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Adult Books - Nonfiction - Science
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Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love.
Sobel, Dava (author).
Oct. 1999. 384p. Walker, hardcover, $25 (0-8027-1343-2). 520.
REVIEW.
First published August, 1999 (Booklist).
As often is the case with religious landmarks in history--in this instance, Galileo’s prostration before the Inquisition—a deeper searching reveals more textures than simple science-versus-religion symbolism. But it takes a talented storyteller to bring them forth, and Sobel meets our high expectations with this work, the legacy of her account of the inventor of the seagoing chronometer in Longitude (1995). Sobel is aided by a unique resource: more than 100 letters to Galileo from his eldest daughter that have never before been published in translation. They appear here largely verbatim and have been skillfully integrated into the contextual events of early 1600s Italy--no mean narrative feat, considering that this daughter, who took the veil and the name Maria Celeste, never in her short adult life ventured beyond her order’s walls. The letters’ somewhat trepidant salutation, “Most Illustrious and Beloved Lord Father,” belies what was apparently a profoundly fond relationship on a filial level (a conclusion supported by the surprise Sobel springs at the end), but it was respectful on an intellectual one: there are allusions to Maria Celeste copying over Galileo’s Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems the work that attracted the ire of the inquisitors. Their lives are set in motion against a background that includes family finances, Florentine and papal politics, the bubonic plague, and the Copernican revolution, which Galileo was championing as discreetly as was safe to do. Succinct in describing where, and where not, Galileo was heading in correct scientific direction (he didn’t understand tides, for example), Sobel connects the tempests of his world to the cares and anxieties of Maria Celeste’s. “A woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me,” eulogized the father when she suddenly died amidst his persecutions, an aptly allusive summing up of the subject of Sobel’s singularly affecting story. — Gilbert Taylor
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Features That Discuss This Work:
1. Top 10 Sci-Tech Books : 1999
2. Booklist Editors' Choice : Adult Books, 1999
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