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The Wild Dark: Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light
At a time when most people on Earth live in regions of acute light pollution, Craig Childs takes us on a journey to rediscover the awesome power of night itself. A night sky is not an absence of light; it is the presence of the universe. In The Wild Dark, master storyteller Craig Childs embarks on a quest to bike from the blinding lights of the Las Vegas Strip to one of the darkest spots in North America. Childs is a fearless explorer of both the natural world and the human imagination, making him the perfect guide to help us rediscover the heavens and to ask: "What does it do to us to not see the night sky?" In a book that is at once an adventure story, a field guide, and a celebration of wonder, Childs invites us to look up and to look inward, eyes wide and sparkling with stars.
212 pages, Hardcover
Published May 27, 2025
About the author
Craig Childs
37 books439 followersCRAIG CHILDS is a commentator for NPR's Morning Edition, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Men's Journal, Outside, The Sun, and Orion. He has won numerous awards including the 2011 Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award, 2008 Rowell Award for the Art of Adventure, the 2007 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, and the 2003 Spirit of the West Award for his body of work.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
August 12, 2026
4.5 stars rating, ALL the stars reading! (Haha, a sort of pun.) For real tho: I loved this exploration of the dark night sky, told as the author's journey biking from Vegas (Bortle 9) to the darkest sky desert area (Bortle 1). It was informative, thoughtful, and dare I say a bit poetic.
Readers, I did not know about the Bortle rating system before picking up this book - a way to rate how dark the sky is / how many stars you can see, named after the guy who invented it (last name Bortle). Childs structures his story in 9 chapters, one for each Bortle rating. Each chapter follows him and a friend as they bike together into progressively darker skies, with Childs remarking on what he can see / not see, as well as some of what the realities of the experience are like.
Throughout each chapter, Childs also raises some issues of what it takes to preserve dark night skies, whether official designations are worth it, and relays some stories of his own other travels to dark sky areas. He includes quotes and experiences from other folks. He includes some of his own opinions / conclusions, but not in an intrusive way.
This book made me look up what Bortle ratings I have lived within throughout my lifetime. In this case, you're lucky if you're older, because the further back in time you go, the darker most areas were. I was lucky to spend high school years in a high desert setting which was a Bortle 3 at the time. And honestly, seeing skies like that changes you. As it should.
I've read Childs before and enjoyed it, but this book was something special for me, I think because I already love the topic. It was a slim book, but weighty, if you get me. I liked to read it one chapter at a time, right before bed. So calming.
Readers, I did not know about the Bortle rating system before picking up this book - a way to rate how dark the sky is / how many stars you can see, named after the guy who invented it (last name Bortle). Childs structures his story in 9 chapters, one for each Bortle rating. Each chapter follows him and a friend as they bike together into progressively darker skies, with Childs remarking on what he can see / not see, as well as some of what the realities of the experience are like.
Throughout each chapter, Childs also raises some issues of what it takes to preserve dark night skies, whether official designations are worth it, and relays some stories of his own other travels to dark sky areas. He includes quotes and experiences from other folks. He includes some of his own opinions / conclusions, but not in an intrusive way.
This book made me look up what Bortle ratings I have lived within throughout my lifetime. In this case, you're lucky if you're older, because the further back in time you go, the darker most areas were. I was lucky to spend high school years in a high desert setting which was a Bortle 3 at the time. And honestly, seeing skies like that changes you. As it should.
I've read Childs before and enjoyed it, but this book was something special for me, I think because I already love the topic. It was a slim book, but weighty, if you get me. I liked to read it one chapter at a time, right before bed. So calming.
June 16, 2025
I've been a Craig Child's fan for 20ish years now and his newest book (pre-ordered) brought a wave of nostalgia for his writing style. Effortlessly imaginative, lovely prose, adventure embarking, scientific explanations and history are all weaved together so beautifully.
Childs' writing is art. And like all good art it inspires and calls to action all good folks who think our connection to the night sky is worth protecting. Both for the physical benefits the dark brings to us but also for the intrinsic beauty that is part of our lineage since time immemorial. Truly, what DOES it mean to lose our connection to the larger universe via the night sky? And what lengths are we willing to go to preserve this sacred connection?
