Acquainted with the Night: Excursions Through the World After Dark by Christopher Dewdney

This book is all about night. Strange concept, eh? The author discusses night from almost ever perspective imaginable: meteorology, astronomy, history, art, literature, botany, zoology, technology... He talks about the history of streetlamps and different kinds of twilight and the relationship between a cricket's chirp and the ambient temperature and strange deep-sea creatures and prehistoric arctic life and the formation of the earth and all kinds of other things, all of it related to the central theme of night. From my description it sounds like some crazy over-ambitious lit. essay, but it's very interesting and remarkably easy to read! Read this if you want to feel smart.