Still As Bright

by Christopher Cokinos

• ISBN13: 9781639365692
• ISBN10: 1639365699
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781639365708
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2024-04-02
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• More Book Details

Summary

*Winner of the 2025 Utah Book Award in Memoir/Narrative*

*A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2024*

An immersive exploration of the nightly presence that has captured our imagination for the entirety of human history.

"When the Moon rises between buildings or over trees, it’s not just a beautiful light: It’s an archive of human longing, fear and adventure. The Moon is more than a rock. It’s a story.”

In the luminously told Still As Bright, the story of the Moon traverses time and space, rendering a range of human experiences—from the beliefs of ancient cultures to the science of Galileo’s telescopic discoveries, from the obsessions of colorful 19th century “selenographers” to the astronauts of Apollo and, now, Artemis.

Still As Bright also traces Cokinos's own lunar pilgrimage. With his backyard telescope, he explores the surface of the Moon, while rooted in places both domestic and wild, and this award-winning poet and writer rediscovers feelings of solace, love and wonder in the midst of loss and change.

Simultaneously steeped in rigorous cultural and scientific history, as well as memoir, Still As Bright is a thoughtful, deeply moving, evergreen natural history. It takes readers on a lyrical journey that spans the human understanding of our closest celestial neighbor, whose multi-faceted appeal has worked on witches, scientists, poets, engineers and even billionaires.

Still As Bright is a must-read for anyone who has ever looked up into the night sky in awe and wonder. Readers will never look at the Moon the same way again.

Author Biography

Christopher Cokinos is the author of The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars and Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds.  His articles, poems and essays about space and astronomy have been published in Sky & Telescope, The Space Review, Astronomy.com, SkyNews and the Los Angeles Times, and other works have been featured in NPR’s “All Things Considered,” USA Today, People, Science, The New Yorker, Nature and Michio Kaku’s “Science Fantastic.” He is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Rachel Carson Center in Munich, the Whiting Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the John Burroughs Prize for Best Natural History Essay, the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, and more.  After more than three decades of teaching at three different universities, he now lives and writes in Utah.