Childs' writing is art. And like all good art it inspires and calls to action all good folks who think our connection to the night sky is worth protecting. Both for the physical benefits the dark brings to us but also for the intrinsic beauty that is part of our lineage since time immemorial. Truly, what DOES it mean to lose our connection to the larger universe via the night sky? And what lengths are we willing to go to preserve this sacred connection?
February 25, 2025
As a lover of the Southwestern United States, especially the people, flora, fauna, and geology I was in for a marvelous treat. As Craig and his friend, Irvin, cycle away from the garish lights of Las Vegas towards the darkest bit of Nevada, they stop to not just look up and see more and more stars becoming visible, but admire petroglyphs, shy desert animals, help and be helped by strangers, and recount stories. My favorite one was Craig's reenactment of the Navajo story of Black God and trickster Coyote. They pass nearby that blot on the landscape "City" art installation by Heizer (my opinion) near the end; Craig kindly makes no disparaging comments. They see the Milky Way dancing like a unique species at the end of their journey. Light pollution is an easy fix, he believes. He has me convinced.
Craig chooses his words carefully, giving you vivid pictures of what he's seeing. He's a terrific writer.
If this taught me anything, it's to look up, look around, look down, slow down, take care of the land, and turn off that bloody light.
I was given an advanced copy by Torrey House.
Craig chooses his words carefully, giving you vivid pictures of what he's seeing. He's a terrific writer.
If this taught me anything, it's to look up, look around, look down, slow down, take care of the land, and turn off that bloody light.
I was given an advanced copy by Torrey House.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 11, 2026
I really enjoyed this book and (ironically) bringing to light the disastrous artificial luminosity of our planet. LED lights, and their white-blue blinding effect, essentially remove the nights sky for most areas where we live. Our older versioned lumens, passing an electric current through sealed gas, instead of using semiconductor material. In the 90s lights were softer, more oranges and yellows.
I will try in 2026 to reach a Bortle 1 zone, where I can gaze into the heavens, visually unimpeded. Take some time to be still, and appreciate the view that our ancestors had nightly access to 💫 ✨
I will try in 2026 to reach a Bortle 1 zone, where I can gaze into the heavens, visually unimpeded. Take some time to be still, and appreciate the view that our ancestors had nightly access to 💫 ✨
February 17, 2026
4.5 Childs is the rare explorer, a true adventurer and an adept raconteur who manages to impart any number of scientific topics while sharing his love affair with the natural world. A more sparing proclamation of his devotion would have rendered this a five rating. But such an enchanting tale.
July 12, 2026
I became a fan of the author after reading “Atlas of a Lost World,” one of my very favorite nonfiction books ever. “The Wild Dark” does not disappoint by lamenting the loss of the night sky to light pollution. I am an avid skywatcher and (very) amateur astronomer and I was so excited by the book that I couldn’t wait to get outside.
September 2, 2026
This is the type of book that will go triple platinum in a group of grubby, dystopian era kids who have never seen the sky because they live underground. They’ll have a singular copy of the book with a homemade cover because the real cover was ripped off at some point. The title page will be ripped and it’ll just say “the Wil_ Dark: __aig Chi__”and the kids will pronounce it like one word: wildark. And one kid in particular will wonder what Aig Chi would think about different things in the underground world. And then maybe one day, the kid will emerge from underground just long enough to see the night sky before dying. And then he will think that it is so much more beautiful than anything he ever could have imagined.
This book taught me words I feel capable of wielding in everyday conversation.
This book taught me words I feel capable of wielding in everyday conversation.
November 3, 2025
Two men take a bicycle trip to find a place where they can see the night sky, starting from Las Vegas, completely light polluted, to the exact opposite, Bortle 9 to Bortle 1. The author discusses the various terrains and various flora and fauna on the way. Quite fascinating book.
