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The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light by Paul Bogard
threegoodrats's review against another edition
4.0
I liked this more than I thought I would. My review is here.
ovenbird_reads's review against another edition
4.0
Fascinating book that makes me want to search out the darkest places i can find and reconnect with the night sky. Bogard makes it clear that losing the night to artificial light isn't just about losing the beauty of stars--we also lose our ability to connect with darkness as a metaphorical and psychological structure, one that is essential to balance and a full life. A great read.
holly_keimig's review against another edition
5.0
Wonderful book. I highly recommend it! :) Save our dark skies!
"To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings." Wendell Berry
p. 135--Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "I think one should work into a story the idea of not being sure of all things, because that's the way reality is".
p. 148--"Unlike birds, which typically die from direct impact with turbine blades, bats are killed by a condition called barotrauma, essentially a version of 'the bends' suffered by scuba divers. The rapid drop in air pressure around the wind turbine blades causes bats' lungs to burst."
p. 179--..."solastalgia, about missing a loved place that still exists but to which the old birds and plant and animals no longer come. A word newly coined for our time, solastalgia combines the Latin word for comfort (slacium) and the Greek root meaning pain (algia) and differs from nostalgia in that it's a yearning for a place you still inhabit rather than the one you've left behind. It's a word we'll be hearing more often, for wherever we live, the climate has changed, or soon will. Next to my own death or that of my family, this is the darkness I fear most, this sadness at the ongoing destruction of the wild world."
p. 239--"...He's often frustrated that many people think the lighting ordinances are only for the benefit of the astronomers...It's like asking why the Grand Canyon is important and saying 'Oh, well, we need to have that so that the geologists can study the rocks'."
p. 252--"It's what psychologist Peter Kahn called 'environmental generational amnesia', a situation where 'the problem is that people don't recognize there's a problem' becuase they don't know any better. In other words, if you have never known a night sky any darker than the one you have now, why would you think anything is wrong?"
p. 254--Sigurd Olson--"If we can somehow retain places where we can always sense the mystery of the unknown our lives will be richer." Beauty and myster: intangible qualities we all know are valuable but don't always know how to value.
p. 265--"To be where anyone else could be and yet to find yourself alone feels like discovering a secret."
"To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings." Wendell Berry
p. 135--Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "I think one should work into a story the idea of not being sure of all things, because that's the way reality is".
p. 148--"Unlike birds, which typically die from direct impact with turbine blades, bats are killed by a condition called barotrauma, essentially a version of 'the bends' suffered by scuba divers. The rapid drop in air pressure around the wind turbine blades causes bats' lungs to burst."
p. 179--..."solastalgia, about missing a loved place that still exists but to which the old birds and plant and animals no longer come. A word newly coined for our time, solastalgia combines the Latin word for comfort (slacium) and the Greek root meaning pain (algia) and differs from nostalgia in that it's a yearning for a place you still inhabit rather than the one you've left behind. It's a word we'll be hearing more often, for wherever we live, the climate has changed, or soon will. Next to my own death or that of my family, this is the darkness I fear most, this sadness at the ongoing destruction of the wild world."
p. 239--"...He's often frustrated that many people think the lighting ordinances are only for the benefit of the astronomers...It's like asking why the Grand Canyon is important and saying 'Oh, well, we need to have that so that the geologists can study the rocks'."
p. 252--"It's what psychologist Peter Kahn called 'environmental generational amnesia', a situation where 'the problem is that people don't recognize there's a problem' becuase they don't know any better. In other words, if you have never known a night sky any darker than the one you have now, why would you think anything is wrong?"
p. 254--Sigurd Olson--"If we can somehow retain places where we can always sense the mystery of the unknown our lives will be richer." Beauty and myster: intangible qualities we all know are valuable but don't always know how to value.
p. 265--"To be where anyone else could be and yet to find yourself alone feels like discovering a secret."
lajacquerie's review against another edition
1.0
I cannot fathom how anyone rates this over 3 stars. This is one of the worst books I've read in recent memory -- I had to force myself through (and even then, I skimmed the last 100 pages. Skimming! Unthinkable!).
