Starborn

How the Stars Made Us (and Who We Would Be Without Them)

By: Roberto Trotta

Narrated by: George Weightman

A sweeping inquiry into how the night sky has shaped human history

For as long as humans have lived, we have lived beneath the stars. But under the glow of today’s artificial lighting, we have lost the intimacy our ancestors once shared with the cosmos.

In Starborn, cosmologist Roberto Trotta reveals how stargazing has shaped the course of human civilization. The stars have served as our timekeepers, our navigators, our muses—they were once even our gods. How radically different would we be, Trotta also asks, if our ancestors had looked up to the night sky and seen… nothing? He pairs the history of our starstruck species with a dramatic alternate version, a world without stars where our understanding of science, art, and ourselves would have been radically altered.

Revealing the hidden connections between astronomy and civilization, Starborn summons us to the marvelous sight that awaits us on a dark, clear night—to lose ourselves in the immeasurable vastness above.

©2023 Roberto Trotta (P)2023 Basic Books

Critic reviews

"Trotta offers a stellar survey of the 'remarkable but often unrecognized' role played by stars and other cosmic bodies in human history... . The prose is evocative...and the history fascinates...it’s a stimulating take on how the heavens have shaped life on Earth."—Publishers Weekly

"A largely satisfying miscellany about stars."—Kirkus

“A stunning and unforgettable voyage through the stars. Almost every page will make you gulp in astonishment. To be so authoritative and yet so readable and companionable is a rare and priceless achievement.”—Stephen Fry, actor

An inspiring survey of cosmology and thoughts about the dark sky.

An inspiring survey of cosmology and thoughts about the dark sky. Astronomy and cosmology reviews almost always require a review of the historical background of the ideas. Seeing the entanglement of fascination with the starts with most of our important ideas IS refreshing. Juxtaposing the review with an imaginary story of a people that never see a night sky is interesting but doesn’t add a lot for me.

Disjointed and Disappointing in the End

As an astrophotographer drawn to the night sky, I really wanted to like this book. I did like parts of it, but in some respects it is a disjointed mess. I did not mind the interspersed "Caligo Tales," in which the author imagines a primitive clan who live in a cloud enshrouded world. But at other points, the book gets mired in details. A good editing would have helped.

The one thing I did like about the book is that it emphasizes the importance of the night sky and the stars in many realms. Dark skies are now fleeting, at least in the developed world.

There are efforts now being undertaken to certify dark sky parks and to curb the effect of urban lighting on the night sky. Significant change can happen through the adoption of outdoor lighting that points down. These are important and, it seems to me, should have been championed in the book. Efforts to preserve and expand dark skies in the U.S. and Europe are somewhat realistic, fit with the subject of the book, and might serve as a model for other cooperative efforts on environmental issues.

Instead, the author descends into an all too common Al Goreish lecture on general climate change. He calls for concerted world action against it--No mention of how that is going to happen with most of the world's population living under totalitarian regimes.