May 6, 2026
This was a much more literary and metaphorical style than I was expecting, but that somehow made it more immersive and transportive (although at times a bit more dense and harder to read). I loved journeying out from Vegas into the night sky with Craig and found myself looking to the sky over my own home and learning to pick out Arcturus and Vega. A gift to have been reconnected with the heavens through this book.
July 29, 2026
Two men go off from Las Vegas toward a spot where almost no artificial night lights are visible. Follow their journey from the glittering glare of LV (which is visible for a really long number of days) to a place where the stars are so bright in the night sky that they can cast shadows.
Quirky but fun. For those of us who live in cities, it's interesting to find out what we're missing.
And there's discussion of the ingenuity, bright discoveries, and mythologies of mankind in the days before lighting up the sky from the ground became possible.
Quirky but fun. For those of us who live in cities, it's interesting to find out what we're missing.
And there's discussion of the ingenuity, bright discoveries, and mythologies of mankind in the days before lighting up the sky from the ground became possible.
March 18, 2026
Under full night conditions, a total of nine thousand stars are known to be visible to the unaided eye from around the entire Earth, a few thousand in a single scan from wherever you happen to be.
There was a black ring of pines holding a circle above me, a window onto a color I still search to name, sapphires on silk. The Milky Way flowed like an event, a splash of paint a hundred thousand light-years across.
Seeing stars is a birthright, one of the major features of living on Earth, and the last islands of visibility are shrinking, their edges eaten away by human-made light. Satellite observations and recordings from the ground show a surge in illumination over the last few decades that has diminished the celestial view worldwide and is gradually making us night-blind.
Childs is a great storyteller, and he narrates a bike trip he and a friend take starting in Vegas and travelling to one of the most remote places in Nevada, from the epitome of glitz and artificial light to the darkest dark skies. Skywatching is something I always want to do more of, and rarely get the chance, so this was such inspiration. I just moved from the city outskirts to the suburbs and was so thrilled my first night to step outside and be able to see stars. Bravo to this fantastic book, combining the lyrical and poetic ways our hearts feel and the science and warning about the loss of dark sky.
A night sky is not an absence of light, it is the presence of the universe. It is there to be seen. I’ll take refuge beneath an overgrown, untamed cosmos where the ground shimmers even when there’s no moon. I’ll draw blankets of light-years over myself, in no hurry to fall asleep, eyes wide and sparkling with stars.
Being drawn to such a spectacle is a pure physical response, so the feeling we had of being on top of the world makes sense. It’s called positive phototaxis, the natural movement of an organism toward light. Not all living things exhibit positive phototaxis, but most do. Lizards, fish, crabs, foxes, frogs do it. Plants lean in, moths are pros, and birds notoriously wheel toward any city, spinning over spotlights and streetlamps as if the maps in their almond-sized brains can’t stop saying turn left, turn left, turn left. This gravitational pull toward light is aptly termed “trapping,” and it often leads to the demise of creatures through simple exhaustion, or swift predation by opportunistic hunters drawn to the commotion, or crashing into windows.
The zone Irvin and I are biking into is part of this Rorschach test of dark islands splotched all over the West. These are distinctly outlined, easy to see on a map, generally places where humans are few. If we paid more attention to them, we might name them like parks, preserving boundaries because they could be so easily destroyed. One blank area outside of Albuquerque is shaped like the Japanese archipelago and reaches from Arizona through New Mexico to Colorado. Two Pan-American islands, mostly in northern Mexico, look like a yin and yang symbol; they should probably have two names, like twins. The Colorado Plateau is mostly covered in night, and a big broken-up chain of darkness runs from Wyoming through Montana into southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. Many smaller Bortle 1 zones are embryonic and staggered across the West while the largest of the remaining “night islands” are in the long folds of the Basin and Range. The island we’re entering is seven hundred miles from end to end, perforated in the middle by Reno, Elko, and the I-80 corridor. The northern part is mainly in Oregon, and the southern is here in Nevada, with Las Vegas glowering at its edge. We’re heading for the middle, the in-between place, the wilderness of night.
