The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light by Paul Bogard

The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light Reviews

• 
  Ted

  
  
  Starry Night Vincent Van Gogh, 1889
  
  4 1/2
  
  The main topic which this book explores is given in its subtitle: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light. So we’re talking about “light pollution” here. That sounds kind of boring, but …
  
  Paul Bogart is assistant professor of English at James Madison University, where he teaches creative nonfiction and environmental literature. “Creative non-fiction” is a genre with its own magazine
  and web site. Bogart’s writing, and the structure he’s given the book, really show off this style, and I found the book anything but boring.
  
  Who cares about light pollution? Well, obviously astronomers, both professionals and amateur stargazers, do. But astronomers are not really the people who Bogard is concerned about. He’s concerned about all the rest of us.
  
  Most of us, if we think about it, could come up with a few examples of light pollution which bother us pretty easily. Have you sat outside in your yard on a summer evening, as dark has descended, and been irritated to distraction by that floodlight your neighbor has – the one that’s lighting not only his own back door but your entire back yard? Or how about that meteor shower you read about in the paper. The sky was clear, but you could hardly see anything because you live in a big city, or even a modest suburb, and so much light was scattered into the sky that few stars were visible, shooting or otherwise.
  
  Bogard talks about that first example for sure. But it’s really the second one that concerns him most, symptomatic as it is of a general condition. The younger you are, the more likely that second example will produce a “Yeah, but so what? That’s the way the sky is” response.
  
  But if you’re older, and/or have ever lived far from cities and towns, you might have a different memory of what the night sky can look like. And it’s that memory, which is more and more disappearing from people all over the earth, that Bogard wants to keep alive.
  
  This is also a book about darkness itself. Several chapters address different aspects of the disappearance of darkness in the modern world, much to the detriment of not only our evolutionary memories but of our health and psychological well-being.
  
  The Introduction explains a darkness scale called the Bortle scale, ranging in value from 1 (the most dark skies) to 9 (a typical inner city sky saturated with light pollution.) The Bortle scale provides the framework upon which Bogard hangs his tale. The book has nine chapters, in descending order. Chapter 9 (the first) is a tale of brightness; the last chapter (Chapter 1) tells of the darkest places in the United States (and a couple elsewhere).
  
  
  9. From a Starry Night to a Streetlight
  
  There may be cities that produce more night light than Las Vegas, because of their larger area. But, writes Bogard, it would be foolish to think there is any brighter real estate than the Las Vegas Strip. The brightest beam of light on earth is emitted from the apex of the Luxor casino’s black pyramid: thirty-nine xenon lamps, each six feet tall and three feet wide.
  
  The title of the chapter comes from two paintings. The first (above), one of the most famous paintings in the world, depicts the night sky over a small town, just a few lights showing in windows, the moon and brilliant stars hanging in the sky. Bogard quotes Van Gogh from a letter he wrote the previous summer.

  The deep blue sky was flecked with clouds of a blue deeper than the fundamental blue of intense cobalt, and others of a clearer blue, like the blue whiteness of the Milky Way. In the blue depth the stars were sparkling, greenish, yellow, white, pink, more brilliant, more sparkling gemlike than at home.

  Bogard views Starry Night as “an imagined sky inspired by the real sky” that Van Gogh knew.
  
  Then there’s this painting, from twenty years later,
  
  
  
  Street Light Giacomo Balla, 1909
  MoMA
  
  “A painting of the very thing that makes Van Gogh’s vision of a starry night an unrealistic one for most of us … the moon has become a little biscuit wafer hanging on for dear life, overwhelmed by the electric street light, while Van Gogh’s moon is a throbbing yellow presence pulsing with natural light.”
  
  
  8. Tales from Two Cities
  
  The author describes post-midnight walks he took in London and Paris. His description of what he saw in the first city is compared to Charles Dickens’ “Night Walks”, and Virginia Woolf’s “Street Hunting: A London Adventure”. The lighting of some of the buildings (such as Parliament, which is only lit in silhouette, from behind, after midnight) he finds evocative of the way the city might have looked long ago; but the street lighting is opposite to Woolf’s London street “with its islands of light, and its long groves of darkness.” Bogard sees “long groves of electric light (which) give way only periodically to pockets of gaslit beauty or darkness.”
  
  When he visits Paris, he walks with David Downie, the author of
  Paris Paris Journey into the City of Light, and writes of Joachim Schlor’s
  Nights in the Big City, about the changes in the perception and experience of the night from 1840 to 1930 in Paris, Berlin and London. But for Downie, the quintessential Paris night-walker is the eighteenth-century writer Restif de la Bretonne, who described his perambulations in
  Les Nuits de Paris, a book whose full title included or, The Nocturnal Spectator.
  
  7. Light That Blinds, Fear That Enlightens
  
  Why do we have so much light at night in cities and suburbs? Safety and security, we are told. Light brings safety and security. Darkness brings danger and fear.
  
  These things are true, to a certain extent. Unfortunately most people assume that the more light the safer. Of course that isn’t true. The amount of light we’re using – and how we’re using it – goes far beyond true requirements for safety.
  
  Yes, we humans have a natural fear of the dark. Our most developed sense for telling us of danger is that of sight – and as our environs darken, human sight becomes less of an aid. Yet our night vision isn’t as bad as we imagine. Once we adjust to darkness, we can see – easily by a full moon, still well by starlight on a clear night.
  
  
  6. Body, Sleep, and Dreams
  
  This excellent chapter discusses the health issues that confront night workers, and to a lesser extent, all of us exposed to light at night (LAN).
  
  “While the World Health Organization’s IARC now lists night-shift work as a probable carcinogen … nearly anyone living in the developed world is subject to the potential effects of electric lighting at night.”
  
  Humans, like the rest of life on earth, evolved in alternating periods of light and darkness - day and night. Only in the last century or so has this rhythm of light and dark begun to be seriously disrupted by electric light, which for shift workers is constant, and bright enough to turn night into day. Many scientists now say that the potential consequences of this exposure to light are “enormous”.

  New research suggests that far from being immune to the effects of LAN, humans are highly sensitive, and that when it comes to disrupting our sleep, confusing our circadian rhythms, and impeding our body’s production of the darkness hormone melatonin, LAN has the power to dramatically – negatively – affect our body’s ancient codes.

