Economist
The Moon: A History for the Future
Key Metrics
- Oliver Morton
- Economist
- Hardcover
- 9781541774322
- 9.5 X 6.1 X 1.4 inches
- 1.2 pounds
- Science > Space Science - Astronomy
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Every generation has looked towards the heavens and wondered at the beauty of the Moon. Fifty years ago, a few Americans became the first to do the reverse--and shared with Earth-bound audiences the view of their own planet hanging in the sky instead.
Recently, the connection has been discovered to be even closer: a fragment of the Earth's surface was found embedded in a rock brought back from the Moon. And astronauts are preparing to return to the surface of the Moon after a half-century hiatus--this time to the dark side.
Oliver Morton explores how the ways we have looked at the Moon have shaped our perceptions of the Earth: from the controversies of early astronomers such as van Eyck and Galileo, to the Cold War space race, to the potential use of the Moon as a stepping stone for further space exploration.
Advanced technologies, new ambitions, and old dreams mean that men, women, and robots now seem certain to return to the Moon. For some, it is a future on which humankind has turned its back for too long. For others, an adventure yet to begin.
Author Bio
Oliver Morton is a writer and editor who concentrates on scientific knowledge, technological change and their effects. He is currently a senior editor at the Economist responsible for the magazine’s Briefing articles.
From 2009 to 2011 he was the Economist’s Energy and Environment Editor; prior to that he was Chief News and Features Editor at Nature, the world’s leading interdisciplinary science journal, supervising its journalistic output in print and online. His writing has appeared in magazines including the New Yorker, National Geographic, Discover, Time, the American Scholar, the New Scientist and Prospect, as well as in newspapers including the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Guardian and the Wall Street Journal. His articles have been anthologised in Best American Science Writing and Best American Science and Nature Writing, and his only foray into science fiction was selected to appear in Year’s Best SF 11 (2006).
His first book, Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination and the Birth of a World was published in 2002 by Picador (US) and Fourth Estate (UK). It deals with scientific and other ways of understanding a place that cannot at present be visited. Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet, was published by Fourth Estate in the UK in 2007. Listed as one of the “Ten Best Nature Books” in The Independent, and as a book of the year in The Spectator and the TLS, the reviewer Jon Turney wrote that it contains “everything you could possibly want from a popular science book.
There is wonder here, and intellectual excitement; clear explanation and lyrical writing; and much new insight into how the world works.” He is currently working on The Deliberate Planet, a book about geoengineering.
Source: https://thebreakthrough.org/people/oliver-morton
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