There was a black ring of pines holding a circle above me, a window onto a color I still search to name, sapphires on silk. The Milky Way flowed like an event, a splash of paint a hundred thousand light-years across.
Seeing stars is a birthright, one of the major features of living on Earth, and the last islands of visibility are shrinking, their edges eaten away by human-made light. Satellite observations and recordings from the ground show a surge in illumination over the last few decades that has diminished the celestial view worldwide and is gradually making us night-blind.
Childs is a great storyteller, and he narrates a bike trip he and a friend take starting in Vegas and travelling to one of the most remote places in Nevada, from the epitome of glitz and artificial light to the darkest dark skies. Skywatching is something I always want to do more of, and rarely get the chance, so this was such inspiration. I just moved from the city outskirts to the suburbs and was so thrilled my first night to step outside and be able to see stars. Bravo to this fantastic book, combining the lyrical and poetic ways our hearts feel and the science and warning about the loss of dark sky.
A night sky is not an absence of light, it is the presence of the universe. It is there to be seen. I’ll take refuge beneath an overgrown, untamed cosmos where the ground shimmers even when there’s no moon. I’ll draw blankets of light-years over myself, in no hurry to fall asleep, eyes wide and sparkling with stars.
Being drawn to such a spectacle is a pure physical response, so the feeling we had of being on top of the world makes sense. It’s called positive phototaxis, the natural movement of an organism toward light. Not all living things exhibit positive phototaxis, but most do. Lizards, fish, crabs, foxes, frogs do it. Plants lean in, moths are pros, and birds notoriously wheel toward any city, spinning over spotlights and streetlamps as if the maps in their almond-sized brains can’t stop saying turn left, turn left, turn left. This gravitational pull toward light is aptly termed “trapping,” and it often leads to the demise of creatures through simple exhaustion, or swift predation by opportunistic hunters drawn to the commotion, or crashing into windows.
The zone Irvin and I are biking into is part of this Rorschach test of dark islands splotched all over the West. These are distinctly outlined, easy to see on a map, generally places where humans are few. If we paid more attention to them, we might name them like parks, preserving boundaries because they could be so easily destroyed. One blank area outside of Albuquerque is shaped like the Japanese archipelago and reaches from Arizona through New Mexico to Colorado. Two Pan-American islands, mostly in northern Mexico, look like a yin and yang symbol; they should probably have two names, like twins. The Colorado Plateau is mostly covered in night, and a big broken-up chain of darkness runs from Wyoming through Montana into southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. Many smaller Bortle 1 zones are embryonic and staggered across the West while the largest of the remaining “night islands” are in the long folds of the Basin and Range. The island we’re entering is seven hundred miles from end to end, perforated in the middle by Reno, Elko, and the I-80 corridor. The northern part is mainly in Oregon, and the southern is here in Nevada, with Las Vegas glowering at its edge. We’re heading for the middle, the in-between place, the wilderness of night.
March 14, 2025
When my twins were three years old, my husband and I took them car camping for the first time at off the Peak-to-Peak Highway between Nederland and Estes Park, CO. It had been a warm summer day, but by the hours just past midnight a chill had descended, as it does in the mountains. Our son woke up needing the bathroom. My husband unzipped the tent. Our son peered out warily after him. "Daddy," I heard him say from the warmth of my own sleeping bag, "is it going to snow?"
It took me a minute to realize that he wasn't talking about the temperature. He was talking about the profusion of stars. I wriggled myself to the tent entrance to join him and there they were: the constellation-blurring masses of them, the Milky Way like a river of light, all of them seeming indeed to be hovering above us like countless slowly falling snowflakes. We can't see that sky from our town. I'm not even sure I could see it from my hometown in Missouri in the 80s, when artificial light was less bright and less widespread outside of big cities.
