The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars

Product Description

A Best Book of 2020 NPRA Best Book of 2020 The EconomistA Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020 Smithsonian A Best Science & Technology Book of 2020 Library JournalA Must-Read Book to Escape the Chaos of 2020 NewsweekStarred review Booklist Starred review Publishers Weekly

An historically unprecedented disconnect between humanity and the heavens has opened. Jo Marchant’s book can begin to heal it.
For at least 20,000 years, we have led not just an earthly existence but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are–our art, religious beliefs, social status, scientific advances, and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. It’s a disconnect with a dire cost.

Our relationship to the stars and planets has moved from one of awe, wonder and superstition to one where technology is king–the cosmos is now explored through data on our screens, not by the naked eye observing the natural world. Indeed, in most countries modern light pollution obscures much of the night sky from view. Jo Marchant’s spellbinding parade of the ways different cultures celebrated the majesty and mysteries of the night sky is a journey to the most awe inspiring view you can ever see–looking up on a clear dark night. That experience and the thoughts it has engendered have radically shaped human civilization across millennia. The cosmos is the source of our greatest creativity in art, in science, in life.

To show us how, Jo Marchant takes us to the Hall of the Bulls in the caves at Lascaux in France, and to the summer solstice at a 5,000-year-old tomb at New Grange in Ireland. We discover Chumash cosmology and visit medieval monks grappling with the nature of time and Tahitian sailors navigating by the stars. We discover how light reveals the chemical composition of the sun, and we are with Einstein as he works out that space and time are one and the same. A four-billion-year-old meteor inspires a search for extraterrestrial life. The cosmically liberating, summary revelation is that star-gazing made us human.

Review

“With whirlwind curiosity and gripping storytelling, Marchant takes us on a trip through time and space, pointing out how our perceptions of the heavens have informed every step of our evolution as a civilization. Dazzling and profound, 
The Human Cosmos is a skyward gaze at the void we can never stop trying to fathom.”
—NPR Book Concierge

“A deft writer…
The Human Cosmos is a reminder that the forces that shape humanity far precede modern people and will persist long after we’re gone.”
—
The New York Times Book Review

“Marchant’s vast and fascinating story packs in plenty of human detail… An inspiring and persuasive argument. If humanity is in the gutter, at least some of us could be looking at the stars.”
—
The Guardian

“Marchant charts the history of humanity’s fascination with the night sky and explores the way the stars have shaped art, faith, science and society, and what our modern disconnect from the stars has cost us.”
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USA Today, “5 Books Not to Miss”

“Science journalist Marchant explores the relationship between humans and the celestial in this luminous and fascinating journey through science, religion, culture and everything in between.”
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Newsweek, “25 Must-Read Fall Fiction and Nonfiction Books to Escape the Chaos of 2020”

“A thought-provoking look at how human fascination with the night sky has influenced beliefs throughout history… Integrating science, history, philosophy and religion, Marchant’s epic account is one for readers to savor.”
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Publishers Weekly, starred review

“In a tour de force on par with
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (2015), Marchant argues that we need to experience the awe evoked by the unveiled night sky so that we, once again, feel profoundly connected to the cosmos and, more crucially, to earthly life, which is preciou