What could be more poetic than the bare facts of the cosmos?” asks Sims (Adam's Navel
), an acclaimed science writer with a flair for giving reality the luster of myth. Here he takes a single day and guides readers through the history of what we know, and what we've imagined, about sunrises, clouds and other natural phenomena. From the opening passage, which recalls a scene from Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
, Sims delights in drawing upon a wide variety of cultural sources. In one section, he invokes Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth
to stress the importance of shadows; later, he discusses circadian rhythms in the context of Darwin's The Power of Movement in Plants
. The hard science is just as vigorously poetic, as when Sims explains how sunlight bounces off the particles in the atmosphere to produce clear blue skies or the reds of twilight. His delightful tour of day and night skies will inspire many readers to look up with a marveling new perspective. (Sept. 24)