Craig Childs' wonderful book explores this loss, and it explores what we gain when we go back to a truly dark sky. Opening with an anecdote--his own first memory of such a sky at an age when he wasn't much older than my little son--he then transports us to Las Vegas where the night is relentlessly, oppressively illuminated. He and a friend are preparing for a cross-country bike ride into the desert, the endpoint of which will be the darkest kind of sky we can see on earth. Each night of their journey, the lights of Vegas recede a touch. Along the way we learn about the Bortle scale: Bortle 9 is a Vegas-lit sky, Bortle 1 the firmament above the arid basin where their journey ends. I'm guessing the sky my family saw all those years ago was probably about Bortle 3; from up there you can still see Denver lighting up the eastern horizon.
Childs is a fabulous storyteller. He brings in memories of other dark skies he's seen (the Atacama in Chile being one), Native American legends about the role of the sky in creation, the science of how the loss of real dark affects our circadian rhythms, and much more. He also interviews fascinating people, including one advocate for dark-sky designation for her community whose own husband isn't convinced of the value of turning out the lights.
His descriptions deserve to be read aloud. Here's just one example: "I'm up to my neck in stars...a menagerie of mythic, astronomical structures and possibilities, not just the cold void of space. The sensation of seeing it with your own eyes is akin to plunging your body into cold water, a sweeping rearrangement of what you understood the world to be by daylight. Zest enters the blood and skin tingles."
There was a fad in self-help books a few years ago around actively seeking experiences of awe to put things into perspective. If you can't get to a truly dark sky yourself right now, this lovely book is the next best thing.
It took me a minute to realize that he wasn't talking about the temperature. He was talking about the profusion of stars. I wriggled myself to the tent entrance to join him and there they were: the constellation-blurring masses of them, the Milky Way like a river of light, all of them seeming indeed to be hovering above us like countless slowly falling snowflakes. We can't see that sky from our town. I'm not even sure I could see it from my hometown in Missouri in the 80s, when artificial light was less bright and less widespread outside of big cities.
Craig Childs' wonderful book explores this loss, and it explores what we gain when we go back to a truly dark sky. Opening with an anecdote--his own first memory of such a sky at an age when he wasn't much older than my little son--he then transports us to Las Vegas where the night is relentlessly, oppressively illuminated. He and a friend are preparing for a cross-country bike ride into the desert, the endpoint of which will be the darkest kind of sky we can see on earth. Each night of their journey, the lights of Vegas recede a touch. Along the way we learn about the Bortle scale: Bortle 9 is a Vegas-lit sky, Bortle 1 the firmament above the arid basin where their journey ends. I'm guessing the sky my family saw all those years ago was probably about Bortle 3; from up there you can still see Denver lighting up the eastern horizon.
Childs is a fabulous storyteller. He brings in memories of other dark skies he's seen (the Atacama in Chile being one), Native American legends about the role of the sky in creation, the science of how the loss of real dark affects our circadian rhythms, and much more. He also interviews fascinating people, including one advocate for dark-sky designation for her community whose own husband isn't convinced of the value of turning out the lights.
His descriptions deserve to be read aloud. Here's just one example: "I'm up to my neck in stars...a menagerie of mythic, astronomical structures and possibilities, not just the cold void of space. The sensation of seeing it with your own eyes is akin to plunging your body into cold water, a sweeping rearrangement of what you understood the world to be by daylight. Zest enters the blood and skin tingles."
There was a fad in self-help books a few years ago around actively seeking experiences of awe to put things into perspective. If you can't get to a truly dark sky yourself right now, this lovely book is the next best thing.
September 9, 2026
This was an immersive read. Childs laid out chapters according to the Bortle rating of the sky as he and Irvin peddle their bikes away from the bright Las Vegas lights. There is so much cool information that Childs intersperses with his more immediate recounting of the road, the terrain, and daily experiences. He dispenses little gems of history, myth, and research with effortless poetic language so that you don't object to the interruption to the business at hand of riding hundreds of miles to "the Bortle." If this is how Childs leads hiking and camping expeditions, I want to be on one. Beyond his descriptions of the expansive sky, are the expansive forays into what great minds of the past and present have to divulge about the stars and how ancient peoples interacted with their unencumbered view of them.
