Meteorite Nature & Culture

Meteorite: Nature and Culture offers an accessible overview of what science has learned from meteorites, beginning with the scientific community’s reluctant embrace of their interplanetary origins, and explores their power to reawaken that precious, yet near-forgotten human trait – the capacity for awe. Arriving amid thunderous blasts and flame-streaked skies, meteorites were once thought to be messengers from the gods. Worshipped in the past, now scrutinized with equal zeal by scientists, meteorites helped sculpt Earth’s features and have shaped our understanding of the planet’s origins. Meteorite tells the long history of our engagement with these sky-born rocks, which are among the rarest things on earth. Scientists, scholars and enthusiasts have scoured the skies and combed Earth’s most unforgiving reaches for meteorites, contributing to a body of work that situates our planet and ourselves within the vastness of the universe. Prized for their strange and otherworldly qualities, meteorites are both collectibles and commodities, art objects and the objects of artists’ desires, while ‘meteorite hunting’ is an adventurous, lucrative profession for some and an addictive hobby for thousands of others. This richly illustrated, wide-ranging account surveys the place of meteoritic phenomena in science, myth, art, literature and popular culture. Appealing to anyone interested in interplanetary space, in the uncanny and the marvelous, Meteorite explores the ancient, lasting power of the meteorite to inspire and awe.