Onze maan

by Rebecca Boyle

Onze maan heeft niet alleen ons dag-en-nachtritme bepaald, maar ook veldslagen beslist, en mythes en religies gevormd. Ze is van cruciaal belang voor de ontwikkeling van alles wat leeft op aarde en voor ons klimaat. Tegelijkertijd heeft de maan zelf geen klimaat, waardoor ze nooit verandert. Een voetstap op de maan wordt niet gewist door wind of regen.
In dit boek belicht journalist en maanfanaat Rebecca Boyle hoe de maan door de eeuwen heen kunstenaars, schrijvers en denkers heeft geïnspireerd en vertelt ze ons over de culturele en wetenschappelijke geschiedenis van de maan van prehistorische archeologie tot het technologische en wetenschappelijke onderzoek van vandaag.
Onze maan is een toegankelijk en geweldig geschreven boek over onze zilveren metgezel in de ruimte.
Dichterbij waren we nog nooit.

The New York Times-bestseller
Longlist National Book Award for Nonfiction

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Nature, Astronomy, Audiobook, Space

419 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 16, 2024

Reviews

[Jaidee · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 "swoon over the moon" stars !!!

Thank you to Netgalley, Random House and the author for an ecopy. This was released January 2024. I am providing an honest review.

I am not a science nerd. Especially not an astronomy nerd. However give me a multidisciplinary masterpiece and I will make a large pot of tea and moon scones and let me simmer !

This science writer scribes like a mystical poet. The prose is both illuminating and gorgeous. The moon is explored through the ages and the areas of archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, history, astronomy, geology, and religious studies all have a turn (or several) in unraveling the mysteries of our sister Moon. I was so enamored of this volume that I tried my very best to slow stream it...to linger, to make it last.

I never imagined that a science book could be a deep spiritual experience but alas it twas !

Ms. Boyle in her deep research and elegant prose did all that and so much more...

Brava and Gracias !

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this up anticipating a fun and informative read mixing science and history, and man, was I disappointed. Kept reading hoping it would get better, and my advice to anyone else finding themselves less than enamored is: don’t, because it doesn’t.

The best part of this book is the opening, which shares some cool factoids about the moon with promise of more to come: stuff like the moon’s rocks being sharper because it has no wind, the optical illusions resulting from its lack of atmosphere, the fact that up close it’s actually somewhat colorful (see a former astronaut’s artwork here). Various organisms have not just circadian rhythms but internal lunar clocks as well. The science part was most interesting to me because I knew least about it, but often poorly explained—the math parts really needed diagrams, along with more detail—but instead Boyle spends time hammering obvious points. Like after pointing out that the moon has no life, not even bacteria in the soil, she feels the need to go on to specify that it has no birds in the sky, and even “no culture, except the one we brought.” I think that goes without saying…?

This was a harbinger of things to come however, as the book is basically an impressionistic mash of stuff that’s interesting to the author, who clearly has a lot of feelings about everything moon-related (for some reason she capitalizes Moon throughout). But it did not translate itself well to this reader, and I was left without even a clear or complete narrative of things like the moon missions. Her history picks and chooses from all your standard western civ stuff: archaeological finds in Bronze Age Europe (the author finds historically ancient but biologically modern humans tracking the moon mind-blowing, for reasons not quite clear to me), a little bit of ancient Mesopotamia (which was interesting, mostly the kings consolidating power through priestesses who were at least legally speaking their daughters), the usual on the ancient Greeks and the early modern European astronomers. She spends a few pages at the end talking about Native Americans, mostly making excuses for why she didn’t visit their sites despite living in the U.S., and didn’t learn anything when she did. Asia is acknowledged in passing to exist, Africa barely gets that.

Boyle also loves to give the moon credit for everything, inflating it to the point that her valid points can be lost. Early calendars were often lunar? “The Moon is responsible for the beginning of time.” Further, “[t]he Moon’s time-setting abilities meant humans could use it to plan, which meant they could invent.” Not just technological inventions, either: elsewhere she speculates that “the people of Mesopotamia invented religion” (moon-worship, of course), imagining that the moon first proved useful and only then evolved into an object of worship. (I don’t think this is how prehistoric people worked; religion is always present. Boyle provides no support for the idea that the Mesopotamians “invented” it.) It gets credit for teaching people to think too: “lunar symbolism likely enabled humans to understand, or at least to relate to, the otherwise mysterious concepts of becoming, birth, vanishing, death, resurrection, renewal, and eternity.” (Because the sun, the seasons, and plant, animal and human life don’t also show this, or are apparently harder to relate to than the moon? Given Boyle’s comments about considering “the perspective of the Moon” on mineral exploitation, maybe she does relate to it that strongly, but I don’t think this perspective is widely held.)

