A sweeping, stunning account of our place in the cosmos and its place in us.
Taking the wide view.
From the ancients to the Newtonians, humans found comfort in the regularities of the heavens—the rising and setting of the sun, the steady light of the fixed stars. But the invention of telescopes in the 17th century revealed more erratic changes in the cosmos, arrhythmias in the scheme of things that spurned the steady cycles of wake and sleep, sow and harvest. In this gorgeously illustrated, richly researched book, Degroot, an environmental historian at Georgetown University, explores the ways in which “real or perceived changes in cosmic environments shaped affairs on Earth.” In the late 1700s, the astronomer William Herschel discovered that the sun’s brightness is inconstant and that changes in solar output can affect our weather and food production. Solar storms turned out to wreak havoc on technology. A 1967 burst of radio waves that scrambled U.S. radar stations left Air Force officers thinking the Soviets had jammed their equipment. Space weather can mean the difference between war and peace, but, on the flip side, Degroot suggests, our understanding of space is itself a reflection of earthly sociopolitical and cultural concerns. Tracing fascinating tales of astronomers, scientists, and reporters who conjectured the existence of massive cities, forests, and even beavers on the Moon, Degroot reveals that they were seeing their own zeitgeist through their telescopes. When, for instance, scientists saw canals on Mars, powerful El Niño and La Niña events on Earth were causing massive droughts that killed millions. “The idea that Martians had engineered their planet to survive the ultimate drought naturally captured widespread attention, and, for a while, convinced many scientists,” Degroot writes. His historical analysis is so persuasive that, when he espouses a kind of techno-utopian vision of space exploration at the book’s end, it’s hard not to read that, too, as a reflection of the hopes and anxieties of our present age.
A sweeping, stunning account of our place in the cosmos and its place in us.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780674986503
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
