Preview
  • The Human Cosmos

  • Civilization and the Stars
  • By: Jo Marchant
  • Narrated by: Jo Marchant
  • Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (204 ratings)

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Human Cosmos

By: Jo Marchant
Narrated by: Jo Marchant
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $15.75

Buy for $15.75

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Publisher's summary

A Best Book of 2020 NPR
A Best Book of 2020 The Economist
A Top 10 Best Science Book of 2020 Smithsonian
A Best Science & Technology Book of 2020 Library Journal
A Must-Read Book to Escape the Chaos of 2020 Newsweek
Starred review Booklist
Starred review Publishers Weekly

A historically unprecedented disconnect between humanity and the heavens has opened. Jo Marchant's book can begin to heal it.

For at least 20,000 years, we have led not just an earthly existence, but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are - our art, religious beliefs, social status, scientific advances, and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. It's a disconnect with a dire cost.

Our relationship to the stars and planets has moved from one of awe, wonder, and superstition to one where technology is king - the cosmos is now explored through data on our screens, not by the naked eye observing the natural world. Indeed, in most countries modern light pollution obscures much of the night sky from view. Jo Marchant's spellbinding parade of the ways different cultures celebrated the majesty and mysteries of the night sky is a journey to the most awe inspiring view you can ever see - looking up on a clear dark night. That experience and the thoughts it has engendered have radically shaped human civilization across millennia. The cosmos is the source of our greatest creativity in art, in science, in life.

To show us how, Jo Marchant takes us to the Hall of the Bulls in the caves at Lascaux in France, and to the summer solstice at a 5,000-year-old tomb at New Grange in Ireland. We discover Chumash cosmology and visit medieval monks grappling with the nature of time and Tahitian sailors navigating by the stars. We discover how light reveals the chemical composition of the sun, and we are with Einstein as he works out that space and time are one and the same. A four-billion-year-old meteor inspires a search for extraterrestrial life. The cosmically liberating, summary revelation is that star-gazing made us human.

©2020 Jo Marchant (P)2020 Penguin Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic reviews

“Marchant charts the history of humanity’s fascination with the night sky and explores the way the stars have shaped art, faith, science and society, and what our modern disconnect from the stars has cost us.” (USA Today, “5 Books Not to Miss”)

"A tour of the heavens that centers not so much on outer space as what it does to our inner beings...Readers interested in the cognitive aspects of cosmology will enjoy Marchant’s explorations." (Kirkus)

"This thematic, engaging overview of our stars and skies has something for all readers of geography, exploration, religion, philosophy, and politics" (Library Journal)