Anyway, assorted other things annoyed me, like the generalizations that swing wildly from assuming “people in the ancient world knew X” because some thinker in the ancient world wrote down X (with no way of knowing what people in general knew), on the one hand, to telling us that only “literate white men who owned property” were even aware of the Enlightenment, which is patently absurd. For one thing, knowledge was generally greater in cities, where fewer people owned property; for another, lots of women were involved, from those who ran the great salons of Paris where these conversations happened, to those who made discoveries in their own right—one of whom was actually profiled at length in the very book the author cited at the beginning of the same paragraph!

It makes you wonder to what extent Boyle even read the books she cites, especially when, also on that page, she has a footnote recommending a bunch of the most well-known science fiction books, with wildly off-base descriptions. The Dispossessed: “allegorical treatment of a big, beautiful wall dividing cultures.” (What? This is neither an allegory nor a book about a wall, and the closest it comes to including one is an unremarkable waist-high fence around a shuttle launch area. It’s a novel exploring different political and social systems on different satellites.) The Broken Earth trilogy: “frank treatment of climate-driven mass migration and segregation based on race and homosexuality.” (All right, I’ve only read the first, but this is an oppressed mages story, as an allegory for race and perhaps homosexuality, but does not feature segregation based on either. Also I’m not sure “climate-driven mass migration” quite describes “small number of survivors fleeing geo-magical apocalypse” but anyway.) While this is a footnote, I have to wonder if Boyle’s understanding of her scientific and historical sources was equally skewed.

At any rate, clearly this book annoyed me a lot, and generally wasted my time. A disappointment.

[Boudewijn · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Our Moon Rebecca Boyle shares her feelings about our moon ("our silvery sister"). I say feelings, as this is more a book about mankind's, pardon me, humankind's relationship with the moon than a scientific approach. I liked the parts where she discussed the likely origin of the Moon, the lunar calendar of Warren Field and the Nebra sky disc, but in the end the sprititual approach to our Moon managed to distract me. All narrated in the sometimes moaning voice of Rebecca Lowman, which also didn't help.

2.5 stars, rounded up to three.

[Amy Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Random. House for an ARC of this book.

I teach high school astronomy and am always looking for books to read with my students or to give me up to date information on class topics. This book exceeded all of my hopes for those purposes. There was a lot of new science on the formation of the moon and even more on the history of human interactions with it. I know much about Greek philosophers and their roles in developing our understanding of the Cosmos, but had never heard of Basilios Bassarion and his role in preserving the documents we have today from some of those philosophers. Galileo is a major part of my class but now I know to talk about Thomas Harriot whose telecopic moon sketches preceeded those of Galileo. I appreciated not only the thorough research, but also the joyful awe that I felt from the author as I read this book.

[John Devlin · Rating 1 out of 5]

(1.9) hard to say why I was so bored by this book. Sure familiar territory, the marginal wokeness, the silly mysticism, the complete ancient archaeological guesswork, the injection of the author into the story…

Well, I guess I do know why the book bored me.

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ancient civilizations sailed the lunar seas of time, navigating humanity towards structured systems like agriculture and spirituality. As Galileo faced the astronomical fallout for challenging Earth's starring role, the moon had already distanced itself from celestial devotion, leaving people to moon over its true purpose—themes brilliantly explored in "Our Moon."

Boyle embarks on a lunar quest, visiting remote fields in Scotland, unearthing discoveries like the Nebra Sky Disc, shedding light on how early Europeans engineered spaces to sync with lunar cycles for precision timekeeping. Venturing to Mesopotamia, Boyle shines a light on the lunar sway over a king's reign, potentially sealing Babylon's fate. Greek observations, eclipsed by dogma and biblical interpretations, obscured lunar truths for centuries until the scientific sunrise of the Renaissance, eventually bringing it all to The V2 rocket and the Apollo missions.

Boyle skillfully reshapes scientific history through a lunar lens, spanning from Mesopotamian stargazers to modern lunar landings, interweaving luminaries like Copernicus and Galileo. From Jules Verne's lunar reveries to Wernher von Braun's gravity-defying reality, Boyle's narrative orbits the moon, tracing humanity's celestial comedy of errors to the present day. Truly out of this world.

