“With humankind’s thoughts, feelings and beliefs projected upon the Moon as its focus, this wonderful book—masterful in scope, rich in detail, and a pleasure to read—takes the reader on a sometimes surprising and often fascinating and enlightening journey across the arts and sciences.” —Leonardo
“Montgomery stitches a story of religious allegory, scientific inquiry and artistic insight…Beneath the easy-reading style lies a work of substance that is a narrow but penetrating contribution to cultural history.” —Publishers Weekly
The Moon is at once a face with a thousand expressions and the archetypal planet. Scott Montgomery has produced a richly detailed analysis of how the Moon has been visualized in Western culture through the ages, revealing the faces it has presented to philosophers, writers, artists, and scientists for nearly three millennia. To do this, he has drawn on a wide array of sources that illustrate changing concepts of the nature and significance of heavenly bodies from classical antiquity to the dawn of modern science…Ultimately, Montgomery suggests…when we finally establish lunar bases and take up some form of residence on the Moon’s surface, we will not be conquering a New World…but a much older one, ripe with history.AmazonAmazon UKBarnes & NobleIndieboundPowell’s