BOK'S GIANT LEAP

A small bit of the primordial Earth is blasted into space…and a longtime later makes a return journey via Apollo 11.

Utilizing parts of a talk Armstrong delivered in 2006, Baker-Smith recasts a chunk of basalt that became part of the moon (thanks to a “celestial fender bender” in the solar system’s early days) as a witness to the history of our planet. Measuring by the “billennium,” Bok oversees continents rising and falling, life’s appearance, and the arrival of dinosaurs. “But they disappeared almost before Bok noticed them.” Taking a brief nap, he then misses “the unfolding story of humankind” until suddenly a “peculiar creature” in a vacuum suit snatches him up and carries him back to where his story began. The artist puts a tiny face on the potato-shaped rock, but for the most part he focuses on large-scale events—vividly capturing the wild violence of those molten eons, the eerie wonder of Earth’s shallow early oceans in bright moonlight, extinction events, ice ages, and views of the suspenseful flight. In the backmatter, short biographies of the moon and Armstrong’s astronautical career fill in further detail. Though the photos in the last part are all of White men, an earlier picture encapsulates our aforementioned “unfolding story” with portraits of Plato, Hypatia, Maria Mitchell, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and Bessie Coleman. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A compelling invitation to take the long view.