  The first suggestion of a link between LAN and cancer was made in 1987. After an initial period or skepticism, research has increasingly suggested that the idea is valid. This has gone hand in hand with findings that melatonin in the blood can lessen the growth of many types of cancers; the precise wavelengths of light that maximally suppress the production of melatonin (those producing blue light), and a remarkable discovery, published in 2002, of a previously unknown photoreceptor cell in the ganglion cell layer of the retina, “a part of the eye that was thought not to be light-sensitive”. This discovery fulfilled a finding of about ten years previously by other studies that “there had to be a whole new way of detecting light for the circadian system, separate from vision.” The newly discovered cells (ipRGCs) “had nothing to do with vision per se but rather were dedicated to detecting light to determine the time of day and the time of year, and in the process, resetting circadian rhythms. The detection of blue light (particularly) by these cells signals the coming of daytime. Melatonin is normally produced at night, and inhibited during the day on signals from these cells that light is present.
  
  A good summary of the link between LAN and breast cancer is
  http://www.breastcancerfund.org/clear...
  For ipRGCs, and their functions, including the regulation of melatonin production, see
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsi...
  
  
  5. The Ecology of Darkness
  
  In Walden Thoreau wrote, “Though it is now dark, the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never complete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey now”. These “wildest” of animals hark back to his famous aphorism in his essay “Walking”: “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World”. Bogard writes, “Thoreau saw an American society hell-bent on fencing in, wiping out, using up, trampling down, or blocking every trace of wildness, and declared it [this society] antithetical to sustainable life.”
  
  A 2006 book,
  Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting is a collection of articles on the effects of LAN on birds, sea turtles, bats, moths, fireflies, reptiles, amphibians, salamanders, fishes, mammals, plants, in which the editors write, “natural patterns of darkness are as important as the light of day to the functioning of ecosystems [but] as a whole, professional conservationists have yet to recognize the implications.” The ipRGCs which regulate our circadian rhythms have been present in the vertebrate retina for at least five hundred million years.
  
  Bogard’s narrative of the night world in which we evolved, and which we are losing, moves from the writings of Henry Beston walking on Cape Cod in the 1920s, to Goethe walking under the moon in Rome in 1787; from the nighttime death tolls of birds and animals (including humans killed in deer-vehicle collisions) to the enormous importance of nighttime migration, and the dangers produced by LAN, for millions upon millions of birds; and describes the teeming life of the night, from matings to pollinations, all woven into the fabric of the ecosystems which sustain the planet and all its life forms, including us unaware and unappreciative humans.
  
  Books:
  The Outermost House A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod,
  Nightwatch The Natural World from Dusk to Dawn,
  Cricket Radio Tuning in the Night-Singing Insects
  
  
  
  4. Know Darkness
  
  In this chapter Bogard begins by contrasting the different ways that Western, Native American, and Japanese cultures view darkness and shadow. He continues by discussing the place that various writers have urged for the “darkness” of sadness and melancholy in human life – not as emotions to be feared and avoided, but as deeply human feelings to be embraced as essential components of our journey through life. He talks with a man who he met when he taught at a small college in Wisconsin, David Saetre, who served as campus minister and professor of religion. He describes Saetre as “a no one to outsiders, and everything to those inside” (a description which reminded me of the character John Singer in
  The Heart is a Lonely Hunter).
  
  Some books mentioned:
  In Praise of Shadows,
  Against Happiness In Praise of Melancholy,
  The Meadow, and
  Last Child in the Woods.
  
  3. Come Together
  
  explores so-called “Dark Sky” efforts that are being promulgated all over the world by organizations including the International Dark Sky Association, the Canadian Royal Astronomy Society and UNESCO. One of the places the author visits is the Isle of Sark, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Normandy. With a population of 600, Sark is a self-governing “royal fief”, part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey. The only transportation on the island is provided by tractors, horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles and feet. Sark was named the world’s first Dark Sky Island in 2011.
  
  Bogard visits with Annie Dachinger, a self-styled witch who has lived on the island since the 1970s. She loves the darkness on the island, “It’s like being asleep while you’re awake … You get true rest. You wake up with the sun. It makes you much more acutely aware of your own pulse, your own life flow.” On being a witch: “A witch is a wise woman, literally. Historically, they were the healers, the midwives, the people who actually looked after communities. It’s an ancient earth religion, pantheistic, lots of gods. I can go out here in my garden at midnight and have a little say to whatever I want to. I can walk out star-clad, naked.” Obviously a good witch.
  
  There are also pieces on the Mont-Megantic Starry Sky Reserve in Quebec (which discusses the photo below), and the Canary Islands, “one of a handful of sites in the world extremely well situated for viewing the night sky.” (YouTube:
  La Palma Canary Islands night sky full of stars) Bogard quotes from a UNESCO declaration: “An unpolluted night sky that allows the enjoyment and contemplation of the firmament should be considered an inalienable right of humankind equivalent to all other environmental, social, and cultural rights.”
  
  
  
  Earthrise
  We came all this way to explore the Moon,
  and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth. William Anders
  
  2. The Maps of Possibility
  
  begins in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Bogard is here with a friend for an overnight stay.

  Two friends, looking out into the universe.
  No cars, no engines, no television or radio. It’s quiet here, that eternal kind, like you’ve gone back in time …
  After midnight in the Black Rock Desert, after every last ounce of sunlight is gone, we walk in the dark, my friend toward the Big Dipper, I toward the Milky Way. Both come down as though touching the ground, as though just over there, as though if we just keep walking we will have stories to share. Straight overhead, the Summer Triangle shines in three dimensions, and you feel as though you’re walking not under but among stars, the night so dark that it’s no longer dark, your adapted eyes guided by the faint glow of mud lit by the stars.
  …
  We live at a time when a place as dark as the Black Rock Desert still exists. But within decades this darkness will exist no longer, unless the spread of light pollution can be stopped.

  The rest of the chapter reports on five people who are doing “varied and vital work on behalf of darkness”.
  