The time they took riding could have been packed into a smaller book, but with all the asides to slow down the reading, they made me stop and contemplate as if I was there drinking in the fullness of the night with them.
Reaching Bortle 1 with Craig and Irvin, because by this point I was there with them, made me think of my Colorado nights of seeing the milky way. The last time was marred by lights coming from a mining operation, so now I know it wasn't Bortle 1. But I will look next time to see if the light coming from the stars themselves can cast a slight shadow, and try to find zodiacal light.
I know that I will go back to this book again, because there's no way I can remember all that was packed into it!
The time they took riding could have been packed into a smaller book, but with all the asides to slow down the reading, they made me stop and contemplate as if I was there drinking in the fullness of the night with them.
Reaching Bortle 1 with Craig and Irvin, because by this point I was there with them, made me think of my Colorado nights of seeing the milky way. The last time was marred by lights coming from a mining operation, so now I know it wasn't Bortle 1. But I will look next time to see if the light coming from the stars themselves can cast a slight shadow, and try to find zodiacal light.
I know that I will go back to this book again, because there's no way I can remember all that was packed into it!
June 27, 2026
Childs describes a journey from light into darkness. Literal, not metaphorical (this is no Heart of Darkness and there is no Kurtz waiting at the end). He and his companion bicycle from Las Vegas, "the brightest city on Earth", north across some pretty uninviting desert terrain, into some of the darkest skies near Great Basin National Park. Throughout the journey, his focus is on the changing relationship with the night sky as the light pollution gets left behind.
I'm sure my sister will enjoy this little morsel concerning the lightweight, high caloric density nutrition they carried.
I'm sure my sister will enjoy this little morsel concerning the lightweight, high caloric density nutrition they carried.
Irvin pulls out the special ingredient we've been using - a bag of dog treats he picked up while we were shopping. I crumble the crisp flakes into our meal from a package that reads "Salmon Skin Baked Dog Treats." He knew we'd be hungry for salmon skin on chilly nights.I also smiled at a new euphemism for roly-poly I had never seen before:
He's older than the guards at the gates, middle-aged and jolly of stature.
June 16, 2025
I'm a big fan of Craig Childs and will read everything he writes. Here he's exploring the experience of confronting dark night skies, and what is lost when the light of urban development brightens the dark so much we can't see our galaxy, and other galaxies. I liked it far more than his last book. There's the familiar sense of adventure here as Childs and his friend travel into the Nevada landscape away from Las Vegas in search of darkness. That first hand adventure account was what I liked most about his earlier works. There's not a sense of danger or risk in this one but certainly exploration and curiosity about the Nevada desert landscape.
And here, for almost the first time in any of Childs' books, is a kind of political awareness about the costs of development and urban growth. For some reason he seemed resistant to exercising any kind of critical social judgment in his previous writing. With this topic it's unavoidable though. The work is premised on the fact that we're losing the ability to see what our ancestors would have seen. It makes me want to see the Milky Way - from a remote place.
And here, for almost the first time in any of Childs' books, is a kind of political awareness about the costs of development and urban growth. For some reason he seemed resistant to exercising any kind of critical social judgment in his previous writing. With this topic it's unavoidable though. The work is premised on the fact that we're losing the ability to see what our ancestors would have seen. It makes me want to see the Milky Way - from a remote place.
August 9, 2026
We are so fortunate to live on a planet with a mostly transparent atmosphere.... where we have gazed upon the wonder of the night sky and shaped our reality around the heavens.
I went to the inaugural presentation of this book- I heard about the premise of documenting the scale of light pollution as it dwindled with bike miles away from the glow of Las Vegas. I listened as Craig lit the spark of curiosity that set these thoughts aflame. And I thought i knew the story.
But, Craig Childs has a way of dancing poetically through the curiosities and discoveries of the natural world. Circadian rhythms, migration patterns, hormonal fluctuations, the very processes of life itself are woven into the revolutions of our planet around our nearest star. Artificial light is disrupting those natural patterns.
