Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love »

Dava Sobel is an award--winning former science writer for the New York Times and has written frequently about science for several magazines, including Audubon, Discover, Life, the New York Times Magazine, and the New Yorker.

Inspired by her long fascination with Galileo, and by the remarkable surviving letters of his daughter, which Sobel has translated into English for the first time, Galileo's Daughter is a book of great originality and power, a biography unlike any ever written on Galileo. Sobel, the author of the bestseller Longitude, brings Galileo to life as never before—boldly compelled to explain the truths he discovered, human in his frailties and faith, devoted to family, especially to his eldest daughter.

The voices of Galileo and his daughter, Suor Maria Celeste, echo down the centuries through letters and writings, which Sobel masterfully weaves into her narrative, building toward the crescendo of history's most dramatic collision between science and religion. In the process, she illuminates an entire era, when the flamboyant Medici grand dukes became Galileo's patrons, when the bubonic plague wreaked its terrible devastation and prayer was the most effective medicine, when the Thirty Years' War tipped fortunes across Europe, and when one man fought, through his trial and betrayal by his former friend, Pope Urban VIII, to reconcile the Heaven he revered as a good Catholic with the heavens he revealed thorough his telescope. An unforgettable story, Galileo's Daughter is a stunning achievement. With forty black-and-white illustrations.

Newsweek

Sobel finds a new way to celebrate history's intellectual heroes.

Part One: To Florence ... 3
Part Two: On Bellosguardo ... 99
Part Three: In Rome ... 187
Part Four: In Care of the Tuscan Embassy, Villa Medici Rome ... 231
Part Five: At Siena ... 285
Part Six: From Arcetri ... 331
In Galileo's Time ... 369
Florentine Weights, Measures, Currency ... 375
Bibliography ... 376
Notes ... 383
Appreciation ... 394
Art Credits ... 396
Index ... 399