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Summary: A Pleasant Surprise
Review: Galileo's Daughter tells the story of the famous scientist and his illegitimate daughter, Sister Maria Celeste. The story is based upon 124 surviving letters to the scientist from the nun. Their correspondence reveals much of their relationship as well as the world in which they lived. Although most of the book is really about Galileo, you find much about Sister Maria Celeste through the many letters woven throughout the narrative. Although I confess to only a passing interest in historical subjects, I found Galileo's Daughter much more fascinating than I had anticipated. The ending, in particular, I found suitably satisfying (you'll need to read the book to appreciate what I mean). If you have the opportunity to read Galileo's Daughter you will also find it to be a pleasurable surprise.
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Summary: Suor grapes...
Review: This spin on the familiar Galileo tale may be truthful in title but is rather shallow in execution. Most of it is an abridged and not-too-penetrating history of Galileo, padded with the letters the great scientist and philosopher received from his illegitimate daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, whom he tucked away (with his other out-of-wedlock offspring) in an abbey.While the letters do reveal the love she had for him, the emotional support she gave him during times of crisis, and the admirable variety of chores she did for him within the impoverished walls of the abbey, Sobel fails to raise her significance above that of a footnote in Galileo's life. Sobel magnifies this flaw by placing her mundane epistles too often at strategic points in the story. While Galileo is grappling with fundamental issues of science and religion, she's yet again begging for money or waxing poetic about tablecloths. The cloyingly self-aggrandizing nature of her letters make her sound like an Italian Uriah Heep--you keep expecting her to talk about how "'umble" she is. Sobel also makes some suppositions that aren't supported by evidence. For example, she always claims that Galileo quickly sent Suor Maria money or supplies whenever she asked, but we're asked to accept this at face value--there are no footnotes revealing how she confirmed this information. We're also supposed to believe that Galileo regularly visited his daughters and that they were the apple of his eye, but there's no proof of this either. For all we know, Galileo may have rarely visited them, and communicated only through letters and used his servants to deliver and pick up his tailoring. Of course, this probably isn't true--he probably was a loving father. But that's the problem--we don't get to know enough about their relationship to conclude that she provided the kind of support he needed to make his monumental discoveries and fight the philistines of the Catholic Church.
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Summary: The sort of book which makes reading a chore
Review: The scale of Ms Sobel's research and the amount of time which she doubtlessly invested in this project fail to prevent the end product from being a surprisingly tiresome and boring book. The title itself is misleading - it is essentially another biography of Galileo - so if you bought it, as I did, hoping for a new slant on the father-daughter relationship, you're in for a disappointment. If you do feel you want to read it, I suggest you visit your local library and save your hard-earned cash.
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Summary: Galileo's Laundry Lists
Review: If only we had Galileo's letters to his daughter. These did not survive. So we have only one side of the correspondence. His illegitimate daughter writes to her father about her very dull life in an Italian convent, and about his laundry. There is not enough material in the daughter's letters to sustain a narrative so the book, as other reviewers have pointed out, is really a life of Galileo which focuses on his conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. Galileo is portrayed as the virtuous (if not wholly heroic) victim of the wicked Inquisition. No doubt it will appeal to readers who enjoy "popular" history and know little about the subject matter. However, it is not as well written as "Longitude" and having enjoyed the former I found "Galileo's Daugther" somewhat disappointing. The author's speculative opinions on what was going on in Galileo's mind were rather irritating. The book might have been improved if it had been subjected to some ruthless editing, or perhaps written as a historical novel (a scientific version of "The Agony and the Ecstasy"). There are much better (scholarly and popular) books available both on the history of seventeenth century science and on Galileo's trial. Having said that there is one delightful twist to the daughter's story at the very end which made up a little for my disappointment with the book as a whole. If you already know quite a bit about Galileo, I suggest that you don't bother buying the book, but take peek at the last couple of pages in the bookshop.
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Summary: An Exceptional Story of a Relationship of a Family
Review: The author has done a masterful job of story telling in this book. You are presented with a wonderful story of the life of one of outstanding persons of the Renaissance and one of the outstanding minds of western intellectual thought. Along the way you alos meet his family and many other people responsible for an important epoch in the history of the western world.
