The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
The "terrific ... moving, poetic, immersive, multifaceted, and thought-provoking" book (Publishers Weekly) that will open your eyes to the night. A brilliantly starry night is one of nature's most thrilling wonders. Yet in our world of nights as bright as day, most of us no longer experience...
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The "terrific ... moving, poetic, immersive, multifaceted, and thought-provoking" book (Publishers Weekly) that will open your eyes to the night. A brilliantly starry night is one of nature's most thrilling wonders. Yet in our world of nights as bright as day, most of us no longer experience true darkness. Eight out of ten Americans born today won't ever live where they can see the Milky Way. And exposure to artificial light at night has been cited as a factor in health concerns ranging from poor sleep to cancer.In his gorgeous debut, THE END OF NIGHT, Paul Bogard travels the globe to find the night, blending personal narrative, natural history, health, science, and folklore to shed light on darkness. Showing exactly what we've lost, what we have left, and what we might hope to regain, he attempts nothing less than a restoration of how we see the spectacularly primal, wildly dark night sky.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780316182911 (0316182915)
ASIN: 316182915
Publish date: July 22nd 2014
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Pages no: 336
Edition language: English
The End of Night began well enough, but ultimately it failed to sustain my interest or an overall focus on light pollution. Two of my major complaints were the lack of focus and the lack of science.Largely the author relied on personal observations (his own and a number of people he interviewed) rat...
With chapters counting down the Bortle scale (9 to 1), this book examines levels of darkness in the world. Chapters discuss modern fallacies (light reduces crime!) and the real reasons (adding light is an easy win for politicians; utilities need to sell electricity at night). Some very good discussi...
When I first saw this book, I thought it would be another doomed attempt by an amateur astronomer to convince people that light pollution is bad because the night sky is pretty. And oh, I agree the night sky is beautiful -- I have a lot of star gazing under my belt and I care. But I had pretty muc...