American Scientist

OUR MOON: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are. Rebecca Boyle. 336 pp. Random House, 2024. $28.99.

The subtitle of science writer Rebecca Boyle’s new book, Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are, sets forth what would be an ambitious task for any author. It describes a book that will explore the physical history of the relationship between the Earth and its only natural satellite, examine the biological consequences of this relationship and how it shaped our existence, and delve into the cultural role the Moon has played in how humans have defined themselves and their place in the universe. That Our Moon succeeds in all three of these realms—taking the reader on a journey from the very creation of the Earth–Moon system up to our present preoccupation with sending humans to the Moon—is a testament to Boyle’s skills as a writer and storyteller.

Boyle’s approach to the topic of the Moon demonstrates her facility translating complex scientific ideas into understandable—and at times poetic—narratives. The idea of a Mars-sized object slamming into the proto-Earth and producing a new two-body system is dramatic in itself, but it still requires finesse to transform the physics and computer modeling behind the currently held theory of the Moon’s origin into an understandable, let alone compelling, story. The same can be said of the assortment of theories about how the Moon’s effect on the tides may have influenced the origin and development of life on Earth, and of the slow process by which the Moon’s orbit has changed over the past 4.5 billion years.

Boyle’s skill as a storyteller really begins to shine toward the middle of the book, as she introduces us to the prehistoric artifacts that speak to humankind’s long and enduring fascination with the Moon. In Boyle’s account, these artifacts transition from objects of ritual—including the well-known standing stones of Stonehenge and the lesser-known earthworks of Warren Field, Scotland—to objects of measurement, wrapped in layers of forgotten cultural meaning now irretrievable to time. Boyle takes us to the sites where prehistoric humans gathered and connected to the Moon, as well as into the museums that today preserve recovered objects, such as the Nebra sky disk, some of which once mapped the Moon’s motions through the sky or counted and measured time via the Moon’s changing appearance.

The stories of these sites and objects are themselves fascinating, but even more so are the people Boyle introduces us to: the experts who devote their lives to piecing together the fragments of prehistoric life. One of the most endearing examples is the husband and wife team Hilary and Charlie Murray, who excavated the Neolithic site at Warren Field and who, after literally walking Boyle through their field work, accept her as “part of their family.” Boyle doesn’t just visit the Murrays and report what she learns; she takes the reader into their lives, which have been shaped by their obsession with the deep human past. Her journey into their lives becomes a journey through time, facilitated via human connection. One gets the sense that going into the field with her subjects was one of her favorite parts of researching this project.

Boyle’s approach to the topic of the Moon demonstrates her facility translating complex scientific ideas into understandable—and at times poetic—narratives.

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The book then progresses through the ancient world, from Babylon to Egypt to Greece and Rome, and then on to the origins of modern science in Europe via Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. This is a familiar trajectory to anyone who has read about the history of astronomy, and Boyle’s perspective is limited by her focus on the West and on the progress of scientific understanding. Nonetheless, Boyle brings the historical figures she presents to life, treating their beliefs and worldviews with adequate care, while again bringing us into the offices and libraries of the people who study them today. These visits take us beyond the presentation of history as one static story, and, as in the case of the Murrays, demonstrate that even ancient history is something that still lives and changes in the minds and arguments of contemporary scholars.

The final portion of the book takes the reader through a fast-paced account of the exploration of the Moon in the 20th century. Here, the human dimension of those who explored the Moon comes through clearly, but there is not much focus on the scientists who worked to support these missions or interpret the data and samples returned. There is little mention of the robotic missions that explored and mapped the Moon before and after the arrival of the Apollo astronauts, and the reader doesn’t get much of a sense of the significance of what was found there. The fact is that Apollo-era lunar exploration involved much more than the 12 men who walked on the Moon. Lunar exploration required thousands of people working on the ground in laboratories, observatories, machine shops, control rooms, and a host of other sites. What they discovered, and what was discovered by robotic spacecraft in the decades that followed, is actually the basis for the story told in the first part of Boyle’s book.

These absences are, in some ways, products of the way Boyle has arranged her narrative. Boyle begins the book as a science writer, explaining our present understanding of the Moon’s origin and history, its physical characteristics, and its theoretical influence on the origin and evolution of life. Chronologically speaking, it makes sense to place this information at the beginning of the book, since she is describing lunar and terrestrial events that occurred long before the appearance of the first humans. But midway through the book, Boyle becomes an anthropologist, and then, finally, a historian, taking the reader through the evolution of human ideas about the Moon. One can imagine a version of Our Moon in which the first chapters are in fact the last, the ideas presented within treated as the most recent human efforts to understand the Moon and, by doing so, uncover our place in our universe. Even though humans were not present for this early history, this knowledge was produced by humans who, as with the anthropologists and the historians, have forged a deep connection with their subject.

This alternate version of the book would demonstrate that we aren’t so different from our prehistoric, ancient, or early modern ancestors. One of the main products of the scientific enterprise—what gives science its cultural significance—is the story of ourselves and our significance in the vastness of space and time. In this sense, the first chapters of Our Moon tell the story of now—a story made possible by 60 years and counting of space-age lunar science and exploration. As Boyle demonstrates, this most recent period should not be thought of as separate from the many thousands of years of human fascination with the Moon. We have always been “moonstruck.”

But just because the book could have been arranged differently doesn’t mean that it should have been. Boyle’s narrative is engaging and incredibly well-informed. Even those of us who have read extensively about the history of lunar and planetary science will find something new in Our Moon.