  One of these is Chris Luginbuhl, an astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff AZ. Flagstaff began protecting darkness as long back as 1958, though “much of its success as the world’s first ‘dark sky city’ is due to Chris.” See
  Luginbuhl’s home page at the Observatory’s site
  (many links) and
  the site of the Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition.
  
  
  1. The Darkest Places
  
  in the United States (that people can get to with reasonable ease) are several of the country’s National Parks in the Southwest. A list of these parks, containing accessible “darkest” locations away from the park’s low-glare night lights, includes Natural Bridges National Monument, Capital Reef NP, Bryce Canyon NP, Big Bend NP, Grand Canyon NP, and Chaco Culture National Historical Park. The National Park Service “now includes darkness as one of the resources it is sworn to protect”.

  Primitive darkness. The valley so dark you see by night’s natural light – the zodiacal light and airglow, and maybe 10 percent from the stars … The sky becomes brighter and darker the longer we stay out, in a way almost no one in America experiences now. Our eyes go dark-adapted, good at ten minutes, even more so at forty-five; but then, after two hours of wide-open eyes and the land with no lights, the sky shifts into focus … Before this there were stars, but now there are stars upon stars and a sense of stars you can’t yet see.

  
  
  
  The Milky Way bending over Death Valley NP
  
  
  
  one of Tyler Nordgren’s WPA-style posters for the National Park Service
  for more, see
  here
  
  The reviewer once experienced a night sky that has remained with him for over fifty years. A cold, late fall evening, miles outside our small town, hours after sunset, a friend and I, driving around after a play practice at the high school, ran out of gas. We got out to walk to a lighted house a quarter mile away. The sky was dry, crystal clear, the Milky Way stretched in its grandeur overhead, flanked by hundreds and hundreds of stars, down to the horizon in near every direction. We gazed, enraptured. How often I’ve wished to be able to see such a night sky again, and to show it to my children and grandchildren.
  
  
  
  
• 
  B Schrodinger

  Some people go all gooey for puppies, newborn babies and kittens hanging from branches and the thought of any harm coming to these things horrifies them. Some people go gooey over the night sky, our window into eternity and the cosmos. And the thought of not having or losing this window is horrifying. There probably is a bit of overlap in that Venn diagram, but I am firmly on one side.
  
  There were two instances recently where I was struck by the mention of the night sky in what I was reading and they both resonated. The first was in Hugh Howey's
  Wool Omnibus where one of the characters climbed to to the top of the silo each night to view the obscured night sky and map the movements of the mysterious and faint lights in the sky. The knowledge of the stars had been blocked from these people, but he noticed them through the haze despite how faint they were, noticed them moving and charted them. Like life science finds a way.
  
  The other is a quote from Charles Dickens in 'Great Expectations':
  
  "It was a dry cold night, and the wind blew keenly, and the frost was white and hard. A man would die to-night of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude."
  
  The same reason is why Robert Charles Wilson's
  Spin is haunting and the far future of the universe is a nightmare of dark skies and high entropy.
  
  Historically humans have been connected to the night sky. It was television before television. But now it seems like it is the latest in a litany of victims at the hands of our progress alongside a cool atmosphere, viable ecosystems and a multitude of other disappearing necessities. And you may well think naively "What has the night sky ever done for me?" and sure, at face value, it seems to have only provided cultural significance. But the lack of darkness or the gain in light in our lives effects our health and behaviour as well as the health of ecosystems.
  
  Paul introduces us to the Bortle classification system where a bright night sky (say the sky in over Times Square or along the Strip in Vegas is a 9, and where a night sky with no artificial light interference is a 1. He then goes on to have 9 chapters each exploring the properties and a location with that Bortle Scale number and links it in to one aspect of the night and the disappearence of it.
  
  He explores the effects of light at night on the human circadian rhythm by talking to experts and shift-workers. He looks at the rise in lighting levels of urban areas due to factors such as security and advertisement and he thoroughly dismantles the claims of bright lights = security. He talks to outdoor lighting designers and the especially interesting man who has designed the lighting for Paris. He also explores the historical relationship we have with night. Did you know that an 8 hour sleep through the night is a 20th century invention? Before the period of electric lighting Europeans went to bed at dusk and rose at dawn but with no expectation to sleep at that time, but they had two sleeping periods separated by a midnight break where it was common to converse with family members, or even go visiting.
  
  But what is so strong about this book is it's message. The night sky is disappearing due to light pollution and also haze. The night skies over major cities may only show a dozen of the brightest stars in their skies. Light at night is damaging our sleeping patterns, human health and impinging on the ecosystems around us.
  
  And there is a simple solution. Turn off your light. Choose lighting that only projects to the ground. Lighting does not equal security. It helps the criminals see what they are doing. It often causes high contrast so that you cannot even see or record on CCTV what a person looks like. And through all these actions we'll also burn less coal, less CO2 will be pumped into our already fragile atmosphere.
  
  Turn off and look up.
  
  
• 
  Grace

  I wanted to like this one more. I have no trouble believing that light pollution has measurable effects on our health and the health of ecosystems across America. Unfortunately, the author doesn't bring the data. Often he'll say that scientific research doesn't yet support a conclusion, and then quote one or two interviews or anecdotes as if this is a substitute for that missing research. He also frequently conflates his poetic love for darkness and the night sky with the serious dangers of light pollution, like the extinction of species and skyrocketing rates of cancer. Dark is good and light is bad. A whole chapter on night shift-work, while certainly tangentially related to light pollution, is never coherently tied to the narrative of the rest of the book. This happens a few times, as the style and tone shift from writerly musings on the beauty of night to journalistic expose. Even though I was on his side, I found his scolding tone and lack of a coherent scientific story off-putting. I did learn a few things and am more aware of light pollution as an issue, but these flaws were enough to make me put the book down halfway through in search of a more coherent, balanced and research-grounded treatment of this important issue.
• 
  Daniel

  I received an advanced reading copy of this book from the publisher through the Goodreads Firstreads giveaway program.
  
  Since I was young I have loved the night sky, gazing up at the lovely stars. Years later when I had the opportunity to be outside in a small village and the Bush of Botswana, I realized that until then I had never seen true night. Not only were these stars of the Southern Hemisphere different, but there were so many more. I was bathed in their glow and I found that I could even see the Milky Way, something that prior I had never comprehended. Yet even then, there in the heart of Africa, light pollution was evident, blazing along the horizon from distant mining industry.
  