[Ula Tardigrade · Rating 3 out of 5]

There has been a recent trend of writing non-fiction books that look at history from the perspective of a particular phenomenon. While it often gives an interesting insight into well-known facts, it has its caveats. In this case, the result is a bit chaotic.

The book starts with geology, describing the origin of the Moon and its influence on the Earth, then dives into archaeology and folklore, and ends with the history of space exploration. You will find a lot of interesting facts here, but overall it feels fragmented. And as some other reviewers mentioned, the style is a bit dry and sometimes not very engaging. But I think hardcore fans of astronomy may find it fascinating.

Thanks to the publisher, Random House, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

[Caroline Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely amazing and well-written book about our moon, what it’s like, what it does, and how we have interacted with it from Earth.

[Ruthie · Rating 2 out of 5]

How do you make a fascinating subject like the literal Moon of Earth into a book this boring?? Otherwise a neutral 3 stars, I had to punish this book for ultimately being too annoying in several ways.

First, the footnotes. Two of them contain everything you really need to know about this book. Page 126: "During the American-led war in 1991, Saddam parked fighter jets near the ziggurat because he imagined the Americans would not risk destroying the priceless monument. It was still damaged by bomb shrapnel."

Oops! The priceless world heritage monument of Ur was still damaged!? How'd that happen??! Anyway....

After struggling along a bit further, on page 152/259, we finally find what we were looking for this whole book, also in footnote form. The Moon... how does it work?

"Start out when the Moon is new. Find the crescent hanging low in the sky at dusk, before it's dark outside. The Moon will follow the Sun down, sinking on the western horizon before night fully falls. The next night, look again. The Moon is thicker now, and a little higher in the sky when you first spot it. Keep watching, and within a few days, the Moon is half illuminated-a pie sliced in two, with the visible side facing the early-evening Sun. The Moon is full when the Sun is setting, and in the following days, the Moon shrinks again. By last quarter, you can see it just ahead of the Sun in the early-morning sky, once again with its luminous half facing our nearest star."

THANK YOU!!! Sorry but I didn't need to go on a storytelling journey, I just needed to know how this shit works because half of my coworkers think the Earth is flat now. I'm just trying to get a little perspective!! The scientific class does NOT understand what is coming!

The MOST important thing I learned very serendipitously from this book is that there is a solar eclipse next Monday lol. How the fuck did I just happen to be reading about that? 🔮 To anyone reading this past Monday, April 8, 2024, I apologize. It’s not happening again for 20 years.

Besides placing important information in twee footnotes, and being basic, this book also just gave up when it came time to analyze Native American or African moon cultures because... it was too hard! There was covid! And too many genocides.... sorry! She tried!

I thought this book was going to bring me some enlightenment, and it did. I became aware of the fact that scientists are writing for their lissencephalic NPR-brained peers and not at all for the common people who are reading posts.

[Cav · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Moon has shaped our rulers, and their conquests, since civilization’s earliest days, but its power over us is far more ancient than even our conflicts..."

Our Moon was an informative read, but I felt that the writing dragged here at times... I was looking for something a bit different from the books I typically read, and put this one on my list when I came across it.

Author Rebecca Boyle is an award-winning science writer. She writes for The Atlantic, the New York Times, New Scientist, Popular Science, Smithsonian Air & Space, and many other publications.

Rebecca Boyle:


Boyle opens the book with a very well-written intro, that talks about her grandfather's participation in the battle of Tarawa. I had high hopes for the writing that was to follow. Unfortunately, I found that it got more esoteric and tedious as the book went on... More below.

She drops the quote at the start of this review in the intro, and it continues below:

"...The Moon’s influence goes back to the sulfurous origins of this planet and everything that crawls, flaps, swims, or strains skyward on its surface. The Moon guides all of us from its vaulted position above us. But it’s not apart from us, not least because it is actually a part of Earth. It was sheared from Earth when the planet was still freshly baked. And its elliptical orbit does not technically circle Earth, at least not in the way you might think. Instead, Earth and the Moon orbit each other, pivoting around a combined center of gravity that guides them both and that shapes their shared history.
Today, the Moon directs migrations, reproductions, the movements of the leaves of plants, and possibly the very blood in your veins. The Moon conducts the symphony of life on Earth, from the people who wage war on one another to the coral polyps that built the reefs of Tarawa. It has guided evolution since the moment of life’s first stirrings, which occurred either inside deep ocean vents or in warm little pools at the water’s edge, both of which derive nutrients through the Moon’s tide.
The Moon makes Earth unique, certainly in our solar system and possibly in the broader cosmos. It made us who we are, in ways that scientists are just beginning to understand, from our physiology to our psychology. It taught us how to tell time, which we used to impose order on the world. The Moon inspired the human projects of religion, philosophy, science, and discovery."

