A fresh, fascinating, up-to-the-moment appraisal of black holes—the massive astronomical objects with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing can escape them, not even light—situating them at the center of our understanding of our place on Earth and in the universeHumanity’s relationship with black holes began in 1783 in a small English village, when clergyman John Michell posed a startling question: What if there are objects in space that are so large and heav...

From the 18th century vicar who was the first to look up at the night's sky and suggest there was something very dark and extraordinarily heavy that was moving the stars, to the first actual photograph of a black hole, 250 years later, Jonas Enander has travelled the world, visited telescopes and observatories, interviewed world-leading space researchers, and delved deep into the archives to investigate how our relationship with black holes has changed over time. Throughout this journey, E...