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keithlafountaine's review against another edition
3.5
Cohen says, in Chasing the Sun's introduction, that he was inspired to write the book after realizing there is not a comprehensive history of the star that gives our planet life. His goal, then, was to create both an exhaustively researched cultural history of the sun's importance to humanity -- in spiritual and scientific terms -- and a granular exploration of the sun's importance scientifically, from the way it helps create life and how it can also harm us.
The result is an interesting, albeit bloated, book. Chasing the Sun is engrossing for the first 250-300 pages. This is clearly a labor of love for Cohen, who spends hundreds of pages discussing everything from the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, and their associated Sun Gods, and the explosion of astronomical science, from Newton to Einstein, that led us to important and world-altering perspective shifts.
But the book's dual goal also hinders it. While I loved reading about humanity's cultural fascination with the Sun, I was less interested in reading extensive passages about skin cancer, the food chain, and ocean flora. As such, the back end of the book reads like a dry science textbook - even when touching on subjects I'm interested in.
All in all, I appreciate what Cohen attempted here. While it often feels like a mixed bag, there is so much here to learn that I can't help but get giddy at the thought of it. As someone who's always dabbled with astronomy and found the universe exciting, it's hard not to love a book that is so dedicated and focused on our central star.
The result is an interesting, albeit bloated, book. Chasing the Sun is engrossing for the first 250-300 pages. This is clearly a labor of love for Cohen, who spends hundreds of pages discussing everything from the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, and their associated Sun Gods, and the explosion of astronomical science, from Newton to Einstein, that led us to important and world-altering perspective shifts.
But the book's dual goal also hinders it. While I loved reading about humanity's cultural fascination with the Sun, I was less interested in reading extensive passages about skin cancer, the food chain, and ocean flora. As such, the back end of the book reads like a dry science textbook - even when touching on subjects I'm interested in.
All in all, I appreciate what Cohen attempted here. While it often feels like a mixed bag, there is so much here to learn that I can't help but get giddy at the thought of it. As someone who's always dabbled with astronomy and found the universe exciting, it's hard not to love a book that is so dedicated and focused on our central star.
friendsheyho's review against another edition
2.0
I picked this book up at the Museum of Natural History, and when I finally got to reading it I can only phrase this text as a long string of disappointments occasionally interspersed with interesting facts. Once in a while, the author would say something that was fascinating and engrossing, and sometimes it even continued for a full chapter; rarely longer. I feel like he could have presented his many facts in a more interesting manner, but that's not the major problem I have with this book, even though it is the most pervasive and made it one of the factors that most diminished the readability of the text.
The cover page claims that Richard Cohen, the author, is writing in the "grand tradition of the scholar-adventurer", but he rarely brings himself back into the text, and when he does it's usually to marvel at some non-Western cultural and to make small assertions that can do nothing but establish his belief, however subconscious, that non-Western societies are strange, different, and above all else, never superior to the Western counterpart. When talking about Chinese astronomy, he is quick to demean it. When, at the beginning of the book, he talks about cultures in relation to the sun "before science", it is almost entirely non-Western societies he talks about. When, at the end, he goes to India to see a sunset, it is filtered through the eyes of a Westerner who seems to love judging cultures that are not his own.
Also, as mentioned by other reviewers, this man seems to discard global warming as happening simply because he met one scientist who doesn't like it, and his conclusions about it are basically "well I don't want to accept that it's us so it's the sun." If you look up the author, though, you discover that he's decided gay people don't exist because he claims to be converted straight, so it's really not a surprise that he leans towards the realm of pretending his lack of progressivism stems from some scientific base. With his backwards opinions he just can't keep to himself, his constant othering of non-Western cultures, and his privileged eight year long trek around the world in search of facts for his tedious book, I'd say he does continue a grand tradition; that of the Western, white man exploring parts of the world he doesn't understand and exploiting it, all so he tell the story he wants to.
The cover page claims that Richard Cohen, the author, is writing in the "grand tradition of the scholar-adventurer", but he rarely brings himself back into the text, and when he does it's usually to marvel at some non-Western cultural and to make small assertions that can do nothing but establish his belief, however subconscious, that non-Western societies are strange, different, and above all else, never superior to the Western counterpart. When talking about Chinese astronomy, he is quick to demean it. When, at the beginning of the book, he talks about cultures in relation to the sun "before science", it is almost entirely non-Western societies he talks about. When, at the end, he goes to India to see a sunset, it is filtered through the eyes of a Westerner who seems to love judging cultures that are not his own.
Also, as mentioned by other reviewers, this man seems to discard global warming as happening simply because he met one scientist who doesn't like it, and his conclusions about it are basically "well I don't want to accept that it's us so it's the sun." If you look up the author, though, you discover that he's decided gay people don't exist because he claims to be converted straight, so it's really not a surprise that he leans towards the realm of pretending his lack of progressivism stems from some scientific base. With his backwards opinions he just can't keep to himself, his constant othering of non-Western cultures, and his privileged eight year long trek around the world in search of facts for his tedious book, I'd say he does continue a grand tradition; that of the Western, white man exploring parts of the world he doesn't understand and exploiting it, all so he tell the story he wants to.
lnatal's review
2.0
From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
"Once upon a time we thought that we were the centre of the universe and that even the sun revolved around us...
Thousands of years later we know that our earliest, most basic idea about our place in the cosmos was false, and that that cosmos is vastly larger than we ever dreamed. We are mere specks..."
Richard Cohen took eight years to write his account of the sun. The sun's biography, in fact. He looks at the myth, the legend, the science. Also the social context and how the sun figures in various art forms. And, will it be with us for ever? We have to hope so. His celebration of that gold disc in the sky is now caught in five episodes...
In the first of five episodes, abridged by Penny Leicester, the author highlights some of the astounding myths associated with the sun, then he views the pefect sunrise...
Reader Allan Corduner
Producer Duncan Minshull.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wlbss
"Once upon a time we thought that we were the centre of the universe and that even the sun revolved around us...
Thousands of years later we know that our earliest, most basic idea about our place in the cosmos was false, and that that cosmos is vastly larger than we ever dreamed. We are mere specks..."
Richard Cohen took eight years to write his account of the sun. The sun's biography, in fact. He looks at the myth, the legend, the science. Also the social context and how the sun figures in various art forms. And, will it be with us for ever? We have to hope so. His celebration of that gold disc in the sky is now caught in five episodes...
In the first of five episodes, abridged by Penny Leicester, the author highlights some of the astounding myths associated with the sun, then he views the pefect sunrise...
Reader Allan Corduner
Producer Duncan Minshull.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wlbss
More...