Chasing the Sun

Starred review from January 3, 2011
Cohen (By the Sword) visited 18 countries to gather information for this ambitious and unusual literary opus, including Peru, where he witnessed the reenactment of an Inca ceremony welcoming the summer solstice, and Japan, where he climbed a snow-covered Mt. Fuji. He hunted the mythology embedded in the works of Shakespeare, Nabokov ("I must be the only person to have read Lolita for its Sun images"), Dante, Chaucer, and other authors, and personally examined the orientation of the Egyptian Pyramids and European cathedrals. This vast effort touches on the modern age shepherded by Copernicus and Galileo, and the author labels 200 discoveries related to solar energy in the 1870s a "scientific revolution" which would lead directly to the hydrogen bomb. He goes on to sound a cautionary note on climate change extremism, warning that there is still no consensus on the influence of solar cycles on climate (he goes so far as to raise the possibility of another ice-age). Cohen was compelled to write "the sort of book I'd like to read," a risky position for a writer seeking a broad readership, but one that more than pays off.

August 15, 2010

A remarkably comprehensive and engrossing synthesis of the sun's influence on science, art, religion, literature, mythology and politics.

Former publishing executive Cohen (By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions, 2002) will not be confined in this study of all things that have been touched by the sun. After more than eight years of research and visits to nearly 20 countries, he ranges about in gleeful fascination, marching through the rich, ancient history of stargazing, from the Babylonian and Egyptian astronomers to Pythagoras, Aristotle, Chinese cosmology, Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. The author discusses the story of sunspots, the art of navigation and the art of nudism, the breathtaking presence of Stonehenge, medicine wheels and the Dancing Stones of Namoratunga in Kenya. He traces the evolution of the calendar, the advent of solar power and the daystar's effect on the writing of Euripides, Shakespeare, Nabokov and Styron, and the paintings of Turner and Hockney—though these just touch the surface of Cohen's breadth and depth. "Sometimes it is the direct subject of their creations," he writes, "sometimes a symbol of what they have wanted to convey, infusing their work with an authority, even majesty, that no other force could match." Finally, the author turns to the death of the sun, a brilliant story unto itself. After billions of years of evolution, in its "final stage" it will "simply dwindle away, a dark nuclear waste drifting in the vacuum, its life-giving journey done." Ever enthusiastic, Cohen provides illuminating personal anecdotes, but he includes just the right amount of detail, never allowing the material to sprawl untethered.

Apollo, Ra, Inti or Huitzilopochtli—all would rock with delight at Cohen's sweeping endeavor.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 15, 2010
Formerly a publisher, Cohen decided to write the work he couldnt sign an author for: a cultural and scientific history of the sun. The result is this information-packed miscellany on solar worship and solar studies, studded with evocative illustrations throughout. Not content to integrate research from books, Cohen traveled extensively for his project, visiting places like Mount Fuji, which some people profoundly connect with the sun. Spanning the globe from China to Antarctica to Stonehenge, Cohens curiosity pulls in monuments and gods, scientists and their discoveries about the physical sun, and solar fads such as tanning. If polarized sunglasses didnt make it into Cohens enthusiastic excursus, popular songs like the Beatles Here Comes the Sun did, showing Cohen in a culturally eclectic light. With its pages as likely to turn from sunspots to sunlights play in famous paintings, Cohens medley will surprise and delight his readers, who will absorb humanitys evolving view of the skys blazing orb, from deity to fusion-powered furnace. With its cultural ambit, Cohens compendium might better the popularity of a straight-up science title such as Nearest Star (2001), by Leon Golub and Jay M. Pasachoff.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)