Bogard loves stars. Great. He wants to teach us about light pollution -- still great! Technically he accomplishes this. But the way he does it makes me feel like someone read a little blurb of Bogard's on night and said, "You seem to love this topic. Here's some money! Go write about it," and then Bogard took the money to visit a few places he really wants to see. That's what the methodology feels like, anyway. The research is lacking, the data non-existent, but man-oh-man there are flashbacks a-plenty to Bogard's memories of various nights.
This might also be a Millennial thing, or an "I live in an urban center thing," but he only goes to Spain, Paris, and the U.K. outside of the United States. How about experiencing night in the middle of an African desert? From the arctic circle? Talking to someone who lived in North Korea but escaped to Seoul? Again, Bogard isn't going for depth so much as SHARING his experience with us. He wants us to FEEL the urgency he feels for night. Which is admirable, but as it says everywhere in this book -- experiencing the night for yourself is the only way to call up that real need for it; words and pictures only get you so far.
What's more, some of what's shared is just worthless. Sorry to whomever picks up my copy at the coffee shop; it's littered with "!" marking all of the inane passages I marked. The writing is good, and mistake-free, you can tell he's an English teacher in that regard. But in terms of this being an exploration of a scientific topic, no bueno (maybe this should have been an Ode to the Night, or a series of essays about what darkness means. But it isn't, so I can only judge it on what it appears to be). A sampling:
"Because there are more than a thousand species of bats... it's hard to generalize about them, but that doesn't keep me from asking Aaron Corcoran to do just that."
"The curve of the night closes the day sky to a small half-dome in the west, and my fleece jacket feels good." [Do we care? Why should we care?]
"Here, too, is the desert quiet - and quiet is a quality closely related to darkness. At least it ought to be." [Then... prove it? Or just state it as fact?]
"For me, the quiet of night has long been a friend." [cue story about being curled around a radio]
There were just so many passages that I didn't care about -- hearing from person after person about how important the night is to them was occasionally touching, but I didn't feel I learned much there. Why are you telling me this when you could be sharing knowledge?
I've also pulled out all the interesting things from the book I found so you don't even have to skim it if you don't want to:
1) Our new-fangled wind turbines are dangerous to bats, but not for the reason you might expect. The drastic change in air pressure near the blades actually causes their lungs to explode!
2) Historically, as night was much longer, it was common to speak of "two sleeps" or a "second sleep" -- you might wake up, chat, make love, etc, and then go back to sleep. Which of us wouldn't go for more time like that in bed?
3) People historically (and this is Bogard's best point) saw a fundamentally different sky from us. They were able to see the glow of the Milky Way with their naked eyes, just outside their houses. The "Starry Night" of van Gogh's canvas is still probably an Impressionist exaggeration, but his source material was far more colorful, detailed, and alive than ours would be.
4) We'll probably hear more about streetlighting alternatives (or there'll be a greater push for lower evening lighting) after more electric cards come online and power companies can charge higher prices for night-'tricity. As it is now, they load dump in the evenings to help balance out their loads.
5) Cadillac Mountain in Maine is the first place that the sun touches in the United States in the fall and winter. Get to Acadia, folks!
Annnnd that's it. Don't waste your time on this book.
Bogard loves stars. Great. He wants to teach us about light pollution -- still great! Technically he accomplishes this. But the way he does it makes me feel like someone read a little blurb of Bogard's on night and said, "You seem to love this topic. Here's some money! Go write about it," and then Bogard took the money to visit a few places he really wants to see. That's what the methodology feels like, anyway. The research is lacking, the data non-existent, but man-oh-man there are flashbacks a-plenty to Bogard's memories of various nights.
