E-raamat: Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: An Environmental History of Our Place in the Solar System

Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean brings us a new arena of history, the history of our collective engagement with our planetary neighbors in the inner solar system. Dagomar Degroot has constructed an amazing synthesis of how cultural projections, and gradually the observational sciences, have brought the environmental histories of the Sun, the Moon, Venus, Mars, and the asteroids into sharper and sharper focus. Simultaneously, Degroot shows how our explorations of environments in the inner solar system have illuminated the critical features of our home planet Earth. This is a book that will be widely read as we grapple both with our emerging efforts to inhabit near-earth environments and with the pressing problem of planetary sustainability here on Earth. -- John L. Brooke, author of Climate Change and the Course of Global History Dagomar Degroot has boldly taken environmental history where no historian has gone before. In this beautifully written and handsomely illustrated book, Degroot shows how dynamic components of the solar system have affected both earthly environments and human ideas over the last five centuries. Part history of astronomy and astronomers, part super-macro environmental history, the book brims over with both interesting anecdotes and arresting perspectives on our place within the cosmos. -- J. R. McNeill, author of The Webs of Humankind A beautifully illustrated and flowing account of the place of our world in the vastness of the cosmos. Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean offers a stark warning about the interplanetary hazards our world faces, but it also offers hope: about our potential to explore the cosmic high seas and our potential to save our own little island. Degroot sets some awesome challenges, but he opens up some liberating possibilities. -- John Haldon, author of The Empire That Would Not Die Dagomar Degroot takes readers on an engrossing journey through the solar system and the history of astronomy, uncovering the dynamic and often unexpected ways outer space has shaped Earths environment and human history. In this sweeping account, Degroot redefines our understanding of our home planetnot as an isolated world, but as one deeply entangled with the cosmos. -- Teasel Muir-Harmony, author of Operation Moonglow