This work takes the reader on a tour of the nature and significance, both scientific and cultural, of light in our world. It explores the development of scientific theories surrounding light, and provides a history of the mind in the process.

`a multi-levelled history about virtually everything that human beings have thought about light and seeing in the last three thousand years... ...I have not enjoyed a book so much for a long time. Oliver Sacks

"A small gem of a book, poetic in its style and in its determined conjoining of distant ideas....As crammed with culture as an overcrowded museum storeroom."--James Gleick, The Washington Post "Brilliant....A beautifully composed meditation."--Kirkus Reviews "An amazing synthesis and a joy to read--I have not enjoyed a book so much for a long time....An extraordinary work."--Oliver Sacks, M.D., author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat a subject surprisingly clear. "Catching the Light is nothing short of a masterpiece. It is at once a riveting story, literate and beautifully precise. What more could one ask for in a marriage between science and art?"--Richard Selzer, author of Down from Troy "A small gem of a book, poetic in its style and in its determined conjoining of distant ideas....As crammed with culture as an overcrowded museum storeroom."--James Gleick, The Washington Post "Brilliant....A beautifully composed meditation."--Kirkus Reviews "An amazing synthesis and a joy to read--I have not enjoyed a book so much for a long time....An extraordinary work."--Oliver Sacks, M.D., author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat a subject surprisingly clear. "Catching the Light is nothing short of a masterpiece. It is at once a riveting story, literate and beautifully precise. What more could one ask for in a marriage between science and art?"--Richard Selzer, author of Down from Troy

Arthur Zajonc is a Fellow of both the Lindisfarne Association and the Fetzer Institute. As a specialist in quantum physics, he has lectured all over the world and is the recipient of a prestigious 1992 Fulbright scholarship.