Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Book Review: Still As Bright: An Illuminating History of the Moon, from Antiquity to Tomorrow by Christopher Cokinos; Pegasus Books; 2024; Hardcover, 448 pages; $32.00.

From the moment you open the cover of this volume, the reader is literally moonbound.

Author Cokinos has written a suburb book about our nightlight in the sky, Earth’s celestial partner, the Moon. His early eyepiece fascination with the Moon, dashing across the rugged lunar landscape via a three-inch reflector telescope stuck with him – and the reader is forever enriched thanks to that early attraction.

This book is true treasure thanks to his tasty style of poetic and philosophic prose and, as he observes that the Moon is more than a rock. It’s a story. Within the 13 chapters, you’ll find a rich tapestry of space exploration events that has captured – sometimes failing – to tell us the true story of our Moon.

The blend of Space Race anecdotes with the allure of our Moon that still propels our exploration instincts is skillfully told, underscoring humankind’s attributes, albeit sometimes also demonstrating our shortcomings.

“When I look at the Moon I see a scumble of violence and change that I register as terrain and that my mind knows is time,” the author writes. Elsewhere in the book you’ll find Cokinos grappling with the UN Outer Space Treaty, who owns the Moon debates, protecting cultural heritage sites on the Moon, and as he points out: “So if the Moon belongs to us, it means the first thing we do is talk with the lawyers.”

By completing this honest, witty and wondrous read, it’s a given you’ll never look at the Moon the same way again. “The Moon has proven to be a patient teacher,” Cokinos explains.

So grab this book and let’s all be students of the unknown together.

Image credit: The Planetary Society/Inside Outer Space screengrab

Christopher Cokinos is a Professor, Emeritus of English at the University of Arizona and is the author of The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars, as well as Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds.  His articles, poems and essays about space and astronomy have been published in Sky & Telescope, the Los Angeles Times, has been featured in other venues, including NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

I want to spotlight a recent interview with Cokinos about this brilliant book. Take a view of “Talking with author Chris Cokinos about STILL AS BRIGHT” – a video from The Planetary Society’s Book Club, hosted by the firm-footed, but out of this world interviewer, Mat Kaplan, at:

https://www.planetary.org/video/talking-with-author-chris-cokinos

For more information on this book, go to:

http://www.pegasusbooks.com/books/still-as-bright-9781639365692-hardcover