  The End of the Night talks about light pollution, about how most people are born, live, and die without ever experiencing an actual night, actual darkness, free of artificial light. I was aware of the effects of modern electric light on star gazing, and even a bit on its adverse health effects, but Bogard takes the story far beyond these issues alone to shed light into all aspects of darkness, literal and even figurative.
  
  Bogard writes both well and passionately, suffusing the text with a glow of caring and hope, even amid factoids that can be downright depressing regarding how ubiquitous and how horrible our way of artificially lighting our lives is done. The book is about light as much as it is about darkness, starting at one of the brightest spots on Earth, Las Vegas, and slowly counting down chapter numbers, dimming the focus on light and raising the focus on dark to the final reflections in quiet blackness.
  
  After the initial astronomical discussions, Bogard turns to examining how two large European cities, London and Paris of course, have utilized light in different ways, with very different effects. He addresses the issue that most lighting we use is too strong and too wasteful, both economically and energetically. He discusses findings that demonstrate that all this light we clamor for in fear, all in the name of 'safety', actually has the opposite effect.
  
  The most interesting chapter occurs halfway through the book with exploration of light and darkness in the metaphorical sense, and the psychological needs we humans have for darkness and for both sides of related things characterized so dualistically. Another chapter focusing on what people can do to change how we misuse light and foolishly banish darkness completes the tour of this book, leaving the last chapters almost like an epilogue, finding bits of darkness still close to home, and hope that it will still exist in the future, perhaps even return to our daily lives.
  
  Riding the bus while reading this I noticed all the lights blaring inside, lights still on outside in parking lots, lights shining from cars...all while the Houston sun blazed down. This book opens your eyes to the lights that blind us. I'd recommend it to all to read.
• 
  Paul

  When was the last time you stopped to look up at the stars? And if you have looked recently then can you remember how many stars were visible? Unless you are into astronomy then it was probably a while ago, and if you did happen to see some on a clear night then there were probably not as many as you remember. The night sky can be one of the natural world’s most dramatic scenes, and yet this is something that we are not seeing much now because of the advent of brighter lights in towns and cities. This extraneous light pollution means that only the brightest stars are visible now, and we almost never experience the richness of the Milky Way in the sky.
  
  Bogard wants us to use less light at night to witness this spectacle once again. Travelling from Las Vegas with its Luxor Beam, one of the brightest single spot of light in the sky, he visits places in America that are beginning to recapture the dark once again. Heading over the pond he visits London to see the streets that still have gas lamps, and onto Paris where the night lighting is specially designed to enhance the atmosphere of the city. He travels to Sark, an island that he had never heard of before, to see how they are embracing the dark and even visits Wimborne to talk to astronomers.
  
  The effect of too much artificial light at night is covered in lots of detail too. From the way it affects us, disturbs sleep patterns and the health effects of working the night shift. The natural world is dramatically disturbed as well, with nocturnal migrations of birds being swept of track and bats not being able to get the food they need as insects are distracted by lights. He blows apart the need for glaring security lighting too, revealing that criminals like the lights we helpfully provide as it means they can see what they are doing.
  
  It is a call for us to rediscover the primeval beauty of the night sky and to consider exactly how we use artificial lighting to enhance our outdoor spaces. Well-written and passionate, his concern is that the next generation never will get to see the magnificence of the Milky Way. He raises interesting points about the use of security lights and how secure we are, and how the intelligent use of light could have a beneficial effect on our lives. Not a bad book at all. 3.5 stars overall.
• 
  Rachel (Kalanadi)

  Turn out your lights, you don't need them (nearly as much as you think you do).
  
  I am very keen on the ideas in this book. Basically, all the ways that night, true dark, and a clear starry sky are under attack from humanity's terrible lighting practices and light pollution. Most people in the US today have never seen the Milky Way. Most people will probably grow up thinking the sky is supposed to be and has always been a reddish dome. I would think so too if my parents hadn't introduced me to astronomy as a kid! And then pile on all the ways bad lighting hurts human health and animal health in ways we don't even understand yet.
  
  So, ideas = good. But I'm not so sure about the presentation here. This isn't a hard facts type of book. Bogard travels around, interviews people, and waxes lyrical about nature and the experience. Lots of topics get covered but I couldn't discern a strong organizing principle or segues that tied things together. I also listened to it on audiobook and didn't care for the author's narration (flat, audio levels hopped around a lot, and subpar audio recording/production is kinda rare for me to notice - this was noticeable!). Read this one in print.
  
  It's a good book for the topic and probably for people who like creative non-fiction* more than I do.
  
  *I know it's a real thing but that term always sounds oxymoronic to me.
• 
  AlcoholBooksCinema

  At night, I have learned to notice. Through my little radio, through my time outside, I have learned that the natural sounds of night are solitary, singled out, floating. Sometimes they seem meant only for me.

  Stars don't rest at night, neither do I. The kid who is frightened of the monster below his bed or the cop who is worried about the harmful things that might happen, might not like night. But I like night, I like the quietness and luxury of solitude it gifts for reading and watching movies. Every night, when the darkness rises enough for the faintest stars to become visible, I make a drink, take the kindle and laptop, and head to the balcony, start reading or watch movies or simply gaze at the sky and look forward to the stars that come into sight. I hang around there till 3 or 3:30, and then I settle to the reality: mosquitoes never lose the battle.

  Sometimes when I don't feel like reading or watching anything, I take out the vehicle, with no particular place to go, with no signs of humans, I solely travel the empty peaceful black roads and explore the places fringed by blackness and silence, and let the night air to free my mind, although, my mind keeps mourning for making the gas station owner rich.

  Before this there were stars, but now there are stars upon stars and a sense of stars you can't yet see.

