In Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are, author Rebecca Boyle explains how Earth's closest neighbor is essential to our history. Reliable and mythical, epic in size and significance, the Moon has been profoundly influential since the beginning. According to Boyle's extensive research, we would not be here without it. 

She begins by recounting theories of the Moon's creation, all involving a collision of some kind with Earth, and how it shaped our planet with its tides, with its light and lack of light. She explains how the earliest terrestrials used it to navigate at night and to time their reproductive cycles. As our planet evolved, countless species learned to "sync their mating, feeding, and spawning schedules with the phases of the Moon." Coral reproduction is entirely dependent on the full Moon each month....