Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love
Galileo Galilei's telescopes allowed him to discover a new reality in the heavens. But for publicly declaring his astounding argument--that the earth revolves around the sun--he was accused of heresy and put under house arrest by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Living a far different life,...
show more
Galileo Galilei's telescopes allowed him to discover a new reality in the heavens. But for publicly declaring his astounding argument--that the earth revolves around the sun--he was accused of heresy and put under house arrest by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Living a far different life, Galileo's daughter Virginia, a cloistered nun, proved to be her father's greatest source of strength through the difficult years of his trial and persecution.Drawing upon the remarkable surviving letters that Virginia wrote to her father, Dava Sobel has written a fascinating history of Medici--era Italy, a mesmerizing account of Galileo's scientific discoveries and his trial by Church authorities, and a touching portrayal of a father--daughter relationship. Galileo's Daughter is a profoundly moving portrait of the man who forever changed the way we see the universe.• Winner of the Christopher Award and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award • Named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, and the American Library Association
show less
Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780140280555 (0140280553)
Publish date: November 1st 2000
Publisher: Penguin
Pages no: 368
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
Autobiography,
Memoir,
Biography,
History,
Cultural,
Italy,
Book Club,
Science,
Religion,
Astronomy,
Biography Memoir
Inspired by a long fascination with Galileo, and by the remarkable surviving letters of his daughter Maria Celeste, a cloistered nun, Dava Sobel has crafted a biography that dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishments of a mythic figure whose early-seventeenth-century clash with Cathol...
One-sentence summary: though it has the title Galileo's Daughter, this is an ordinary, relatively superficial, definitely uncritical biography of Galileo himself, with its only "innovation" being the interwoven portions of his daughter's 124 extant letters. A little background. Galileo had two dau...
So, given the title you'd think this would be about Galileo's daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, who he called "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me." Perhaps you might have thought that through her eyes--this account is partly based upon and includes several o...
After 150 pages I decided if this book didn’t end by smashing the patriarchy, I didn’t want to read anymore. And since it would end in 1642, I gave up. Say what you will about ‘the times,’ it’s impossible to buy the idea that a well-off, well-educated, intelligent and self-respecting public figure c...
Galileo's story was fascinating. I kind of felt like the letters from his daughter were kind of arbitrarily thrown in. They detracted from the presentation of Galileo's life. If Sobel wanted an excuse to show off the translated letters, I wish she would have focused more on Sour Maria Celeste's conv...
Log in with Facebook 
