On page 96 the author notes that “the actual mapping of the heavens did not exist” in medieval Europe; on page 98, that “celestial cartography awaited its invention.” That these words appear nearly 40 percent of the way through The Sky Atlas (Simon & Schuster UK, 2019) should hint at what this book does and does not do. Despite appearances, this is not strictly speaking a history of celestial cartography. Do star maps appear, and are they discussed? Certainly. Absolutely. But not to the extent you might expect.
To the extent that this is a book by Edward Brooke-Hitching, whom you may remember from The Phantom Atlas (reviewed here) or The Golden Atlas (not seen), there are some thing that are familiar, at least in terms of design and presentation. The Sky Atlas is an illustrated history of observational astronomy from the ancients to the present day, aimed at a general audience, with short, digestible chapters. It’s expansive and inclusive—there are chapters on Jain and Mesoamerican astronomy, for example. And it has, as you might expect, lots and lots of illustrations, which given the timeline and scope of the book means artistic representations and maps of the skies from every era and multiple cultures.
You’re not getting what what you see in Nick Kanas’s Star Maps (reviewed here)—deep dives on specific celestial cartographers and their work (in Kanas’s case, from a collector’s perspective). The Sky Atlas gives celestial cartography a more ancillary role. Apart from a chapter on Hevelius, most of the text about maps takes place in the captions. Now in a book this illustrated there are a lot of captions, and the captions are not terse. But the maps themselves are there to illustrate and document the observations and discoveries that are the focus of this book—interesting in and of themselves, but not the main focus of the narrative. There is, to be sure, less of an audience for celestial cartography pur et dur, and this is a book for a general audience. So the direction the book takes is understandable. And as a collection of maps and illustrations it is quite lovely; as I said about The Phantom Atlas, “it’s the kind of map book you look at as much as you read it.” Even so, when something doesn’t quite do what it says on the tin, it should be noted.
Got this one from my public library.
The Sky Atlas by Edward Brooke-Hitching. Simon & Schuster UK, 17 Oct 2019, £25 (U.K. edition); Chronicle, 25 Feb 2020, $35 (U.S. edition). Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
