TO KNOW A STARRY NIGHT, Booksgiving gifting idea for your nature-loving giftee

TO KNOW A STARRY NIGHT
Text by PAUL BOGARD, photos by BEAU ROGERS
University of Nevada Press
$35.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: No matter where we live, what language we speak, or what culture shapes our worldview, there is always the night. The darkness is a reminder of the ebb and flow, of an opportunity to recharge, of the movement of time. But how many of us have taken the time to truly know a starry night? To really know it.

Combining the lyrical writing of Paul Bogard with the stunning night-sky photography of Beau Rogers, To Know a Starry Night explores the powerful experience of being outside under a natural starry sky—how important it is to human life, and how so many people don’t know this experience. As the night sky increasingly becomes flooded with artificial-light pollution, this poignant work helps us reconnect with the natural darkness of night, an experience that now, in our time, is fading from our lives.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: There is a very strong chance that, if you're my age or younger, you've never seen a truly dark night sky. If you grew up east of the Mississippi River, it's almost a guarantee. The saddest part of that is the sheer, astonishing vastness of stars. The closest I've come to seeing skies like these:

...was an early 1970s car trip with my oldest sister who was leaving South Texas for California. I went with her and, at more than one point, she stopped the car at night, turned off the car lights, and we stared up at sheerly astoundingly bright skies...not from (in those days) mercury-vapor lights that were common and getting more so on major highways, as we were in the proverbial middle of nowhere, but from stars. Thousands and thousands and thousands of stars, more than I had ever seen before. The night skies I encountered in middle age above Machu Picchu were the only comparably startling revelation to me.

What made Author Bogard present this book of Photographer Beau Rogers's glorious night-time images to us was his increasing awareness that his own daughter, whose company on these night-time ramblings in the American West he treasured, might not have even these places to see the natural condition of darkness again in her lifetime.

Nothing could possibly be sadder than that!

What a loss to Humanity the curse of light pollution is...and how necessary it is to protect what there is left of it.

We're simply not paying enough attention to these losses. There's nothing to replace natural darkness. There's little research into the costs of the loss to the natural world...there's next to none on its impact to us, the polluters. What we lose only starts with the aesthetic awareness of the extent of the beauty around us on the planet.

This absolutely astoundingly gorgeous book is perfect to gift to your photography fan as well as the environmentally aware young person. It's a spectacular creation and worthy of a space on anyone's display shelf, coffee table, or even tablet.