Prompted by last week's total eclipse over the US, I dug out this little book from the back of my bookshelf, published just before the last total eclipse visible from the UK in 1999 (we hadn't seen one before from this country since 1927 and we won't see another one until 2090). From central London where I worked in 1999 and still work, the eclipse was disappointing; we all went out into St James Park (between Whitehall and Buckingham Palace) but it was a cloudy day, with no visible sun and the sky merely darkened as it might before a thunderstorm...so a disappointment. Anyway, I digress - this book is part science, part history and the most striking aspect for me was the significance that eclipses have had for all civilisations starting from the Babylonians who first recorded eclipses on clay tablets, many thousands of which survive to this day, as signs from the gods, then later coming to see patterns and analyse and predict future eclipses. Though there is some slightly dry science in this, there are also interesting vignettes of prominent astronomers and other scientists whose work has influenced, and/or been influenced by eclipses. ( )