Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love [B1319]

2011 PB in nice clean condition. Inspired by a long fascination with Galileo, and by the remarkable surviving letters of Galileo's daughter, a cloistered nun, Dava Sobel has written a biography unlike any other of the man Albert Einstein called "the father of modern physics- indeed of modern science altogether." Galileo's Daughter also presents a stunning portrait of a person hitherto lost to history, described by her father as "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me."

Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. Moving between Galileo's grand public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during the pivotal era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was about to be overturned. In that same time, while the bubonic plague wreaked its terrible devastation and the Thirty Years' War tipped fortunes across Europe, one man sought to reconcile the Heaven he revered as a good Catholic with the heavens he revealed through his telescope. With all the human drama and scientific adventure that distinguished Dava Sobel's previous book Longitude, Galileo's Daughter is an unforgettable story.

From recent MIXED Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Love this. I never knew it was an option to learn about Galileo this way"; "Unique view through a daughter's letters. Sobel has chosen a particular lens through which to recount Galileo's life and work, that of his correspondence with his elder daughter, a cloistered nun, of which only her letters have survived. The book makes for a fairly dense read, but rewards the persistent reader."; "Horribly boring. If you're like me and you don't like pages and pages that drone on in mundane detail with a monotonous tone, I would stay away from this book. Sobel took a really interesting subject and made it so wretchedly boring that I felt like I was gritting my teeth just to get through a few pages."; "Wonderful! Another gem from Dava Sobel. Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Heart-wrenching and heart-warming at the same time. Rich in finer details that you will never learn from history books. Couldn't put it down but didn't want to finish reading it so quickly either!"