by Ronald Florence

• Telescopes, edited by Gerard P. Kuiper and Barbara M. Middlehurst (contains a chapter on the 200-inch telescope by Ira S. Bowen)

• First Light: The Search for the Edge of the Universe, by Richard Preston (partly about Palomar)

• Millikan's School: A History of the California Institute of Technology, by Judith R. Goodstein

• Yerkes Observatory 1892-1950: The Birth, Near Death, and Resurrection of a Scientific Research Institution, by Donald E. Osterbrock

• James Lick's Monument: The Saga of Captain Richard Floyd and the Building of the Lick Observatory, by Helen Wright

• Eye On the Sky: Lick Observatory's First Century, by Donald E. Osterbrock, John R. Gustafson and W. J. Shiloh Unruh

• The History of the Telescope, by Henry C. King

• A History of the Photographic Lens, by Rudolf Kingslake

• Camera Lenses: From Box Camera to Digital, by Gregory Hallock Smith

• The Mount Wilson Story, by John W. Robinson (a short booklet)

• The San Gabriels: Southern California Mountain Country, by John W. Robinson

• Sierra Madre's Old Mount Wilson Trail, by John W. Robinson

• Heninger Flats: The story of William K. Heninger and the area that bears his name, by Paul H. Rippens

• Mount Lowe: The Railway in the Clouds, by Charles Seims

• Mt. Lowe Power: The Magnificant Mountain Railway: The story of how it operated from a mechanical and electrical point of view, by John P. Harrigan