This might also be a Millennial thing, or an "I live in an urban center thing," but he only goes to Spain, Paris, and the U.K. outside of the United States. How about experiencing night in the middle of an African desert? From the arctic circle? Talking to someone who lived in North Korea but escaped to Seoul? Again, Bogard isn't going for depth so much as SHARING his experience with us. He wants us to FEEL the urgency he feels for night. Which is admirable, but as it says everywhere in this book -- experiencing the night for yourself is the only way to call up that real need for it; words and pictures only get you so far.
What's more, some of what's shared is just worthless. Sorry to whomever picks up my copy at the coffee shop; it's littered with "!" marking all of the inane passages I marked. The writing is good, and mistake-free, you can tell he's an English teacher in that regard. But in terms of this being an exploration of a scientific topic, no bueno (maybe this should have been an Ode to the Night, or a series of essays about what darkness means. But it isn't, so I can only judge it on what it appears to be). A sampling:
"Because there are more than a thousand species of bats... it's hard to generalize about them, but that doesn't keep me from asking Aaron Corcoran to do just that."
"The curve of the night closes the day sky to a small half-dome in the west, and my fleece jacket feels good." [Do we care? Why should we care?]
"Here, too, is the desert quiet - and quiet is a quality closely related to darkness. At least it ought to be." [Then... prove it? Or just state it as fact?]
"For me, the quiet of night has long been a friend." [cue story about being curled around a radio]
There were just so many passages that I didn't care about -- hearing from person after person about how important the night is to them was occasionally touching, but I didn't feel I learned much there. Why are you telling me this when you could be sharing knowledge?
I've also pulled out all the interesting things from the book I found so you don't even have to skim it if you don't want to:
1) Our new-fangled wind turbines are dangerous to bats, but not for the reason you might expect. The drastic change in air pressure near the blades actually causes their lungs to explode!
2) Historically, as night was much longer, it was common to speak of "two sleeps" or a "second sleep" -- you might wake up, chat, make love, etc, and then go back to sleep. Which of us wouldn't go for more time like that in bed?
3) People historically (and this is Bogard's best point) saw a fundamentally different sky from us. They were able to see the glow of the Milky Way with their naked eyes, just outside their houses. The "Starry Night" of van Gogh's canvas is still probably an Impressionist exaggeration, but his source material was far more colorful, detailed, and alive than ours would be.
4) We'll probably hear more about streetlighting alternatives (or there'll be a greater push for lower evening lighting) after more electric cards come online and power companies can charge higher prices for night-'tricity. As it is now, they load dump in the evenings to help balance out their loads.
5) Cadillac Mountain in Maine is the first place that the sun touches in the United States in the fall and winter. Get to Acadia, folks!
Annnnd that's it. Don't waste your time on this book.
tinynavajo's review against another edition
5.0
I will say that this book took me a long long while to read but I'm glad I read it!!! So much information and so much to know and yet I don't know even with having grown up with a nearly fully dark sky but I haven't seen a fully dark sky in years.
Please read through this and consider when you last saw a fully starry sky. And then consider if your kids, or your nieces and nephews or the kids from your local library, have ever seen a starry sky and if they ever will.
Please read through this and consider when you last saw a fully starry sky. And then consider if your kids, or your nieces and nephews or the kids from your local library, have ever seen a starry sky and if they ever will.
ajlark25's review against another edition
5.0
4.5 stars. This was a really cool book for me. Having grown up in a big suburb of Minneapolis where the night sky/lighting is similar to most major cities, and having travelled to some pretty remote places where there is next to no lighting I really felt like I was able to connect to the Bogard's feeling. I loved reading about the different aspects of the night sky and artificial lighting, especially the psychological and physiological effects it has, or may have, on the human body, and the ecological effects as well. I did find his writing to be a bit dry at times, but never so much that I wanted to give up on the book, more in a way that I felt I needed to take a break for a few days.