A page from the "Calendars" exhibit...

Calendars through the Ages · Reading list

A working bibliography on calendars, timekeeping, and the astronomy of time — from Stonehenge to the atomic clock. Most are written for general readers; a few are reference works for the seriously curious. Affiliate links to Amazon support WebExhibits. See also the Museum store and the exhibit credits.

The Long View — Histories of Time and the Calendar

  • A Brief History of Timekeeping

    A Brief History of Timekeeping

    Chad Orzel · 2022

    A physicist’s tour from solstice markers and sundials to atomic clocks, with side trips through Gregorian reform, the Maya Long Count, and relativity. The most readable recent overview.

    View on Amazon →
  • Calendar

    Calendar: Humanity’s Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year

    David Ewing Duncan · 1999

    A narrative history of how the West ended up with the Gregorian calendar. Strong on personalities — Caesar, Bede, Aloysius Lilius, Pope Gregory XIII — and on the missing ten days of October 1582.

    View on Amazon →
  • Marking Time

    Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar

    Duncan Steel · 2000

    Written by an astronomer; complements Duncan’s Calendar with more attention to the underlying astronomy and to modern reform proposals.

    View on Amazon →
  • Time's Pendulum

    Time’s Pendulum: From Sundials to Atomic Clocks

    Jo Ellen Barnett · 1999

    A clear, chronological history of timekeeping technology and how each new instrument quietly reshaped daily life.

    View on Amazon →
  • Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps

    Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps: Empires of Time

    Peter Galison · 2003

    How the practical problem of synchronizing railway and telegraph clocks across continents fed directly into special relativity. Beautifully written.

    View on Amazon →
  • Time Lord

    Time Lord: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time

    Clark Blaise · 2001

    The biography of the Scots-Canadian engineer who pushed the world to adopt 24 standard time zones after missing a train in 1876.

    View on Amazon →
  • The Story of Time

    The Story of Time

    Kristen Lippincott, Umberto Eco, E. H. Gombrich (eds.) · 1999

    Catalogue of the National Maritime Museum’s millennium exhibition: 300+ illustrated essays on how cultures from Babylon to Dalí have measured and depicted time.

    View on Amazon →

Time, Mind, and the Universe

  • The Order of Time

    The Order of Time

    Carlo Rovelli · 2018

    A short, lyrical book by the loop-quantum-gravity physicist arguing that what we call “time” is much stranger, and much more local, than the calendar suggests.

    View on Amazon →
  • Why Time Flies

    Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation

    Alan Burdick · 2017

    A reporter visits chronobiologists, atomic-clock keepers and Antarctic researchers to ask why subjective time bends the way it does.

    View on Amazon →
  • The Clock Mirage

    The Clock Mirage: Our Myth of Measured Time

    Joseph Mazur · 2020

    A mathematician’s essay on the mismatch between the time we measure and the time we feel — sandglasses, telomeres, Olympic photo finishes, the Amondawa.

    View on Amazon →
  • Eyewitness: Time & Space

    Eyewitness: Time & Space

    John & Mary Gribbin · 2000

    DK’s photograph-rich introduction to time, space and relativity for ages 8–12. Useful as a visual primer for adults too.

    View on Amazon →

Reference & Technical

  • Calendrical Calculations: The Ultimate Edition

    Calendrical Calculations: The Ultimate Edition

    Edward M. Reingold & Nachum Dershowitz · 2018

    The standard technical reference: precise algorithms for converting dates among the Gregorian, Julian, Coptic, Islamic, Hebrew, Persian, Bahá’í, Maya, Aztec, Hindu, Chinese, French Revolutionary and other calendars. Replaces the 2001 Millennium edition.

    View on Amazon →
  • Calendrical Calculations: Millennium Edition

    Calendrical Calculations: The Millennium Edition

    Edward M. Reingold & Nachum Dershowitz · 2001

    Earlier edition of the above; cheaper used and often the one cited in the WebExhibits articles.

    View on Amazon →
  • Mapping Time: The Calendar and Its History

    Mapping Time: The Calendar and Its History

    E. G. Richards · 1998 (rev. 2000)

    Oxford’s mid-length reference: covers the astronomical basis, world calendars and the arithmetic of conversion in one volume. A good bridge between trade books and Reingold/Dershowitz.

    View on Amazon →
  • The Book of Calendars

    The Book of Calendars

    Frank Parise (ed.) · 2002

    Conversion tables from sixty ancient and modern calendars to the Julian and Gregorian. Useful as a desk reference; some entries have known errata, so double-check critical dates.

    View on Amazon →
  • Standard C Date/Time Library

    Standard C Date/Time Library: Programming the World’s Calendars and Clocks

    Lance Latham · 1998

    For programmers: a C library plus historical notes on why date arithmetic is genuinely hard. Dated in idiom but the algorithms remain useful.

    View on Amazon →
Amazon links use the WebExhibits Associates tag webexhibits-calendars-20; purchases support the exhibit.

Advertisement