"One book dominated astronomy for nearly one-thousand four-hundred years. This was the Almagest of Claudius Ptolemy. Why was just one book so influential and so dominant that it took so long to be surpassed?"

read an article about the history of the Almagest here ~~
http://www.star-names.freeserve.co.uk/almagest.html

view the Almagest here ~~
http://astro.isi.edu/reference/almagest.html