In this quote, she lays out the aim of the book:

"This book is the story of our journey with the Moon in three parts: how the Moon was made, how the Moon made us, and how we made the Moon in our image. This is not solely an astronomy book, and it is not an Apollo book, though astronomy and the Apollo missions are both inseparable from humanity’s journey with the Moon. This is a book about time, life on Earth, human civilization, our place in the universe, and how the Moon has made all of it possible. I hope this book changes your understanding of all these things. And I hope it changes the way you see the Moon, this partner world that has always been with you, and which I hope you notice anew the next time you go outside at night."

Unfortunately, as touched on above, I did not find the writing in the second ~half of the book to be as engaging and interesting as the writing in the first half. Now, fault me if you want for being too picky, but I am very particular about how lively and engaging the books I read are. Sadly, I found my finicky attention wandering numerous times here, particularly after the ~ halfway point, when she spends quite a lot of time talking about ancient Sumerian Moon worshippers in ~600BCE.

Also, for reasons unknown, the author somehow manages to shoehorn in various assorted bits of irrelevant leftist politicking into these pages. She has a decently sized chunk of writing about how the Space Program could have fed hungry children, with some snarkish commentary about the American efforts towards besting the Communist sphere in the Space Race.

Although she did mostly manage (fortunately) to keep a fairly tight leash on it for most of the book, she lets out this line, which I found both cringey and hilarious:
"...The Moon landing occurred during, and because of, the Cold War. So in one sense, it is impressive that the language included “for all mankind” in that (unfortunately gendered) last line."

~"Mankind." You know, as in the colloquial term used to describe all of humanity? A word that's been common parlance in the English language since the 13th century. But, ya, let's complain about putting that on a plaque. Christ, these people are exhausting. Should the plaque have said "peoplekind" instead?? Ridiculous nonsense...

You know, it's becoming more and more difficult to pick up a nonfiction book these days without reading the unnecessary and (most often) unwelcomed author's political commentary. Commentary that is, more often than not; completely juvenile and ridiculous.

It would be nice to pick up a book about the Moon, and have the author just tell the fucking story, without adding her own shit-tier, low-resolution partisan politicking...

That an author can't write a book about the Moon without adding in derogatory tidbits of writing about America, men, or other assorted SJW nonsense should serve as a barometer of her ideological possession.
I really, really dislike it when authors cram their own partisan talking points into books where they have no business being.
Ok, end rant.

********************

If you are looking for a one-stop shop for all things "Moon," then this is your book. The scope of the writing here is incredibly broad. Unfortunately, quite a lot of the wiring trended towards minutia, and I found my attention wandering numerous times here...
I think that a large chunk of the book should have been taken out for the sake of brevity and clarity.
3 stars, rounded down to 2.5 due to the inclusion of the author's mindless leftist commentary.

[Stefanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you think you know the Moon (Boyle capitalizes the word in her book), you probably don't know the Moon. Like, did you know it smells like gunpowder? Or all the various ways it helped humanity understand the concept of time? I confess I did not. And I enjoyed Boyle's exploration of the story of the Moon chronologically from its formation all the way to our landing upon it.

The book is divided into three parts: 1) How the Moon was Made, 2) How the Moon Made Us, and 3) How We Made the Moon. The first part is probably the most science-y bit, going over theories of how the Moon formed and its influence / relationship with the Earth. The second part - and my favorite - goes into prehistory's early Moonkeeping efforts through pits, standing stones and the very cool sounding Nebra Sky Disk, as well as how the Moon was a feature of worship and state religion in Sumer and Babylon. The third part covers the thinkers who were able to use it to disprove the Earth-centric theory, who first used telescopes to see and map its surface, and a quick summary of the U.S. missions that culminated with men walking on the Moon.

