Earthrise: The Story of a Photograph That Changed the Way We See Our Planet

From renowned researcher and children’s lit scholar Leonard S. Marcus comes a middle-grade nonfiction book about the astonishing photograph taken during the Apollo 8 mission that forever shifted the way we view our planet.



Gazing out the window of the Apollo 8 spacecraft on Christmas Eve, 1968, NASA astronaut Bill Anders grabbed his camera and snapped the iconic color photo of our planet rising over the lunar horizon. Not long after the crew's safe return, NASA developed Anders’s film and released “Earthrise” to the world. For the millions of viewers who first saw the photo, it was a revelation: a dramatic reminder that our home planet is a small but beautiful “blue marble” hurtling through the universe, fragile yet resilient, familiar yet strange, a sort of spacecraft in its own right for all humanity, without fixed national borders or much room for strife.



A companion to Marcus’s acclaimed Mr. Lincoln Sits for His Portrait—a unique biography of America’s sixteenth president centered around one famous picture—Earthrise uses the same technique of telling an expansive historical story through the lens of an iconic photograph. This compact, accessible, and engaging nonfiction book includes a trove of black-and-white photos and related materials throughout, as well as an 8-page color insert.