Traveling through the Great Basin and sleeping beneath the stars yields contemplative views of the world's visual boundaries and the history built in the study of the stars. I'll never tire of the earthy wondering. I've tagged along on a journey I'll be reminded of every time I gaze on a meteor shower or the dark sky of a new moon.
I went to the inaugural presentation of this book- I heard about the premise of documenting the scale of light pollution as it dwindled with bike miles away from the glow of Las Vegas. I listened as Craig lit the spark of curiosity that set these thoughts aflame. And I thought i knew the story.
But, Craig Childs has a way of dancing poetically through the curiosities and discoveries of the natural world. Circadian rhythms, migration patterns, hormonal fluctuations, the very processes of life itself are woven into the revolutions of our planet around our nearest star. Artificial light is disrupting those natural patterns.
Traveling through the Great Basin and sleeping beneath the stars yields contemplative views of the world's visual boundaries and the history built in the study of the stars. I'll never tire of the earthy wondering. I've tagged along on a journey I'll be reminded of every time I gaze on a meteor shower or the dark sky of a new moon.
February 17, 2026
At first hard for me to get into. Maybe b/c I don’t know astronomy at all. Craig’s writing style is different and took me a while to get used to it. Felt a little like watching a movie in a foreign language and reading the subtitles takes a min to get used to. Craig and Irvin go on an incredible journey to find dark sky/stars. At first I just wanted to finish the book so I could join my book club conversation. Just to say I read it, but somewhere along their journey I find myself immersed and can’t put the book down. And I want everyone to read this book. One question: I think they drove their route before hand and placed water strategically. But sometimes seems like they were surprised by the road/not road or terrain. I just finished The Correspondents. So now I want to write a letter to Craig Child’s.
July 19, 2025
It is so nice to see Craig Childs writing about the things he wants to. Seeing a thread and pulling on it while engaging with it experientially. The books for the big publishers always seemed a bit of a stretch. His audience might be smaller now with Torrey House Press but his strengths are allowed to shine. Thinking deeply about the wonders of the world while exploring.
Bike packing from Las Vegas to the areas with almost zero light pollution- seeing the shift night to night as the skies shift from hardly any stars to soooooo many stars. Also cool to see how his expedition was timed with the moon- we often time things to the sun and seasons, but less so about the moon unless you’re on tidal waters.
The wonders of the night sky! What could and should be!
Bike packing from Las Vegas to the areas with almost zero light pollution- seeing the shift night to night as the skies shift from hardly any stars to soooooo many stars. Also cool to see how his expedition was timed with the moon- we often time things to the sun and seasons, but less so about the moon unless you’re on tidal waters.
The wonders of the night sky! What could and should be!
October 17, 2025
The parts of this book that describe the levels of sky darkness and what we lose by losing the stars are very compelling and made me want to get to a really dark site and see the cosmos again. But the author is often too cute by half, like when he talks about flavoring their meals with dog treats or keeping an open mind about whe4ter he accepts the scientific view of star formation or the Native American tale of trickster Coyote randomly scattering them, from a bag. Also, much of the book is travelog, and reading about a bike trip isn't that interesting. It did convince me that I never want to go to Vegas, and if I do go, I never want to leave by biking across the desert to the4 North.
February 27, 2025
We are definitely not alone!
Childs and a companion take a bike trip from Las Vegas into the darkest Nevada desert, and his talent to tell an entertaining and informative story is on full display.
It reminds me of the dark skies of my childhood, and a dear uncle who could rattle off the different constellations after the milking was done and the yard light was shut off. Maybe all this light is making humans as disoriented as the other creatures we harm by our excess.
The solution is just a light switch away. A must read.
Childs and a companion take a bike trip from Las Vegas into the darkest Nevada desert, and his talent to tell an entertaining and informative story is on full display.
It reminds me of the dark skies of my childhood, and a dear uncle who could rattle off the different constellations after the milking was done and the yard light was shut off. Maybe all this light is making humans as disoriented as the other creatures we harm by our excess.
The solution is just a light switch away. A must read.
