Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light Book

'Brilliant' is a pleasing accompaniment to At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, and Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams, popular histories of nighttime, oil, and sleep respectively. Brox turns the focus instead to unnatural light over the centuries in engaging, episodic fashion. It's hard to grasp the full import of the changes that artificial light has wrought, and I'm not sure such a short book could ever do so. Although Brox's perspective is largely US-centric, the book creditably addresses racial and geographical inequalities in access to light. It's difficult to build a wholly coherent narrative from such a broad global transformation, so the memorable highlights of the book are somewhat scattered. I especially appreciated learning about the history of lighthouses, the first house to have electric lights requiring a coal boiler in the basement, the revolting process of rendering whale oil, and the World's Columbian Exposition. Brox marshals an impressive range of sources and some lovely quotes, such as this on the 1965 New York blackout:

The moonlight lay on the streets like thick snow, and we had a curious, persistent feeling that we were leaving footprints in it. Something was odd about buildings and corners in this beautiful light. The city presented a tilted aspect, and ever our fellow pedestrians, chattering with implacable cheerfulness, appeared foreshortened as they passed; they made us think of people running downhill. It was a bloc more before we understood: The shadows, for once, all fell in the same direction - away from the easterly, all-illuminating moon… We were in a night forest and for a change, home lay not merely uptown but north.

Indeed, by the end of the book I felt a little ambivalent about artificial light. A chapter on the Lascaux caves and another on light pollution are reminders of how costly our profligacy with light can be. Not that I don't rely upon it to read past midnight, of course, and am certainly not about to give it up. Still, I loved Brox's description of the Soft House idea:

A flexible network made of multiple, adaptable, and co-operative light-emitting textiles that can be touched, held, and used by homeowners, according to their needs. [...] Translucent moveable curtains along the perimeter convert sunlight into energy during the day, shading the house in summer and creating an insulating air layer in winter. Folded downward, a central curtain establishes a habitable off-the-grid energy harvesting room. Folded upward, this luminous curtain becomes a suspended soft chandelier.

The chapters on slow-paced rural electrification are less interesting, as to the European reader they merely demonstrate the baffling American reluctance to intervene in manifestly dysfunctional free markets. Otherwise, though, this is a fascinating compendium of light-related social insights.