by Bernd Brunner
Yale University Press, $25.00, 290 pages
We Earthlings have a strange and wonderful relationship with our first satellite. It affects all life on our planet, it inhabits our dreams, it represents our greatest achievement, and our biggest aspirations. Benrd Brunner’s exquisite Moon: A Brief History explores our relationship to our nearest celestial neighbor. From poetry, religious texts, scientific journals and screenplays, humans have obsessed over her. Brunner traces the cultural impact, and the biological effects of life with, and speculates on what would happen without the Moon. Drawing on multiple, varied and unrelated sources, Brunner’s Moon, is emotional, and sensual. I deeply recommend this book to anyone who has ever looked for The Man in the Moon, and wondered, even for a moment, why it has taken us so long to consider going back for a return visit.
Reviewed by Bradley Wright