Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
This got great reviews and I was excited to learn about a topic that I didn't know a whole lot about. It was excruciatingly boring. I think you have to like astronomy to be able to get into the day to day progression of his discoveries and letters.
informative
medium-paced
Wow! What a stunningly awesome book! This is the best of author Sobel's books which is high praise in itself. Most highly reccomended!
A fascinating take on Leonardo, from the angle of a person I never knew existed. (In the various history and science classes I took over the years, his children were never mentioned.) I especially liked having an edition that included the original Italian text of the letters.
Bought this book 20 years ago and never read it until now! Life got in the way.
It is a historical biography that is centered around the letters that Galileo's daughter wrote to her father while she lived as a nun in a convent. The contents of these letters are printed in full and woven into the historical record of the time.
The story covers certain aspects of about science, philosophy, religion, medicine (if you could call it that), publishing, plagues and just day to day living during that time.
I liked the book because it made me think deeply about all kinds of things I haven't thought much about in a while. Consequently it was a slow read for me, but well worth the effort.
If you want the Cliff Notes version, here it is: "Galileo had a daughter and they loved each other very much. The End"
It is a historical biography that is centered around the letters that Galileo's daughter wrote to her father while she lived as a nun in a convent. The contents of these letters are printed in full and woven into the historical record of the time.
The story covers certain aspects of about science, philosophy, religion, medicine (if you could call it that), publishing, plagues and just day to day living during that time.
I liked the book because it made me think deeply about all kinds of things I haven't thought much about in a while. Consequently it was a slow read for me, but well worth the effort.
If you want the Cliff Notes version, here it is: "Galileo had a daughter and they loved each other very much. The End"
Great science, history, and religion -- as well as a touching father-daughter story.
You can find me at 520.92 Galilei in the Non-Fiction stacks.
This book is really a biography of Galileo, but has much more information about his daughter and their relationship than other biographies. I had just read Galileo: A Life by James Reston Jr before this, and he mentions that Galileo fell in love with a lowborn woman and had 3 kids, and then just never mentioned the woman again, and only the daughters-going-to-convent rather in passing. I think it's a shame on that other book to so thoroughly leave out such an important and active person in Galileo's life, and I appreciate learning about her from this book, even if it's not really *about* her.