Fans pick 79 books like The Once and Future Moon

The Face of the Moon was the most important lunar book of the 20th century and perhaps of all time. Ralph Baldwin was an astronomer who studied stars, but while waiting to give public lectures at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium in 1941 he became fascinated by huge photos of the Moon on the planetarium’s walls. Baldwin saw that craters were everywhere, from tiny ones to giants hundreds of miles wide that had gouged surrounding terrain and ejected bright streamers of debris in all directions.

During World War 2 he recognized that myriads of craters from the Allied bombardment that had devasted France and Germany were tiny versions of what he saw on the Moon. The Moon’s craters were not volcanoes as commonly believed, they formed by explosions of projectiles – asteroids and comets. After the war, Baldwin investigated the physics of crater formation by setting off dynamite charges along the sandy… show more.

Subtitled A Geologist’s History of Lunar Exploration, Don Wilhelms is every lunar scientist’s favorite selenographer. He worked from the very beginning of America’s lunar program to plan and prepare for humans to go to the Moon, including training geologists to map and understand an alien nearby world, and training fighter pilot astronauts to become extraterrestrial field geologists. To a Rocky Moon is Don’s comprehensive and entertaining story from an insider’s point of view of the officials, scientists, engineers, and astronauts who solved thousands of problems to successfully voyage to the Moon six times, and to survive one nearly disastrous aborted attempt. 

I especially like Don’s telling of the personalities of the people involved, nearly all of whom he knew and worked with. Virtually everyone struggled at some point but ultimately became a hero – or got out of the way – in learning about the Moon and getting us… show more.

Epic Moon tells the stories of the often odd characters and their thoughts about the Moon in the 400 years before Apollo. Although Galileo and one or two other early astronomers found evidence that the Moon did not hold water or air, the search for life and changes such as volcanic eruptions, light flashes, insect migrations, vegetation growth, and lunar cities dominated most lunar mapping and telescopic exploration and interpretation. The observers weren’t crazy, the Moon was completely alien, but humans understood only what was known on Earth. Terrestrial impact craters were not recognized until the early 1900s and the origins of many were still doubted into the 1960s. The fundamental discoveries starting with Galileo, skipping to Mädler in the 1830s, and Shoemaker and Baldwin in the 1950s, finally reached a firmament of understanding after Apollo when scientists established the new disciplines of lunar and planetary science.

Women have been involved in mapping and studying the Moon and the stars since the late 1600s. Women’s stories have almost never been told largely because most cultures considered women only as helpmeets, and because women scientists could only publish their work under their husband’s or brother’s names. Altschuler and Ballesteros, award-winning Puerto Rican and Spanish male astronomers, have selected the 28 women pioneer astronomers whose names graced lunar craters by 2019 to tell representative stories of hardship and success of woman astronomers and promoters. Although women's names are rare on the Moon, it is fitting that for Venus all the features are named for women and goddesses. 

I end by mentioning that since 2019 five more lunar craters honor women. Many more women are studying the Moon and the rest of the universe than ever before, and a woman will be on the next American mission to the Moon.… show more.

Haynes Manuals: they’re not just for cars anymore. Haynes also publishes books dedicated to the technical details of planes you’ll never own or service, and spacecraft you’ll never fly in. They’re detailed, they’re technical, and they’re geek gold. With a million color pictures and cutaway diagrams, and text crammed with comprehensive engineering details, the Haynes' Apollo 13 volume is a perfect companion to my Woods pick, or a great standalone in getting literally beneath the skin of the Apollo spacecraft and seeing exactly how all the moving parts worked. By all means buy the Haynes' Apollo 11 Manual too (I did), but I think this one has the edge in terms of technical depth–and you obviously get the full backstory of this aborted and almost disastrous Lost Moon mission too.

As a break from the two hardcore technical volumes above, my next pick is a coffee table book stuffed with awesome historical photos and graphics, that tells the story of the Apollo Program in a more straightforward and traditional fashion, but also delves into the politics, the science of what we learned about lunar geology, and so on. There’s no shortage of big glossy Apollo books, but for my money this is the most complete and absorbing, and has all the best pictures. 

Sun and Moon is a simple story. Moon is bored with the night sky and the darkness with nothing to see and suggests a swap for a day to Sun. Sun says any swap must be permanent and suggest Moon takes a closer look at the world at night before making a decision. Moon is amazed by the things he sees, the colors, the people and animals, and night activities. The luminous illustrations are quite exquisite, and they are the reason I have chosen this book. They are very detailed and slanted so we view them as through the moon. Children wear quaint old-fashioned clothes. We see them flying through magical dreams. We see scampering raccoons and fireflies gleaming like stars. By the end of the book we are as entranced as the moon is.

This is a beautifully written story highlighting young Max's tender relationship with his grandfather.

Before Max leaves to return home, his grandfather assures him that the tag-along moon will always be there and remind him of their time together, even if his grandfather is not physically with him.

Max and the Tag-Along Moon is comforting, peaceful, and a great reminder of unconditional love, acceptance, and positive familial relationships.

The magical tale, Music for Mister Moon, is about a little girl named Harriet, who likes to be called Hank. She loves nothing more than to play her cello, alone. When her parents suggest how wonderful it would be to play in a big orchestra someday, she retreats into her room playing her cello. When the owl hoots outside her window she loses her temper and throws a teacup. And so begins her imaginative journey that tickles the reader's imagination. On Hank’s adventure with Mr. Moon, they encounter kind and thoughtful animals with a profound understanding of acceptance and giving. Each time I read this book, I can almost hear the music of the cello float out the window, the crash of the teacup, the smell of the smoke that fills the little house. Harriet’s emotional journey comes full circle with a most satisfying ending. A must-read, over and… show more.

I fell in love with this book when I was eleven years old, and I still love it now. That’s despite the fact that I now see just how corrupt and vicious the first human visitors to the moon truly are.

Yet there are moments here that still hold the old enchantment. There’s the instant when the "hero" grasps that night is falling on the moon, and as the shadow of a new, strange "sunset" starts to lengthen that he has perhaps only minutes to live, or there’s the encounter with the Selenites and the realization that he faces an absolutely alien consciousness with no connection to his own.

No-one outdoes Wells in making the fantastic utterly real to the reader.