  This book reminded of one of the interesting conversation I had with a friend when she accompanied me on a late night drive, a year ago. It was about 2 A.M. We were on the way to a place that serves delicious food. She spoke regarding how the city's nightlife has changed in the last 5 years since she left Hyderabad(India), she felt the nights now displayed a little safer conditions for women driving home from work as the street lights escort their way, giving a feeling of safety, helping them to get home safe, though, she felt most of the lights were utterly waste. She also spoke about how during an Earth Hour, even when the city cut the lights, astronomers felt it didn't really affect the sky quality, in fact, the quality of the sky didn't change, and why astronomers feel we will never experience no longer a truly dark night, and while we mistake, the next generations will substitute quietness for darkness.

  The secrets are simple. Blend the light with the surroundings. Don't annoy the birds, the insects , the neighbors or the astronomers. If City Hall gave me money to do whatever I want, I'd teach people about the beauty of light.

  Paul Bogard traveled to all the places and wrote this wonderful book to restore the awareness and importance of darkness, and then we have some people who don't get their ass out of the chair to switch off the lights of the rooms that are not being used.

  Sometimes I read a book and I feel happy for discovering the book because I learned something from it about the things and places that I may or may not travel to.

  Anyway, just read this beautifully written romantic thematic adventure if you, too, sometimes look up at the sky, wonder and ask yourself, "will I ever witness a truly dark night and see the stars like my ancestors did?".
• 
  Fred Forbes

  As a young lad of about 10, I remember hanging out with a friend and scanning the sky with a small telescope as we discovered wonder after wonder under the skies in a small New Hampshire town in the 50's. Years later I remember pulling over to the side of the road that heads up to the Grand Canyon, just blown away by the amazing spectacle the stars presented under a truly dark sky. I did not have a repeat of the experience until a nighttime trip during a sailboat crossing from Ft. Lauderdale to the Bahamas. (And the Miami glow is visible from a long way out!)While I find it hard to believe the statistic presented in the book that 80% of American children have never seen the Milky Way, I certainly understand the concept of light pollution and the need to try to restore the dark sky in more places.
  
  The author points out that it is difficult to make progress based on the idea that it is more beautiful to have dark skies, the common human idea that at night, the brighter, the better from a safety standpoint. (Some rather interesting ideas in this book that refute that argument.) So, the dark sky supporters will be casting the argument in terms of energy and cost savings. Some interesting ideas about lighting design are included as well.
  
  Frankly, the book deserves 3.5 stars as it is an interesting and important topic. I down graded it from a 4 because in places it seems like he is getting paid by word and it would tend to plod. I really did not need to know the entrees of a three course meal at an Italian restaurant. He has found some interesting people to interview, with interesting insight and some of the material related to the history of street lighting can be fascinating. Just seems to take a lot to get his points across.
• 
  Chris

  A fascinating exploration of darkness and light covering religion, culture, astronomy, and health. Lots to process here and it’s very soulful too as the author connects to his childhood.
  
  So much interesting information was presented. Artificial lighting at night is supposedly all about security and safety. No proof of this. In fact the inverse is true. Darkness is safer. But we want more light. It’s never bright enough for us. Artificial light or electric light interferes with the production of melatonin in our bodies. The bane of shift workers. Melatonin fights cancer. Doing shift work is a health hazard.
  
  We are running out of dark skies. Our children will never know what stars are as lighting encroachment grows. Most lighting is thoughtless and wasteful in terms of direction and energy cost. It’s poorly designed and creates glare. Few are the cities with well designed lighting that works. Paris is one of them.
  
  One of those books you want to read the notes.
  
• 
  Stefany GG

  Siempre me ha dado tristeza que desde la ciudad no se pueda apreciar la noche tal cual es. Si tienes suerte apenas puedes alcanzar a ver Orión completo. En la ciudad sólo alcanzas a ver decenas de estrellas y con un ojo bien entrenado. ¿Ver nebulosas? ¿La vía láctea? Eso es un lujo para quien pueda irse de viaje lejos de su ciudad sólo para eso, y tienes que alcanzar lugares muy remotos porque la mancha urbana crece cada vez más y con ello la contaminación lumínica.
  
  Bogard nos relata su aventura hacia la oscuridad, en sus 9 capítulos muy propiamente colocados de acuerdo a la escala de Bortle (9 a 1, siendo el 1 más oscuro posible). En sus viajes se encuentra con mucha gente interesante, algunos muy apasionados a la conservación de la oscuridad, otros que han dedicado su vida entera a conservar especies y ambientes tan perjudicados por el exceso de luz... También hace mucha reflexión sobre lo que implica la oscuridad en nuestra persona, y hace muchas referencias y citas a gente quienes se han ido en búsqueda de sí mismos mediante la oscuridad.
  
  El mensaje del libro es importante porque perdemos la noche y los efectos de la luz no sólo afectan el ritmo circadiano humano y la salud, también afectamos al mundo natural, a las demás especies, ecosistemas completos, pues en tan poco tiempo hemos cambiado lo que millones de años de evolución han logrado.
  
  Nuestro cielo nocturno está desapareciendo y tenemos que recuperarlo.
  
  Apaga la luz y mira hacia arriba.
• 
  LibraryCin

  The author of this book travels to various places around the world – some are the brightest places and some are the darkest places. He is trying to find the best ways to get back to some natural darkness, and not let light pollution take over our world.
  
  There is a scale to measure darkness (from 1-9, 1 being the darkest), and I liked that he numbered his chapters in reverse, as he started at the brighter places (Las Vegas, brightest in the world! And Paris, City of Lights), and made his way to darker places, as he continued on. He not only discussed the light or darkness of each place, and of course, the resulting lack of stars that can be seen, he also talked about crime (some light helps, but more and more light doesn’t make a difference), and also the effect of perpetual light at night on humans’ health, not just due to sleepyness for those who work at night, but also cancer. Of course, there was discussion of other animals, as well, who rely on night and darkness.
  
  I found this very interesting. I love looking at the stars and miss being in a rural area in order to actually see the stars (or more than the very few I can see in the city I now live in). I love to be out at my parents’ cabin in the summers when I visit, and I can see the Milky Way and pick out so many constellations when I’m out there.
• 
  H.

  I was looking forward to this book for ages and fully expected to really enjoy it. I agree with other reviewers who were disappointed by the lack of science and over-romanticization of urban Europe. Like other reviewers, I was put off by his casual dismissal of fears of safety in the dark, and by the cavalier way he discussed sexual assault. He seemed to implicitly blame women for feeling afraid based on "merely" anecdotal stories of other women who've been attacked at night, but in the very next chapter he backed up his next argument (about the dangers of fatigue) with a list of...anecdotal stories. In other words, he adjusts his logic to suit his own arguments.
  
