Galileo's Daughter A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (Paperback)
| Author: Dava Sobel |
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Product Details:
Format: Paperback
Publisher: St Martins Pr
ISBN-10: 0802779654
ISBN-13: 9780802779656
Sku: 220179577
Publish Date: 8/30/2011
Dimensions:
(in Inches) 8.1H x 5.5L x 1T
Pages:
432
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Galileo's daughter, born of his long illicit liaison with the beautiful Marina Gamba of Venice, entered in the summer heat of a new century, on August 13, 1600--the same year the Dominican friar Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome for insisting, among his many heresies and blasphemies, that the Earth traveled around the Sun, instead of remaining motionless at the center of the universe. In a world that did not yet know its place, Galileo would engage this same cosmic conflict with the Church, treading a dangerous path between the Heaven he revered as a good Catholic and the heavens he revealed through his telescope.
| Inspired by a long fascination with Galileo and the remarkable surviving letters of his daughter, Sobel, a cloistered nun, dramatically reinterprets the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. |
Praise
Salon
"...showing once again her keen eye for the compelling stories that simmer beneath great discoveries, [Sobel] turns this seemingly meager material into genuine historical drama....The book is most remarkable for its graceful combination of scholarly integrity and rhapsodic tone. Sobel imbues this potentially dry, academic story with the language and cadence of oral storytelling, and she gives it all the dramatic suspense that narrative demands." - Casey Greenfield 11/11/1999 New York Times
"But the real focus and appeal of Ms. Sobel's book is her account of Galileo's own life and career, which allows her to exercise the skills at scientific narrative that she put to such good use in a previous book, LONGITUDE:...Galileo's story has been told many times, but Ms. Sobel's graceful reworking of it makes several important points clearer. For one thing, it is enlightening to learn how much effort Galileo gave to the literary form of his scientific writings, which....For another thing, it is surprising to see how much Galileo equivocates in his expression of those ideas." - Christopher Lehmann-Haupt 11/15/1999 Electronic Telegraph (London)
"Dava Sobel tells Galileo's story with insight and clarity. But she adds to it another element which lifts her book into another dimension....Weaving Maria Celeste's obscure story into Galileo's famous one does more than add a touch Galileo's own religion which earlier accounts have lacked. This is a splendid and moving book, and Sister Maria Celeste, not Galileo, is its hero." - Eamon Duffy 10/23/1999 Wall Street Journal
"Forming the core of GALILEO'S DAUGHTER, Maria Celeste's 124 surviving letters to her father...brim with concern for the health of his body and soul....Ms. Sobel draws on these letters to make refreshing juxtapositions of the mundane and extraordinary....As in her previous book, LONGITUDE (1995), she here shows herself a virtuoso at encapsulating the history and the politics of science." - Francis X. Rocca 10/19/1999 Newsweek
"In GALILIEO'S DAUGHTER, a briskly written history that reads like a novel, [Sobel] plunges into a 17th-century world where gravity had not been discovered, thermometers had not been invented and women could be consigned to convent life simply because they weren't marriageable....Counterbalancing Galileo's story with Maria Celeste's, Sobel tells not just their story but the story of their times....[This book] is innovative history and a wonderfully told tale." - Malcolm Jones 10/11/1999 New York Times Book Review
"Sobel is a master storyteller....Here, she turns her talent to creating an exceptionally human narrative of the physicist whose achievements and thought have been equaled only by Newton and Einstein....What Sobel has done, with her choice of excerpts and her strong sense of story, is bring a great scientist to life. Reading GALILEO'S DAUGHTER, we hear Galileo's voice, we sense his pain and share his excitement, and once again we marvel at how the human mind, and heart, can lift so much." - Alan Lightman 10/17/1999 USA Today
"The best stories aren't always the newest, nor the most obvious.|Dava Sobel proved that in LONGITUDE, Her 1995 surprise best seller....Sobel returns to the 17th century in GALILEO'S DAUGHTER, a fascinating history lesson disguised as family drama....Sobel is a most original writer, with a reverence for history and storytelling." - Bob Minzesheimer 10/20/1999
"...showing once again her keen eye for the compelling stories that simmer beneath great discoveries, [Sobel] turns this seemingly meager material into genuine historical drama....The book is most remarkable for its graceful combination of scholarly integrity and rhapsodic tone. Sobel imbues this potentially dry, academic story with the language and cadence of oral storytelling, and she gives it all the dramatic suspense that narrative demands." - Casey Greenfield 11/11/1999 New York Times
"But the real focus and appeal of Ms. Sobel's book is her account of Galileo's own life and career, which allows her to exercise the skills at scientific narrative that she put to such good use in a previous book, LONGITUDE:...Galileo's story has been told many times, but Ms. Sobel's graceful reworking of it makes several important points clearer. For one thing, it is enlightening to learn how much effort Galileo gave to the literary form of his scientific writings, which....For another thing, it is surprising to see how much Galileo equivocates in his expression of those ideas." - Christopher Lehmann-Haupt 11/15/1999 Electronic Telegraph (London)
"Dava Sobel tells Galileo's story with insight and clarity. But she adds to it another element which lifts her book into another dimension....Weaving Maria Celeste's obscure story into Galileo's famous one does more than add a touch Galileo's own religion which earlier accounts have lacked. This is a splendid and moving book, and Sister Maria Celeste, not Galileo, is its hero." - Eamon Duffy 10/23/1999 Wall Street Journal
"Forming the core of GALILEO'S DAUGHTER, Maria Celeste's 124 surviving letters to her father...brim with concern for the health of his body and soul....Ms. Sobel draws on these letters to make refreshing juxtapositions of the mundane and extraordinary....As in her previous book, LONGITUDE (1995), she here shows herself a virtuoso at encapsulating the history and the politics of science." - Francis X. Rocca 10/19/1999 Newsweek
"In GALILIEO'S DAUGHTER, a briskly written history that reads like a novel, [Sobel] plunges into a 17th-century world where gravity had not been discovered, thermometers had not been invented and women could be consigned to convent life simply because they weren't marriageable....Counterbalancing Galileo's story with Maria Celeste's, Sobel tells not just their story but the story of their times....[This book] is innovative history and a wonderfully told tale." - Malcolm Jones 10/11/1999 New York Times Book Review
"Sobel is a master storyteller....Here, she turns her talent to creating an exceptionally human narrative of the physicist whose achievements and thought have been equaled only by Newton and Einstein....What Sobel has done, with her choice of excerpts and her strong sense of story, is bring a great scientist to life. Reading GALILEO'S DAUGHTER, we hear Galileo's voice, we sense his pain and share his excitement, and once again we marvel at how the human mind, and heart, can lift so much." - Alan Lightman 10/17/1999 USA Today
"The best stories aren't always the newest, nor the most obvious.|Dava Sobel proved that in LONGITUDE, Her 1995 surprise best seller....Sobel returns to the 17th century in GALILEO'S DAUGHTER, a fascinating history lesson disguised as family drama....Sobel is a most original writer, with a reverence for history and storytelling." - Bob Minzesheimer 10/20/1999
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