Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel
A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love
Penguin - Oct. 200
ISBN: 0140280553 - Paperback
Biography

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, MyShelf.com
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Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel is such a beautiful paperback it's suitable for a holiday gift.

It's cover has a cameo cut-out frame with a portrait of Galileo's daughter, a pious woman and a woman intellectually prepared to help her brilliant father with his writing. There is a gold page on the inside with a lovely synopsis of the book, a page of recommendations surrounded by a frame of pictures of the heavens atwinkle with stars.

For the intellectually curious, the interior of the book will not disappoint. Sobel, the author of Longitude, has done her homework and has a way with words besides. She brings Galileo and his friend and nemesis, Pope Urban VIII, alive. She opens ones eyes to Galileo's science and religion and even his beloved city, Florence.

For me, there was only one disappointment; in spite of the fact that the book is built around the letters of Galileo's Daughter, it is not-as the title suggests-really about her. Instead the daughter's letters hold a mirror up to her famous and brilliant father. What those letters reveal about her seem practically incidental. One can read between the lines but Sobel does very little of that for you. She is a writer interested in the big events, the philosophical issues of the time. The quiet, dutiful daughter gets short shrift-even with a book titled after her, even with her picture on the cover.