  Similarly, he claims that streetlights don't actually reduce crime, and cites several studies, but never explains any study methods. He cited one study from the Chicago police department; a simple Google search gave me a much more recent study from the same police department, proving precisely the opposite of his argument. There is an abundance of evidence that streetlights decrease crime rates, and it seems disingenuous to pretend to be bewildered that police officers like lights. For example, he says that in one study "criminals listed 'belief that house is occupied,'" as the number one deterrent of robbery, but "nowhere did they mention the presence of light." ....What makes a criminal think a house is occupied, if not leaving your lights on?
  
  Ironically, he moons over Parisian lighting quite a lot, and all I could remember was the nights I roamed around Paris in the dark, feeling incredibly unsafe. On several occasions I walked several meters behind another woman, and I would see her glance back at me, seeming afraid and unable to determine my gender from my silhouette. I used to cough a little so that women would know I wasn't a man following them; on one occasion a woman actually thanked me for doing this. Memories of those experiences made his love for shadowy Paris seem privileged in unexamined ways.
  
  His views are taken from literature he likes, with minimal science. He quotes almost entirely men, including when he's talking about safety concerns at night. (He addresses safety + gender in its own little section; it seems clear that maybe an editor pointed out the gaps in his arguments, and so he added in sections on gender and race as separate things, distinct from what he really cares about. He also never thinks about issues of disability, including impaired vision.) In the beginning he warns us that he's only going to talk about the West, but he does quote Junichiro Tanizaki at one point, and is then inspired to go on for a bit about the "shadowy east," and the differences between East and West. The irony being that the Tanizaki essay he quoted is likely a parody making fun of precisely that East/West mindset.
  
  Some parts were what I actually wanted the book to be about, like the chapter about the effects of artificial light on wildlife, or the discussion about how streetlights could be re-designed to emit less "wasted" light. These parts were really great. I stopped reading at page 170 when he casually wrote, "During the day, there were obese Americans complaining about having to walk one hundred feet," but during the night he gets to....escape fat people???? I guess only skinny able-bodied people are cool enough to appreciate the dark?? I recognized that casual fatphobia and elitism and felt my trust utterly lost as a reader. I closed the book.
  
  It's a white guy book. It's not what I wanted. Still looking for the stars, and for books about the stars.
• 
  Tessa

  Really fascinating read. It's hard to believe that it's ten years old, when so much of the information is still very relevant.
  
  I'm blessed that I grew up and still live in a rural area with pretty good stargazing, but light pollution does concern me still. I liked the hopeful attitude he included, that it's not too late to change course. The idea that future generations might never know true darkness is a depressing one.
  
  Recommended for people interested in star-gazing or science nonfiction in general.
  
  Edit a few days later:
  I think this book might have permanently changed how I view the world. My husband and I were driving home after dark on a long, quiet road through the country. This was not in town. I was shocked by all the lights that I saw. Yard lights, spotlights trained on quiet pig barns, random streetlights, the red flashes from wind turbines and cell phone towers. How many of these lights are actually necessary? Do we need to light up every house's yard all night, when most people are fast asleep? Do we need glaring lights over every pig barn, even if no one is currently working there? The wind turbines and cell towers are flight risks, I suppose, so those at least make sense.
  
  I am lucky to live in a rural area where I can stargaze almost anywhere. On clear nights I can see the Milky Way. Even living in town (a small one), I go to sleep with stars shining in my window.
  
  And even here in an area rated light blue (
  check your location here! ), there is all this wasted, pointless light.
  
  I think this book will stick with me for a long time.
  
  (Also, shout out to my husband because he listened to me rant about this for 45 minutes all the way home while I pointed out every light and rambled about this book. It's like having a podcast with a trapped (but willing) audience of one lol.)
• 
  Patricia

  Full of insights that call for the reader to shift their perspective and see night from a new angle. Best of all, the book makes the reader want to get out there and look.
• 
  Kerri Anne

  This book is brimming with game-changing potential, one of those books I wish were taught in every school, and mandatory for every adult to read, too. The topic (light pollution and how detrimental it is for wildlife, for wild places, and for all of us, too—and how relatively easy it would be to fix!) is just that important.
  
  Especially with 7.7 billion people on this planet. Especially because global population is only growing. Especially with so few truly dark places left on this earth, let alone in this country. Especially because there are species of flora and fauna across the globe that rely on darkness to survive (including humans). Especially because studies are only beginning to show how bad artificial light at night is for all of us, and the prognosis is pretty sobering.
  
  National Parks are our greatest security against the eventual (and inevitable, if we don't make some serious changes, post-haste) eradication against true night, and it's likely in National Parks that most people see some of the darkest, if not the literal darkest, skies of their lives. But even National Parks are under siege from oil, gas, and mining companies (alongside myriad other businesses and corporate interests) seeking to develop pristine land in and/or directly adjacent to National Parks, threatening to add ever more pollution, noise, and light to places set aside for conservation.
  
  I found this book in a beloved National Park last fall, after staring, mouth agape and teary-eyed, at the darkest night sky I'd seen since summers growing up in the mountains of North Idaho, where my sister and I used to toss our sleeping bags on the docks of an alpine lake to sleep under an overwhelmingly expansive and stunning sky. But there are so few places left like that. So few places where transient light from nearby cities doesn't encroach on our (and wildlife's) ability to experience real darkness. (I also couldn't stop thinking about how much darker the sky could and would been without the oil rigs pumping their machinery and their flood lights all night directly across the highway from the Park.)
  
  It used to be that everyone got the privilege of viewing star-studded, truly dark skies, or could at least more readily access them immediately outside of established cities. But increasingly sprawling cities and their ever more lights have pushed darkness farther and farther away from places where people can easily find darkness, and it's a sincere and troubling problem that's only growing each year anywhere electricity is readily available.
  
  It's also the one human-made environmental crisis we could collectively and individually solve so much easier and faster than any of the rest of the environmental crises we've so adeptly created.
  
