It could be fairly said that there are enough books about Mars out there already. In ‘For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet’ (University of Chicago Press, £20, ISBN 9780226821894), however, historian Dr Matthew Shindell takes a distinct approach to the subject. ‘For the Love of Mars’ is not so much about Mars itself as much as about how we have imagined, explored and been inspired by Mars for millennia: a human history of something utterly unhuman.
“Mars is an object that has rarely spoken for itself, although it has at times been treated as animate. It has been with us from our earliest written records, and it will likely be with us until our end. But what it is, what it has been, and what it will be, are not necessarily the same thing,” says Shindell. “The Mars I am interested in is Mars as we have known it, as we have described it, and as we have defined its importance to our world and our lives.”
‘For the Love of Mars’, then, is...