 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | Everyone knows that Galileo Galilei dropped cannonballs off the leaning tower of Pisa, developed the first reliable telescope, and was convicted by the Inquisition for holding a heretical belief--that the earth revolved around the sun. But did you know he had a daughter? In Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel (author of the bestselling Longitude) tells the story of the famous scientist and his illegitimate daughter, Sister Maria Celeste. Sobel bases her book on 124 surviving letters to the scientist from the nun, whom Galileo described as "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and tenderly attached to me." Their loving correspondence revealed much about their world: the agonies of the bubonic plague, the hardships of monastic life, even Galileo's occasional forgetfulness ("The little basket, which I sent you recently with several pastries, is not mine, and therefore I wish you to return it to me"). While Galileo tangled with the Church, Maria Celeste--whose adopted name was a tribute to her father's fascination with the heavens--provided moral and emotional support with her frequent letters, approving of his work because she knew the depth of his faith. As Sobel notes, "It is difficult today ... to see the Earth at the center of the Universe. Yet that is where Galileo found it." With her fluid prose and graceful turn of phrase, Sobel breathes life into Galileo, his daughter, and the earth-centered world in which they lived. --Sunny Delaney |
Galileo's Daughter I read this book and could not put it down. It is written beautifully, but it has so much information about Galileo that we should all know! This man was a genius. An Obverse Perspective Up until now I'd always envisioned of Galileo Galilei as an old bearded man, who had dropped his balls off of the Tower of Pisa, and who got shoved into a tiny room by the Catholic Church only to look at the sun with his telescope and became blind, and then died. This book portrays a man far off the doldrums of old age and instead introduces a romping playboy, who shacked and impregnated women without ever marrying them. Altercations with the Catholic Church, who looked upon the sun with a different sort of blindness, rendered this much revered man to destitute at last. Only a little over a decade ago that the Catholic Church finally said Oops, we were wrong, and apologized to Galileo, who in turn has his middle finger prominently displayed at the Museo di Storia del Scienza in Italy. good Rather unremarkable, but fairly informative and enjoyable. It is sad that our approaches to religion and science don't seem to have progressed much over the last 4 centuries as there still are people debating creationism and evolution etc. Gallileo's Daughter The book was just exactly as described, only in better condition. Arrived promptly at a very fair selling and shipping price. Absolutely the best way to buy books. My first experience buying used books. Except in exceptional circumstances, as gifts, I'd never pay the new price again when I can get almost new at a fractional price. Now that I've read it, I'd like to tell y'all about it.
This is a fine book. The author researched it completely. The period literature about Galileo at the time of his problem with the pope was read and studied in the original Italian by the author. The book covers most of Galileo's life and accomplishments. As a court reporter, I was especially interested to find that a court reporter recorded his trial as well as depositions, what we would call "Discovery Depositions" now. The transcript is very, very similar to what I see today. A little stilted maybe, and in the third person. Question by Cardinal: "When did the accused first publish his book?" Answer: "He published it one book at a time as it could be copied, over a long time." And that was Galileo answering. The author read the actual documents in order to write about them. Read the book and you'll want to go to Firenze one more time, to see it through Galileo's eyes, and see bits of physical history that remain of his time. You'll want to go up to Siena, where he wintered while waiting the verdict on his church trial. The very thorough backbone of the book is the series of letters to Galileo by his daughter, she being placed in a convent with her sister because of their illegitimacy. No letters were ever found from father to daughter. Galileo Deserves Better The title proclaims this to be something called an historical memoir. huh? What's that? Memoirs certainly are all the rage now. Would it be unfair to accuse the folks putting out this book of trying to force it into the "memoir" category to sell more copies? How fitting that a book featuring disagreements has in its very title a challenge to readers to start arguing. Here are some definitions snatched from a couple websites:
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Biography, in general, is someone's life story, written by another person. It is usually supported by documentation (letters, legal papers, etc.) proving the facts that they present, unless they are unauthorized biographies, in which case, anything goes.
Autobiography is the story of someone's life, written by themselves. It also is supported by documentation.
Memoir is sometimes considered the same as autobiography, but it is less formal, less well-documented, and often, about only a segment of a person's life.
A memoir is usually a more personal piece of writing than a biography or autobiography, which tends to give a "whole picture" of the person or family about whom the book is written. On the other hand, a memoir tends to have more of an overarching theme than most autobiographies; thus, it gives a "partial picture."
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So this is best described as a biography because Galileo didn't write it and it's supported by both letters and legal papers. "Historical Memoir" indeed. I sneer at that. Sneer I do! Now what about what's between the covers?
THE BAD: Too often this came across like a stretched out text book. It could have only have been helped if someone had cut it to one-third the length. Entire sections seem to repeat topics fully covered before.
The daughter's letters were disappointing adding less humanity and human interest than you might expect, especially given that she's the title character. They felt like a flimsy excuse so Dava Sobel could restate the same tale of Galileo while pretending to approach it with a new angle. I wish Sobel had discovered themes within the letters and told us what she found. As it was, the letters were too mundane and failed to add enough to the story. The buffalo egg letter, however, was a hoot. It would have been nice if more of the letters had been entertaining like that.
Somehow despite the letters, the daughters' lives never come into focus. I want to know more about the visits with their father. How did Suor Maria Celeste come to write so well that it was a special duty of hers at the convent? She read her father's letters and enjoyed frequent visits with him - was it through him she learned to write so well? Was it something taught in the convent? I would have enjoyed hearing about this and other aspects of the daughters lives.
THE GOOD: The descriptions of Ptolemy's Earth-centered universe somehow lacked enough detail, yet are essentially complete. It was great to read the actual (translated) transcript of Galileo's heresy hearing. That's the most important part of the book and the part that will stay with me. He got all his points out and it's surprising that the council ruled against him. The book shined brightest when explaining science (telescopes, tides, bones and falling bodies), discussing Galileo arguing points of science (objects would not fall 100xs slower if they weighed 100xs less) and when discussing the plague. Thankfully, the book is too smart to argue some simplistic deep divide between science and religion. Galileo himself as well as many very pious, high-ranking holy men around him, did not see such a conflict.
It's unfair to pretend the folks who continued to believe the Earth stood still were ignoring obvious fact. It wasn't that obvious. If we had never learned extra facts since the time of Galileo about how the heavens move, still today would be huge groups of educated people who believe the Earth is stationary. Truth is hard to pin down. What is the truth behind such modern claims as a) there being 10-20 pounds of sludge stuck to our colon walls which can be cleansed if you buy some product or b) boy-part enlargement pills or pumps? By now shouldn't we have proven or disproven whether ghosts or aliens are walking around with the rest of us? ESP? Such ideas linger on as unanswered questions. How about time travel as described by Albert Einstein? Spontaneous combustion? Has anyone yet figured out how bees are able to fly since that's supposedly impossible? There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
THE MAN: Galileo himself, a pioneer of experimentation and observation, was truly amazing. His influence is enormous. The book, though, is not very good. People rave about it and I wonder if their opinions aren't being colored by their affection for Galileo himself. I was surprised that his belief in circular orbits never came up. Now I wonder if he really espoused that orbits were perfect circles while many others argued that they were ellipses.
It's funny but trying to imagine the Earth as stationary makes me dizzy.
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