Boyle is a Moon superfan, and doesn't try to hide it. She has some science background, but mostly worked as a journalist, so the writing style is philosophical and engaging, with short sections within chapters, easy to read.

I definitely enjoyed the historical sections best, but that's just my preference. This book serves as a good overview of humanity's relationship with the Moon, and if any particular area sparks your interest, there's a bibliography included for further reading.

I whipped through this pretty fast, which is not always true for the SciFri Book Club monthly picks. Boyle brings the reader right up to where we are currently: with several countries planning return trips to the Moon, and both countries and private companies considering mining and other extractive efforts. It's an uneasy moment, and made me want to pay closer attention to just exactly where we are with all that. This book re-invigorates a reverence for the Moon - at least in this reader.

[Peter A · Rating 5 out of 5]

The moon presents a familiar face during most clear nights, and because it has always been there, it is generally taken for granted. However, the moon is a vital component of our world, and none of us would be here had it not joined the Earth! Our Moon explains the significance and importance of the moon to the development of our planet, our environment, our ecology and our society.

I enjoyed the scientific history and lunar exploration, though was less-interested in the extensive folklore of the moon. However, it cannot be denied that this mythology was strongly influential in our cultural history.

An interesting, well-written, in-depth study of our moon that will probably appeal most to amateur astronomers and those who enjoy science and history.

[Mai H.]

Non-fiction November TBR

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Random House

[Danya Matulis · Rating 2 out of 5]

A boring book on a fascinating subject :/ 10 pages of this book would immediately put me to sleep, no matter the time of day. I had to force myself to finish this book and was relieved when the last 50 pages were of bibliography and index so I didn’t have to actually read 50 more pages. I wish the book noted when there are pictures of what she is talking about in the center section of the book. You just have to guess if it’s important enough for a glossy photo and keep flipping back and forth while reading. Lots of fancy science terminology that was not defined well. I was hoping for more “woo-woo”stuff too based on the book cover of canines howling and the subtitle but there was none. I love a good sciency book though but this was not good. The only thing that I commend Rebecca Boyle on is the immense amount of research that went into this book. However, I wish she kept researching after Covid settled down how she mentions her plans were to talk to Navajo people, Plains Indians, and visit Cahokia but couldnt because of the lockdown. Why not wait to complete your book?

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Rebecca Boyle writes with a tone that is the perfect mixture of literary writing and crispness. The science is very clearly explained. But the book is about a lot more than just science. There are discussions of the relationship between the moon and culture, religion and history. She also writes with some humor and the footnotes are certainly worth reading. Overall I felt that this book was well worth reading. Apparently this is Boyle’s first book and I look forward to reading more of her books in the future. Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for the digital review copy.

[Michaela Okland]

This book is sort of just a person talking about their hyper-fixation at length. Sometimes, this creates delightful moments, and sometimes it is sporadic and hard to follow. I struggle to give this a rating. It’s a special book, but it’s also difficult to stay tuned in to. If you truly have interest in the moon I would recommend it.

[Colin Gooding · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as part of my effort to read more books in the same year that they are released.

I liked the format of this, it explores the moon from all different angles: scientifically, culturally, historically, through fiction, etc etc. It doesn't get stuck in any ruts and is more interested in just touching on fun anecdotes and tidbits of information, which is my preference for non-fiction.

I'm not sure if there is anything particularly revelatory or must-read about this, but I had a good time with it.

[Braden Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly interesting book that taught me a lot about the moon.

The book had a really good start focusing on the geology (selenology) of the moon and the moons direct impact on evolution and life on earth. Super interesting!

As the book went on, some of the claims felt like it was a bit more of a stretch and some of the theorizing and anecdotes were a little distracting at times. Still interesting to learn more in depth about things like Anaxagoras, Nabonidus, Nebra sky disc, and so on.

I also agree with other reviews that the book was pretty eurocentric. If you want to hammer home the point of cultural and religious significance, it would’ve been interesting to see other points of view.

Overall, a good read with points of interest that will stick in my mind.

