File:The Home Planet.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/The-Home-Planet-Kevin-Kelley/dp/0201151979

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4290375-the-home-planet

From Publishers Weekly

This is a collection of 150 photographs of Earth taken from space, accompanied by quotes from members of the Association of Space Explorers, a multi-national group of astronauts and cosmonauts. The pictures are spectacular: an "Earthrise," as seen from the moon; the mountain ranges, canyons, coastlines, cloud formations, tropical storms, volcanos, oceans, deserts and deltas of the Earth photographed from thousands of miles above our planet's surface.

So precise is the view that we see a plankton bloom, in an amazing inversion of scale, off the coast of New Zealand. The space explorers' comments on their experiences, their common realization of the camaraderie of all of Earth's citizens and of the fact that the Earth is fragile and too precious to be wasted range in eloquence, but are uniformly affecting and well-intentioned:

"The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day we were aware of only one Earth..."

"We went to the moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians..."

"I understood that we are all sailing in the same boat..."

166,000 first printing; first serial to Life; Literary Guild alternate - Copyright 1988