  Bonus nerdery: There's also a fascinating (to me) history of lighting in the United States and Europe that I'd never stumbled into before this book.
  
  (The one, thankfully brief, part I didn't dig were the pages wherein a white guy was trying to assert how much danger (or lack thereof) unlit (or less-lit) places are for women or Everyone Else Who Isn't A White Dude. Which: No, thanks.)
  
  Anyway, I could talk about this topic and this book for days. It's good and definitely worth your time, is my overall point.
  
  [Five stars for being a riveting book I almost didn't want to finish because I was so enthralled with it, and for the hope that as a global population we'll learn to be more comfortable, and to thrive, even, under dark skies where we can look up and see endless stars instead of endless streetlights.]
• 
  Gregory Crouch

  Bogard deploys his literary and persuasive talents to open our eyes to the evils of light pollution, our minds to the perils of bad lighting, and our hearts to the beauty of dark night skies. He succeeds on all counts.
  
  Structuring his book with nine chapters to mirror the gradations of the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, Bogard takes us on a worst-to-best tour of the North American and European night, starting (where else?) in Las Vegas, in the glare of the forty-billion candlepower lightbeam cast skyward from the apex of the Luxor Casino, and in New York City’s Times Square, a place so bright it utterly obliterates the stars. From those over-illuminated start points, Bogard leads us through a usually charming, occasionally appalling series of Bortle-scale based literary, physical, ecological, and health-inspired peregrinations, ruminations, and digressions as he wanders the night skies of London, Paris, Florence, Walden Pond, Cape Cod, his Minnesota roots, the southwestern deserts and the Grand Canyon, the Channel Island of Sark, Acadia National Park, the Canary Islands, Death Valley, and the Black Rock Desert. Along the way, he encounters a plethora of dark sky aficionados and activists, finally bringing us to a starry climax at an astronomy festival in Great Basin National Park, beneath one of the darkest night skies in the United States.
  
  The End of Night is a fascinating read, built around a topic most of us never pause to consider – the beauty of the night – and tragically, considering the state of modern light pollution, never or seldom get to experience. Bogard quickly sensitizes readers to the perils and evils of artificial light and light pollution, and he makes a strong science-based case that darkness is actually good for us—as in good for our health–since thousands of generations of evolution adapted us to spend half our lives in darkness. Through the eons of human history, every member of our species experienced the profound, three-dimensional glitter of the stars. That isn’t true anymore. We didn’t start losing the night until just over 140 years ago, when, on April 29, 1869, Cleveland, Ohio installed the first electric streetlamp. Until then, true darkness held the night skies of even the most urban places. Ever since, the developed and industrialized world has been gradually losing the night.
  
  And we lose another precious glimmer every night.
  
  We need to learn to love darkness. It's part of who we are.
• 
  Barb

  Paul Bogard wrote this wonderful book on light pollution. From Las Vegas to Paris and Death Valley to Acadia National Park he travels the globe experiencing the darkest and brightest of our world. He is convincing as he demonstrates that our selections of artificial light are an ethical choice. They impact on our neighbors, nocturnal animals, and our view of the night skies. My favorite quote from the book is one Bogard took from Pierre Bruner, "...the presence of an astronomer was the sign of a healthy ecosystem; that when a sky grows too bright for astronomy and the astronomers go away, you know you have a polluted sky, and whatever has polluted that sky will eventually pollute other resources, given time."
• 
  Jean

  I love this book because it celebrates night and darkness. There is nothing more beautiful than a night sky! Another book I will come back to often.
• 
  Lorenzo

  Ver las estrellas en las grandes ciudades del planeta es casi imposible. Unas 15 o 20 estrellas se asomarán tímidas entre las capas de luz desprendidas por millones de focos que apuntan hacia el cielo. Los habitantes de las ciudades, en sí la mayoría de este planeta, nunca hemos visto (y muchos nunca verán) la Vía Láctea a simple vista. La maravilla de un cielo estrellado se ha vuelto un mito.
  
  En este gran libro, Paul Bogard, recorre el planeta buscando los cielos más oscuros y escapando de los grandes islas de luz en las que vivimos. Luchar contra la pérdida del cielo oscuro, y recuperar la oscuridad que durante miles de millones de años caracterizó la noche en la Tierra, debe convertirse en uno de los grandes retos para la humanidad en el siglo XXI. El exceso de luz no sólo nos roba de la belleza de la oscuridad, sino que altera directamente, y muchas veces con efectos trágicos, la vida y los ciclos de incontables especies en tierra, mar y cielo.
  
  Este es un libro que sin duda abre los ojos ante un problema que pasa en gran medida desapercibido para casi todos.
• 
  Starbubbles

  This book was really good. I did have to skip over 100 pages because I just couldn't take all of the personal stories anymore. If you really like reading blogs, it reads like that.
  
  But this book has inspired me to seek out darkness and reevaluate the fear I have been taught in that regard for years. I have always been drawn to the beauty of the stars. The reverence I have felt has not always been understood by everyone I have relayed it to. I had no idea I was missing so much from my suburban homes. I had no idea still, that I was missing so much when I lived in one of those black spots in New England. (Yes they exist, and yes, the sky was breathtaking.)
  
  I am one of those kids who has never seen the Milky Way. That is something I plan to change, and plan to share with my hypothetical, future children. I thought it was a place, not something that can be seen. The anger I felt for being rob of something that has been seen for millennia was surprising. I wish I had a clearer idea how to go about fixing my contribution. But I will tell you one thing, nighttime lighting that aids criminals is soo out.
  
  This book covers health, cancer, ecology, sleep patterns, work, science, astronomy, national parks, nighttime ecosystems and research, art, poetry, religion, and cultural significance. I mean, it even covers ephemera. This book really covers everything. And I did appreciate the personal story that goes throughout the book. It adds a personal touch that is necessary for an academic-like book. It is needed for an advocacy book.
  
  It was also fun having been to and lived in a number of the places mentioned. This was especially true of Austin. I had no idea about the animosity towards bats. Sure, I freaked out when they flew next to my head and held my breath under the bridge. It smelled. But I also freak out about lots of animals. I once freaked out over a house cat rubbing against my leg. That was pretty funny.
  