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Summary: Satisfying on many levels
Review: I like this book on many levels. I like what it's about: Galileo, his daughter, his discoveries, 17th-century science, politics, society, the church, the Inquisition, the Plague, geography, and more. I like Sobel's style. Warm, with an impressive level of detail. It's apparent that she's done exhaustive research, and it's clear that she cares deeply about her subject. I like the unpretentious way that Galileo's time is contrasted with our own. Galileo sequestered his illegitimate daughter in a convent, yet there was genuine love between them. We see how the good of the individual was second to the good of society, both in Maria Celeste's acceptance of her tough circumstances, and in Galileo's dealings with the Inquisition. We see how the rules of nature were based more on what made logical sense than on observation (which led to, for example, some bizarre medical treatments). Even though I don't read much biography, I found this to be a fascinating, engaging book, meticulously researched and powerfully written, with a satisfying stranger-than-fiction ending.
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Summary: Galileo: Father
Review: The essence of this impressive work is the discovery of a giant of a man who was also a remarkably loving father. Indeed Galileo Galilei was driven by extraordinary talents in his own life and here moves strikingly though this book taking one intellectual giant step after another. The reader is reminded of Galileo's computations and conceptualizations that challenged the finest minds of his age. While we readily accept his conclusions today, Dava Sobel presents each with its inherent threats and potential for controversy. Yet, what compels the reader's persistence is an insightful and sensitive development of the extraordinary relationship between Galileo as a responsible and responsive father and his adoring daughter, Virginia. Galileo placed Virginia and her younger sister in a convent near him in Florence when she was but thirteen years old. Both daughters, upon coming of age chose to take vows as members of the religious community of Poor Clares at the Convent of San Matteo. It is as Suor Maria Celeste that Virginia wrote the letters to her father that now reside in Florence among the rare manuscripts of the city's National Central Library. Virginia's letters are used well by the writer. The major events of Galileo's age are replayed for the reader: wars, banishments, inventions, discoveries, celebrations, persecutions of real or imagined heretics. The seventeenth century is recreated on page after page. The Court of the Medicis, the popes, palacesand prisons of Rome, are vividly presnt along with Galileo's friends and enemies. Yet, time and again Dava Sobel returns her story to the father and daughter. This is their story. For many readers the unraveling of secrets long entombed in Florence's Santa Croce seal this tale with startling revelations, confirming the bond between Galileo's, as father, and Virginia, the daughter.
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Summary: Galileo's World Under A Microscope
Review: Galileo's Daughter is a rare gift. This marvelous duo biography of Galileo Galilei and his daughter Virginia evokes a sense of time and place, character and action and of cosmic importance that are usually the province of great works of fiction. Author Dava Sobel's meticulous scholarship and keen insights provide us a literary microscope with which we can examine Galileo's seventeenth-century world as the great astronomer explored the heavens with his telescope. Galileo's numerous scientific discoveries and his condemnation by the Church for heretically teaching the earth moved around the sun are familiar to most school children. Galileo's Daughter does much more than chronicle these familiar events. Sobel transports us to the Florence of Grand Duke Ferninando de Medici, the Rome of Pope Urban VIII, the Covent of San Matteo where Virginia Galilei became Suor Maria Celeste and breathes life into Galileo's Italy during the era of The Thirty Years War. Superstition and science, loyalty and treachery, generosity and selfishness, the ridiculous and the sublime each combine in a rich Italinate tapestry of seventeenth-century life. I recommend this wonderful book to men and women of all ages. It will satisfy even those with little interest in history, science or biography. If you are looking for a good story, well told, that illuminates the human condition, this book is for you.
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Summary: Galileo's Daughter is pure Renaissance
Review: This is one long immersion into the history of Italian life, European nations & the ways of the aristocracy & the Roman Catholic Church. Here a musician's son learns the skills that will, in time, make him the keenest observer of the heavens & develop his religious-shaking premise. The letters of this man's daughter are translated & interspersed with the biography of & the history of his time. The daughter's life, while short, was immensely comforting to the father. Fascinating details of papal life, house arrest & the interplay between scientists & aristocracy. A bit of a slog sometimes then again the Renaissance was a heady, dense era in Italian history! Do check out my full review at [my website]
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Summary: Excellent addition to the works on Galileo
Review: A very personal biography of Galileo, told from the standpoint of his daughter's side of a multi year correspondence. S. M. Celeste was in a convent and wrote to her father often. Galileo's side was lost, but Sobel does a great job of painting a human face on one of the great figures of the millennium. This book cannot stand alone or serve as a replacement for the many excellent biographies of Galileo, but it does have an important place amongst those other works. For instance, only in S.M. Celeste's letters will you see the plain face of Galileo's faith in God and the (Catholic) Church. The Galileo affair is often presented as the epitome of the conflict between faith and science, and it is often assumed that Galileo was challenging the authority of the church or the bible. As this book shows, Galileo was a man of great faith and remained faithful and committed to God and the church until his dying day. A great book.
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