Starborn: How the Stars Made Us (and Who We Would Be Without Them)

By: Roberto Trotta

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: An astronomer "who writes like a poet" (Wall Street Journal) gives a sweeping, "beautifully written" (Nature) inquiry into how the night sky has shaped human history For as long as humans have lived, we have lived beneath the stars. But under the glow of today&’s artificial lighting, we have lost the intimacy our ancestors once shared with the cosmos. In Starborn, cosmologist Roberto Trotta reveals how stargazing has shaped the course of human civilization. The stars have served as our timekeepers, our navigators, our muses—they were once even our gods. How radically different would we be, Trotta also asks, if our ancestors had looked up to the night sky and seen… nothing? He pairs the history of our starstruck species with a dramatic alternate version, a world without stars where our understanding of science, art, and ourselves would have been radically altered.  Revealing the hidden connections between astronomy and civilization, Starborn summons us to the marvelous sight that awaits us on a dark, clear night—to lose ourselves in the immeasurable vastness above.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
Book Size:: 352 Pages
ISBN-13:: 9781541674783
Related ISBNs:: 9781541674776
Publisher:: Basic Books
Date of Addition:: 02/23/24
Copyrighted By:: Roberto Trotta
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: History, Nonfiction, Science, Mathematics and Statistics, Philosophy
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.