January 16, 2026
What a celebration of the night sky! Craig Childs recounts his bike journey from one of the most light polluted places in America – Las Vegas,- to a location in remote Nevada that is rated Bortal 1 - the darkest sky one can encounter on the face of the Earth. With lyrical writing, he weaves in not just astronomy, but biology, history, native cultures, environmental concerns, all the while capturing, the allure, the intrigued and the magic of the heavens. A great read for anyone who values nature.
February 2, 2026
This was a wonderful book. The author and his friend Irvin bike 200 hundred miles starting in Las Vegas into the desert to a dark Bortle 1 zone. From the lightest place in the world to one of the darkest areas. The book is part travelogue, part memoir, part astronomy lesson and part history lesson. The author laments the loss of our dark skies from light pollution and the introduction of LED lights. He is an incredibly descriptive writer. His description makes one feel that they are actually on the bike trip.
February 3, 2026
The author, Craig Childs, takes us on an enchanting bike ride from Vegas to the darkest night skies in the US; according to his trusty light meter. The trip, over about 9 days, not only is an exploration of the Nevada out-back, but a historic adventure of all the mythology, traditions, and spookiness, of our star filled nights.
This funny, entertaining, and wise book is definitely something you will want to read, at least if you are someone that looks up into the night every once in a while.
This funny, entertaining, and wise book is definitely something you will want to read, at least if you are someone that looks up into the night every once in a while.
July 24, 2026
This book brought on very mixed emotions for me. Loved reading about the dark areas that the author and his son biked to and camped at. Much harder to read about Las Vegas!
As an older person, I grew up in a suburban neighborhood without all the extremely bright security lights that are all over the place now. Old fashioned street lights, most people didn't turn on porch lights in the evening and no one had these very bright security lights. Now I live in a condo complex and can't escape all the overly bright lights. As a kid I loved looking at the stars at night with my dad.
As an older person, I grew up in a suburban neighborhood without all the extremely bright security lights that are all over the place now. Old fashioned street lights, most people didn't turn on porch lights in the evening and no one had these very bright security lights. Now I live in a condo complex and can't escape all the overly bright lights. As a kid I loved looking at the stars at night with my dad.
September 14, 2025
The author and a friend decide to bike from Las Vegas, a place where night is as bright as daytime, to a distant dark spot to truly see the stars as our ancestors once did. Along the way, he discusses not just the constant threat of light pollution and losing the night sky, but interesting tidbits and musings. The book's slower pace fits its purpose and the author's philosophy and I recommend it.
[I received an advanced copy from the publisher.]
[I received an advanced copy from the publisher.]
December 10, 2025
As I hold Childs in incredibly high esteem I was a little disappointed by this book. It lacked substance and even some of the prose felt a little forced. I remain staunchly in the CC fan club, however, and appreciate how Childs continues to stand for areas in wilderness that can easily be overlooked.
April 1, 2026
There are 9 Bortle ratings that measure the darkness of the night sky void of any light pollution. Childs builds a narrative around a bike trip with a friend out of Vegas to the darkest of desert nights. This is an informative read as the world is seeing a decrease of dark night skies due to growing urban sprawl.
April 13, 2026
Book was very interesting …..I started knowing just a little about Dark Skies. Now I would like to go to some of the places to see the sky at night. I’ve seen the Milky Way several times and it is amazing to view; in Africa, out at sea near Bali and Australia. The author is a talented writer and his adventure by bike from Las Vegas to the outer limits of the city were interesting and amusing.
April 20, 2026
4.5 stars, rounding up. As always, I love Childs' writing and the way he shares science and cosmology through adventure. This is full of such valuable information about the night sky and about what electric lights are doing to us and to our ecosystems, but it doesn't have quite as much lyrical intensity as some of his other work.
July 19, 2026
Very enjoyable. As Childs and his friend bike out from Las Vegas to find darker and darker night sky, we are provided with astronomical knowledge as well as information about how light night, especially in cities, has negative effects on people. Also, related tails about adventures Childs and others have had. Well written, well organized, keeps your interest.
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