Thoughts on reading the new book Earthrise

I fin­ished read­ing a new book by Leonard S. Mar­cus over the week­end: “Earth­rise: The Sto­ry of the Pho­to­graph That Changed the Way We See Our Plan­et”

This book was just released in the U.S. on March 4, 2025. It’s avail­able on Kin­dle, and the title could be trans­lat­ed into Chi­nese as 《地球升起：一张改变人类视野的照片》. The term Earth­rise is quite inter­est­ing — it par­al­lels Sun­rise and Moon­rise, which would sug­gest trans­lat­ing it as “地出” (like “日出”), but that sounds odd. Trans­lat­ing it as “地球崛起” (like Rise of the Plan­et of the Apes) would be strange too. So I’d say just go with “地球升起,” which reflects the orig­i­nal name of the icon­ic pho­to fea­tured on the cov­er.

As a children’s book his­to­ri­an, Mar­cus has writ­ten sev­er­al his­to­ry books for young read­ers. Earth­rise fol­lows the same nar­ra­tive approach as his pre­vi­ous work, “Mr. Lin­coln Sits for His Por­trait” (2023) — using a sin­gle famous pho­to­graph as an entry point to explore the deep­er his­tor­i­cal con­text behind it.

To put it sim­ply, Earth­rise tells the sto­ry of the icon­ic pho­to tak­en on Christ­mas Eve, 1968, dur­ing the Apol­lo 8 mis­sion by astro­naut Bill Anders as he orbit­ed the Moon. This pho­to shows the Earth ris­ing over the Moon’s hori­zon — one of the most con­se­quen­tial and wide­ly viewed images in human his­to­ry. Mar­cus unpacks the sto­ry behind this pho­to, com­bin­ing vivid details, his­tor­i­cal con­text, and per­son­al per­spec­tives to reveal how it changed humanity’s under­stand­ing of our place in the uni­verse.

Mar­cus is a mas­ter sto­ry­teller. He opens the book with a com­pelling idea: this pho­to changed how we see our­selves and our plan­et. From there, he skill­ful­ly unrav­els a nar­ra­tive full of ten­sion and con­flict — start­ing with the Cold War space race, includ­ing the Sovi­et Union’s launch of the first satel­lite, Sput­nik; Yuri Gagarin becom­ing the first human in space; and Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s dec­la­ra­tion of the Moon land­ing goal. Mar­cus main­tains a brisk, engag­ing pace, punc­tu­at­ing the nar­ra­tive with rare his­tor­i­cal images and detailed accounts of the per­son­al sac­ri­fices made by the astro­nauts and their fam­i­lies.

Inter­est­ing­ly, Mar­cus begins the book by refer­ring to the “Sput­nik moment” — a term that has recent­ly resur­faced in the wake of DeepSeek’s suc­cess. Some West­ern media out­lets have described DeepSeek’s break­through as a new “Sput­nik moment.” But what does this real­ly mean for human­i­ty? Mar­cus’s account of the orig­i­nal “Sput­nik moment” invites us to reflect on how tech­no­log­i­cal rival­ry can dri­ve both com­pe­ti­tion and coop­er­a­tion — just as the Cold War space race even­tu­al­ly gave way to space col­lab­o­ra­tion in the 1970s.

How exact­ly did Earth­rise change human­i­ty’s view of the world — even our world­view? I recall that a glob­al his­to­ri­an once sug­gest­ed that we could try to rewrite human his­to­ry from the per­spec­tive of stand­ing on the Moon and look­ing back at Earth.

Bill Anders, the astro­naut who took the icon­ic pho­to, famous­ly said: “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most impor­tant thing is that we dis­cov­ered the Earth.” This was a com­plete­ly new per­spec­tive. For the first time, human­i­ty saw Earth not as a vast, end­less expanse — but as a small, frag­ile, and beau­ti­ful plan­et. It inspired humil­i­ty and awe.

Mar­cus also point­ed out that the “Earth­rise” pho­to made peo­ple feel the unique­ness and pre­cious­ness of the Earth. The visu­al impact of view­ing the Earth from the lunar orbit prompt­ed peo­ple to have a strong “home con­scious­ness” and rethink the def­i­n­i­tion of “home”. Anoth­er astro­naut, Jim Lovell, could com­plete­ly cov­er the Earth by block­ing the win­dow with his fin­gers. This sim­ple action made him deeply feel the small­ness and lone­li­ness of the Earth:

” Just think, over five bil­lion peo­ple, every­thing I ever knew was behind my thumb.”

Earth­rise is not just a pho­to­graph; it’s a metaphor. It reminds human­i­ty that we are all pas­sen­gers on “Space­ship Earth,” a frag­ile and lim­it­ed ves­sel that we must pro­tect togeth­er. The idea of “Space­ship Earth” sharp­ened humanity’s aware­ness of lim­it­ed resources and envi­ron­men­tal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. It rein­forced the idea that we are not just cit­i­zens of indi­vid­ual nations, but mem­bers of a shared glob­al com­mu­ni­ty with a col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty.

One of my favorite lines from the book comes from Jim Lovell’s real­iza­tion: “Then I remem­bered a say­ing I often heard: ‘I hope I go to Heav­en when I die.’ I sud­den­ly real­ized that I went to Heav­en when I was born! I arrived on a plan­et with the prop­er mass to have the grav­i­ty to con­tain water and an atmos­phere, the essen­tials for life. I arrived on a plan­et orbit­ing a star at just the right dis­tance to absorb that star’s energy—energy that caused life to evolve in the begin­ning.”

Yes, peo­ple on Earth imag­ine that Heav­en is such a won­der­ful place, but in fact, we have been in Heav­en since the moment we were born!

Many peo­ple think that the Earth is not so good any­more and are ready to migrate to oth­er plan­ets, but think about it, which plan­et is more suit­able for “Earth­lings” than Earth? Instead of try­ing to migrate, it is bet­ter to try not to destroy the Earth, right?

Hav­ing fol­lowed Mar­cus’s work for some time, I think the core mes­sage of Earth­rise is this: Earth­rise is not just a famous pho­to­graph — it’s a sym­bol that reminds human­i­ty to re-eval­u­ate the plan­et we inhab­it. It reveals Earth’s iso­la­tion and unique­ness in the uni­verse and chal­lenges us to embrace a mind­set of glob­al care, peace, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Think about it, if peo­ple stay in a vil­lage for their whole lives, the peo­ple in the vil­lage on the oth­er side of the riv­er may be “ene­mies”. But if you run a thou­sand kilo­me­ters away and look back, the peo­ple in the next vil­lage are “fel­low vil­lagers”. When fel­low vil­lagers meet, their eyes are filled with tears. If peo­ple stay in the same coun­try for their whole lives, is there a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion? When we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn a few som­er­saults and run to space hun­dreds of thou­sands of miles away, the peo­ple in the “ene­my coun­try” become neigh­bors and fel­low vil­lagers. When we meet, won’t our eyes be filled with tears?

How do we see the world, how do we see our­selves? — It depends on where you stand.

Final­ly, I’d like to note the book’s ded­i­ca­tion (which I almost missed): “In Mem­o­ry of Amy Schwartz—Shining Light, Beau­ti­ful Spir­it”

Amy Schwartz (April 2, 1954 – Feb­ru­ary 26, 2023) was Mar­cus’s late wife. The ded­i­ca­tion car­ries a qui­et yet pro­found sense of loss and remem­brance — a reminder that, just as human­i­ty must cher­ish the Earth, we must also trea­sure the peo­ple and mem­o­ries that give mean­ing to our lives.

Ajia writ­ten on March 10, 2025