The Moon: A biography by David Whitehouse, Headline, £14.99, ISBN
074727228X
Look at the list under “Moon” in a dictionary of quotations to realise the
part that our satellite has played in human life from the earliest times. That’s
where Whitehouse starts—in the Lascaux caves, where there is a string of
marks that are thought to be notations of the Moon’s monthly changes. He follows
the trail of discoveries about the Moon since then, the theories that they
excited, the revelations brought by the telescope and the development of modern
astronomy. It’s a well-worn trail, but he plunges off…