  Anyway, I recommend this book to anyone who has a remote interest in science, and the world around.
• 
  Gabriela Kozhuharova

  Необикновена документална книга, написана толкова красиво и пеотично, че няма как да не се възхитиш не само на познанията, но и на очевидната страст, която авторът влага в изследването си. Тъй като нехудожествените книги неизменно ми вървят много по-бавно и трудно от романите, изключително държа онези, към които все пак посягам, да са написани с умение и индивидуалност, да не са толкова сухи, че съвсем да ме обезкуражат. Тази определено се отличава, благодарение на личното, доста емоционално отношение на Пол Богард към темата за нощта и онези създания – от прилепите до работещите през "гробищната смяна" – които живеят в нея.
  
  Най-ценното, което The End of Night ми предложи, е дълбокото потапяне във всеки един отделен аспект от връзката ни с тъмнината – биологичен, философски, религиозен, урбанистичен... Научих повече и за един проблем, чиито мащаби ми бяха абсолютно неизвестни досега – светлинното замърсяване, което упорито, стъпка по стъпка, ни лишава от красотата на звездното небе. Вдъхнових се някой ден да посетя поне едно от описаните места, нареждащи се от три надолу по скалата на Бортъл, където нощта е дива, ясна и прекрасна, като преляла от картина на Ван Гог.
  
  So often – if we notice night's arrival – we head inside when darkness come. It's that old medieval sense of locking ourselves behind the city walls, behind our doors, like a ship battening down the hatches before a storm. Again and again while researching the book, I had the wonderful feeling of heading out into the night while most other people were heading in. It's that feeling of night being a time bursting with possibility. What would I see tonight? What would I experience? What's it like at night here, wherever I was? Being outside at night is such a rich, wonderful time, and we so often ignore it, know nothing of it, fear it. It felt fantastic to instead embrace the night, again and again and again.
• 
  Kelly Lynn Thomas

  This book is important, because it will get you thinking about the night sky in ways you probably haven't before. It's an easy read, and Bogard doesn't bog you down in a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo. He's good at translating the science into plain English. He's also good at showing us the wonder of the moments he encounters on the dark nights he manages to find. But this was a three star book instead of a four star because....
  
  This was a collection of essays stitched together into a book, and it felt like it. Bogard had a pretty cool chapter numbering system to bring everything together, but I think it would have been better to leave everything separated into essays. A bigger problem I had with the book, though, was a feeling that he didn't do enough research, and instead just talked to people and wrote about what they said. He interviewed SO MANY people throughout the course of this book, and they all appeared so briefly, that it was like, woah, people overload. Things would have been a lot smoother if he'd done more direct research, or even just given us the info without introducing us to every single person he interviewed. I understand why he did it--he wants us to feel passionate about saving the night sky and preserving darkness, and everyone he talks to is passionate about those things. But I felt sometimes like he was pushing me too hard without enough hard scientific fact to back him up, and that frustrated me--especially because I am passionate about preserving darkness and the night sky, not only because I love stars, but because I'm concerned about health effects on humans and nocturnal creatures.
• 
  Katie

  Just like a relaxed stroll through a beautiful nighttime landscape Bogard's book takes you on a meandering exploration of all the ways we have been disconnected with the night. It is seldom that you find a nonfiction book written with the lyrical language of a novel. Borgard is a gifted writer and a conceptual thinker. His passion for the night and all its beauties is inspiring. He recounts his travels around the world trying to reconnect with night's mysteries and discover how we have lost our ability to experience true darkness. Both our plugged-in, lit-up society and our subconscious fear of the dark has people scurrying toward the light as soon as the sun sets. Bogard also discusses the success stories in our world- places where dark skies exist and are being protected and others where they are being reclaimed.
  
  Soft, wandering and mysterious this book is not a quick course on all information regarding light pollution but a gentle meandering discussion to reconnect us with the night and its beauties. It certainly inspires me to venture out again with my woolies and telescope to explore its wonders again.
  
  Highly recommended.
• 
  Josh

  This is a book about nightlife. Not the Vegas kind. The middle of the desert at night kind. But it covers both. It's a worthwhile read for anyone with some curiosity about the natural world and its dark places, or if you're interested in knowing what things were like before ubiquitous electric light. Equal parts travel, science, and history.
  
  I do wish I could have read this less cynically--I'm a science-degree-havin' librarian dude with subscriptions to National Geographic and Sky and Telescope so am unsurprisingly on board with every bit of this. But I'm obviously not the type that needs convincing that all of these problems need fixing. Those types are never picking up this book in the first place. So it's hard to imagine things really getting better. I'm also wrong a lot. Let's all root for this being another example.
  
  Thanks to
  Rachel for the recommendation! This also turned out to be a great primer on our upcoming trip to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon and the Flagstaff area.
• 
  Melissa

  Except for some language scattered throughout the book and some other philosophical ideas I don't agree with, I sincerely enjoyed the book. It was a fluke that I even started reading it in the first place - I was looking for books on astronomy to read. It sounded interesting so I borrowed it from the library... and I'm glad I did. Paul Bogard was a way with words and it made the chapters flow beautifully while still managing to keep my interest from start to end. Now I want to do all I can to help make our sky as dark as it once was. I might've reached the end of the book but I feel like I'm starting a new journey thanks to what I've learned.
• 
  Thom

  With chapters counting down the Bortle scale (9 to 1), this book examines levels of darkness in the world. Chapters discuss modern fallacies (light reduces crime!) and the real reasons (adding light is an easy win for politicians; utilities need to sell electricity at night). Some very good discussions of night in earlier cultures, some rambling travels with a lot of bad weather. Enjoyed the discussions from each chapter at the end, and plan to find a Bortle 1 class night next summer. Somewhere between 3.5 and 4 stars.
• 
  Phil Breidenbach

  Paul does an excellent job at telling us how important the night sky is to us and that we shouldn't be afraid of the dark. He never gets "preachy" but he gets across how important these things are to us. He shares his experiences and makes us want to see the things he has seen. If we don't work towards better light control, there is a chance that our children will never see the things we have seen...if we've seen them ourselves!
  Read this book, it's very enjoyable. I'll be ordering a copy for our clubs library!