Chasing the Sun

The Sun is so powerful, so much bigger than us, that it is a terrifying subject. Yet though we depend on it, we take it for granted. Amazingly the first book of its kind, CHASING THE SUN is a cultural and scientific history of our relationship with the star that gives us life. Richard Cohen, applying the same mix of wide-ranging reference and intimate detail that won outstanding reviews for By the Sword, travels from the ancient Greek astronomers to modern-day solar scientists, from Stonehenge to Antarctica (site of the solar eclipse of 2003, when penguins were said to sing), Mexico's Aztecs to the Norwegian city of Tromso, where for two months of the year there is no Sun at all. He introduces us to the crucial 'sunspot cycle' in modern economics, the religious dances of Indian tribesmen, the histories of sundials and calendars, the plight of migrating birds, the latest theories of global warming, and Galileo recording his discoveries in code, for fear of persecution. And throughout, there is the rich Sun literature -- from the writings of Homer through Dante and Nietzsche to Keats, Shelley and beyond. Blindingly impressive and hugely readable, this is a tour de force of narrative non-fiction.

ISBN 0743259289   DEWEY edition DC22 ISBN13 9780743259286 (What's this?)   Pages 704 Publisher Simon & Schuster   Published in New York Imprint Simon & Schuster   Height (mm) 234 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 153 Publication date 01 Nov 2010   Academic level General DEWEY 523.7

		List of Illustrations and Illustration Credits
		Preface
		Sunrise on Mount Fuji		1
PART ONE		THE SUN BEFORE SCIENCE
1		Telling Stories		11
		Solar myths
		Max Muller's discoveries
		children of the Sun
		An Inca Festival
2		Celebrating the Seasons		24
		Solstices and equinoxes
		worshipping through the seasons
		North American sun dances
3		The Three Thousand Witnesses		40
		The Earth's standing stones
		Stonehenge
		The Pyramids
		Newgrange and New York
4		Terrors of the Sky		56
		Auroras and eclipses
		their respective histories, from 2000 BC to Shakespeare and Milton
PART TWO		DISCOVERING THE SUN
5		The First Astronomers		75
		The earliest sungazers
		The Sumerians
		The Babylonians
		the ancient Egyptians
6		Enter the Greeks		86
		From Homer and Hesiod to Pythagoras, Plato and Ptolemy
7		Gifts of the Yellow Emperor		105
		More...

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