3.5/5

[bird · Rating 4 out of 5]

a little uneven and sometimes repetitive but i didn't really mind-- we both love the MOON! i thought it was beautiful in her acknowledgements when she said she hopes the moon is a source of comfort for her daughters for all their days.... throughout this whole book i was like damn should i move somewhere with less light pollution?????

eta: forgot to highlight how depressing it is how the last chapter of every recent book about anything in the natural world is like "don't you love this??? isn't it special???? well they're going to mine the hell out of it so we have to act now." what do you mean you're going to mine THE MOON

[Conor · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. There was some really interesting fun facts but it was written kinda weirdly. Tho I appreciate how much she loves the moon

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ❤️ u moon 🥲

[Michelle L · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this. It covers so much ground, I felt completely ensconced. The moon through history, in philosophy, science, religion, government, literature, society, and what the moon means to the environment, life, people, and animals.
There are a few places where things get repetitive while the author makes their argument. And there are definitely stretches of prose where the use of descriptive adjectives is overdone. I still appreciated the reflections and historical touch points Boyle used, the way she organized the book, and the ways she chose to anchor stories and examples.
Surprised and pleased. It feels like this book is under-appreciated.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who knows a lot about the modern space race and rocketry, it was really interesting to read how ancient cultures were able to measure time using the moon. The author is able to present complex topics such as the creation of planets in a way that is digestible and interesting. Within all the talk of ancient civilizations, I expected a chapter on religions and/or cults that were inspired by the moon, but there was a lot of ground to cover.

I do wish that some of the chapters had been broken into more small ones organized by topic vs less, longer chapters. Overall a fun read.

[Mac · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bust.

First few chapters on the formation and composition of the moon were good and felt more scientific. From that point onwards, however, this turns into a lot of flowery languaged journalism, a lot of "probably" and "may" have influenced/caused semi-facts. And from there just a record of anything in history that referenced the moon at some point.

[CatReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very readable, engaging book centered on the moon from multiple angles -- its origins, its geology, its impact on Earth's tilt and tides, and a longitudinal history of how life on earth has interacted with the moon.

[Teemu Öhman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rebecca Boyle's Our Moon was a major disappointment. I don't have my copy at hand so I cannot give detailed examples, but the text has way too many misleading sentences and expressions. If you choose to take a lenient view, they're not excatly errors but, nevertheless, the reader ends up with the wrong impression.

The chapter(s?) where she talks about Alfred Wegener and the origin of the Moon are the worst. Boyle very confusingly jumps back and forth in time and, erroneously, claims that Wegener invented plate tectonics (I'm a Wegener fan and he invented a lot of things, one of them being continental drift, but that's not the same thing as plate tectonics). The whole thing just isn't coherent enough to be enjoyable, and Boyle includes herself in the story too much to my liking.

The topic of the book – how our perception of the Moon has changed during the past several thousand years and how fortunate it is to have such a large natural satellite– is obviously a very fascinating one. Boyle deals with archaeology, history, biology and lunar science, but not with art or literature. That's an understandable omission, because those topics require books of their own.

Overall, I think Our Moon is a good effort, but the end result is a bit of a mess. It never reached the emotional level that I had hoped it would. I'm not a fan of the cover, either.

3.25/5

[Randy Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ms Boyle has written a daring and passionate essay about the Moon and its relationship to the Earth and humans. She divides the work into three parts; how the Moon was made, how the Moon made us and how we made the Moon.

The first part covers the moons’ creation and she shows that it’s likely that the Moon and Earth are conjoined in their mutual genesis. This was news to me. It also gave me a greater perspective on how the Moon and Earth are so closely related and need to be seen as twins with our sun playing an important supporting role.

How the Moon made us is my favorite part because the author takes many familiar stories from history like Julius Caesar and the Ides of March where the Moon figures prominently and shows how critical it is to the course of human history.

Unfortunately the last part of the book - how we made the moon - suffers from a weak summary of the moon program. I guess it couldn’t be left out but it is a story much more about man rather than the moon. Here man is the hero of his own story and most of the book makes the Moon the hero. Most of the book is great. It preserves the mystery, the majesty and the centrality of the Moon in the life of Earth.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've honestly always been a bit of a moon girl, so this book was right up my alley. It very easily could've been dry, it's very informative, but I thought Boyle did a good job of giving the information in a way that was easy to read/digest, but also it still had a narrative feel and at times, I felt like it was kind of beautiful. But again, that just may be the moon girl in me.

[Pallavi]

unfortunately, this book proved to me I truly have a pea brain and cannot read non-fiction. maybe I'll try again one day, because honestly the content of this book is super interesting, I just found myself not wanting to pick the book up because it was too big brain for me

[lola · Rating 3 out of 5]

truly humiliating how many times i welled up listening to this but then i regularly well up just looking at the moon, so i guess in hindsight maybe not that surprising