The Moon - Oliver Morton ****

Like most amateur astronomers, as a teenager I found the Moon by far the most rewarding subject for observation with my little telescope. Stars remained just points. The planets showed little detail. But the Moon became a landscape I could explore. Reading Oliver Morton's book brought back that feeling of fascination with our nearest neighbour in space, an engagement that was intensified for me by the book's exploration of the Apollo programme and Morton's regular excursions into science fiction references, most notably a lengthy stroll through Heinlein's classic The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

There's a lot to like here, whether it's Morton's description of the cramped conditions in the lunar module, the consideration of the collision that is thought to have caused the Moon to be formed or the lyrical, almost polemical exploration of the sadness felt by those who witnessed the Apollo 11 landing and assumed it was a beginning of something wonderful, not an ending. There's also a very realistic take on the practical difficulties of having any kind of financially self-sustaining Moon colony.

There are some negatives. Some parts of the text are a little dull - going on too long about reflected light from the two bodies, the thin fact splurge sections and some tangential material that has little to do with the Moon itself. Morton's style can have a portentous tone that veers into the irritating when there seems to be a deliberate attempt at artiness, such as 'Energy comes down from the sky, energy goes back out to the sky, energy makes no difference worth the telling in between.' or 'They have no more relevance to the shape of the surface they sit on than the trace of a kiss has to the contours of the cheek.'

One last moan - I really didn't get the little right justified (hence almost unreadable) snippets of text that now and then cropped up mid sentence for no obvious reason. It just spoiled the flow.

The complaints, though, are essentially stylistic. There's loads of good material in here from a journalist who has spent a lot of time dealing with space topics (even though he's an editor for the Economist). The Moon is usually ignored, if not cursed for being irritatingly bright by professional astronomers - but Morton reminds us what an important part of our night sky and our culture it forms.

Hardback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...

Zero Degrees of Empathy [The Science of Evil] – Simon Baron-Cohen ***

I’ve been a real fan of previous books by Simon Baron-Cohen like The Essential Difference , so opening this was one was a pleasant prospect. What I found was a book that wasn’t bad … but that could have been a lot better. I got the impression of a book that had been rushed out without a lot of work going into it. The thesis at the heart of the book – that one of the important ‘circuits’ of the brain is the one dealing with empathy, and that individuals sit on an empathy spectrum, with some residing at zero degrees of empathy – is an interesting one. Baron-Cohen introduces us to three key personality types he defines as ‘zero-negative’ including psychopaths, plus types that are ‘zero-positive’ like those with Asperger’s. In a way both of these definitions are odd, in that his zero-negatives can actually have a lot of the kind of empathy that involves being able to read another person’s emotional state, and his zero-negatives can have a lot of the kind of empathy i...

Search This Blog