On August 21st, over one hundred million people will gather across the USA to witness the most-watched total solar eclipse in history. Eclipse: Journeys to the Dark Side of the Moon, by popular science author Frank Close, describes the spellbinding allure of this beautiful natural phenomenon. The book explains why eclipses happen, reveals their role in history, literature and myth, and introduces us to eclipse chasers, who travel with ecstatic fervor to some of the most inaccessible places on the globe. The book also includes the author's quest to solve a 3000-year-old mystery: how did the moon move backward during a total solar eclipse, as claimed in the Book of Joshua? Eclipse is also the story of how a teacher inspired the author, aged eight, to pursue a career in science and a love affair with eclipses that has taken him to a war zone in the Western Sahara, the South Pacific, and the African bush. The tale comes full circle with another eight-year old boy - the author's grandson - at the 2017 great American eclipse. Readers of all ages will be drawn to this inspirational chronicle of the mesmerizing experience of total solar eclipse.
Author
Francis Edwin Close (Arabic: فرانك كلوس) In addition to his scientific research, he is known for his lectures and writings making science intelligible to a wider audience. From Oxford he went to Stanford University in California for two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow on the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. In 1973 he went to the Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire and then to CERN in Switzerland from 1973–5. He joined the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire in 1975 as a research physicist and was latterly Head of Theoretical Physics Division from 1991. He headed the communication and public education activities at CERN from 1997 to 2000. From 2001, he was Professor of Theoretical Physics at Oxford. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Birmingham from 1996–2002. Close lists his recreations as writing, singing, travel, squash and Real tennis, and he is a member of Harwell Squash Club.
