For the Love of Mars

Mars and its secrets have fascinated and mystified humans since ancient times. Its vivid color and visibility, its geologic kinship with Earth, and in its potential as our best hope for settlement--Mars embodies everything that inspires us about space and exploration. For the Love of Mars journeys through the red planet's place in human imagination, beginning with ancient astrologers and skywatchers and ending in our present moment of exploration and virtual engagement. Along the way, National Air and Space Museum Curator Matthew Shindell introduces us to the transatlantic historical figures who cared about Mars, vividly describing how they made sense of this mysterious planet. We meet Mayan astrologer priests who incorporated Mars into religious ceremonies and seasonal calendars; Babylonian astrologers and the bad omens they associated with it; figures of the Scientific Revolution who struggled to comprehend it as a world; Victorian astronomers who sought signs of intelligence on it; and scientists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries who used new technologies to extend their presence to it. We also encounter writers and artists from each of these periods who found ways to take readers and viewers along on imagined journeys to Mars. By focusing on the diverse human stories behind the telescopes and behind the robots we have come to know and love, Shindell shows how Mars exploration gradually evolved in ways that expanded knowledge about other facets of the universe. Captained by an engaging and erudite expert, For the Love of Mars is a captivating voyage through time and space for anyone curious about curiosity and the red planet.