A review by soniagracelm
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel

4.0

The story was interesting, the history well-researched, and the subject fascinating. Dava Sobel did a good job of explaining celestial navigation and the importance of longitude in a way that conveyed the urgency of the problem. Granted, I already knew how to use a sextant, so I'm not sure it would be quite as understandable to a complete layman, but it seemed fairly transparent to me. My only quibble was that the flow of the story was a little off. It read like it was trying to be a smooth pop-history, but it erred a little heavily on the side of history, rather than pop. On the plus side, this means that the history was really good, but it was a little dry at times. Overall an excellent, quick read. I loved the poem excerpts at the beginning of each chapter, it helped show how widespread knowledge of the search for longitude was.