Rating: 
Summary: Great!
Review: My friends & I read this for a book club, and what a winner! To read about the daily mundane activities in the convent, to see the love between father & daughter, and to be up-close & personal with such pivotal moments in history as Galileo's trial & the birth of the scientific method were truly thrilling. I was a little disappointed that the book did not explore Marie Celeste's life in even more detail, but I suppose that is the consequence of having so little information available about her.
Rating: 
Summary: A Treatise on the Nature of the Text
Review: Further proof that nonfiction is not fit for publishing. While I thoroughly enjoyed the author's book _Longitude_, I have little interest in the goings-on of daughters of famous scientists who "proved" certain "theories" about the "revolutions" of the "heavenly" "spheres." There is very little science, and even less faith and love in this tiresome text.
Rating: 
Summary: Engaging, yet a lack of character development
Review: Writing from the perspective of Galileo's daughter, Dava Sobel attempts to bring new perspective to the life of Galileo. Although the book is education and thought-provoking, Sobel fails to generate sympathy for the characters like she did in Longitude. By splitting the perspective between the two characters, Galileo and his daughter, one leaves without a real sense of the personality of either one. However, this book was not just about personalities and in describing the historical events, Sobel does an excellent job. In addition, the book leaves one pondering questions of theology, philosophy, and science--always a good thing. As the centuries have passed, the tensions between religion and science have not disappeared, and Sobel's description of those events in Galileo's time, leave one with new questions about religion and science today.
Rating: 
Summary: What a pleasure
Review: What a moving experience to discover the human side of a great scientist. Dave Sobel presented historic facts in such a vivid way that I had difficulty in putting the book down when it got very late at night. Galileo could have been proud of his daughter who loved him so unconditionally. I was also amazed about the power and influence of the Roman Catholic church and particularly of the Pope in those days. A book not to be missed!
Rating:
Summary: Is the daughter worth knowing?
Review: This is a good biography of Galileo. For anyone searching for such a book, do not let this one pass by. The title does deceive one into thinking that the book may be at least 50/50 Galileo and daughter, but it is not. To me the dughter is not worth knowing anyway. She was fairly intelligent from her letters, but otherwise not worth knowing. There are not too many biographies about Galileo still in print, but this one is good and worth reading for that purpose.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyable
Review: I picked up the book expecting it to be like "Longitude" -- an exposition of the personalities involved in a scientific and technical breakthrough -- and I wasn't disappointed in that. But this book has much more depth: not only does Sobel give a well-researched, convincing picture of the individuals involved, but she puts Galileo's achievements and his persecution by the Inquisition into their scientific and historical context. His case wasn't a simplistic "religion vs. science" debate (as it's often depicted) but a tangled web of personal vendettas, intellectual rivalries, and religious/political authority figures with conflicting agendas, and Sobel made it all much clearer to me.
I felt that Suor Maria Celeste came across vividly in her letters: she was clearly an intelligent, perceptive, and levelheaded person, capable of taking care of her father's affairs (and writing witty descriptions of domestic disasters in her letters to him), while at the same time she was coping with the stresses of living in a poverty- and illness-ridden convent. I found the mundane details fascinating because they gave me a feeling for daily life at the time: Galileo may have revolutionized science, but he also wore out his collars and had a weakness for candied citron!
I think some readers' dissatisfaction with the book stems from the fact that Sobel didn't feel the need to spell everything out. She doesn't speculate at length about Suor Maria Celeste's character, just lets the letters and the facts of the story speak for themselves. (It's clear to me that Galileo loved his elder daughter so deeply because they related as ADULTS, and she gave him the unqualified emotional support he didn't have from anyone else -- so it's not surprising that her early death devastated him.) I did feel that the book was more about Galileo than his daughter, but the historical records give her short shrift compared to him, and Sobel made the best of what was available.
Although the book is solidly referenced, it's not obtrusively "scholarly," and the appendix material (e.g., weights and measures) is useful. I wish that the author had provided better maps: the 1603 map of Italy didn't show some cities that loom large in the story (e.g., Padua). Otherwise, the illustrations are well chosen and add a great deal to the story. All in all, I enjoyed the book thoroughly, and recommend it as a painless way to learn more about this period of intellectual history.
Rating:
Summary: Clarity and Caritas
Review: I'm not a scientist, just curious to know more than than the pop fables we all inherit about our historical "giants." We all picked up the basic Galileo story, and Brecht played it to the hilt in his famous play. Dava Sobel shows us how wrong we were. Galileo wasn't the sly conniver who tried to play against the Church and got caught in the act. If ever a man of genius tried honorably to balance his faith and his reason, it was he. His daughter Virginia emerges as a truly noble nun, a bright and careful writer, devoted to her faith and her father. Given the century and her circumstances, she appears to have been an extraordinarily intelligent and literate woman. Her letters and Dava Sobel's well-researched documentation of Galileo's developing ideas offer clear and compelling descriptions of the multiplying proofs of our heliocentric system. I don't believe we have any modern instances to compare with this intimate and feeling father/daughter relationship. There is a fine love here, pure caritas; and for those like me who have not known this tale, it leads--sadly and inexorably--to a suprising and moving ending.
Rating:
Summary: An intruiging biography of Gallileo, but oddly disappointing
Review: After hearing such rave reviews about this book, I expected it to be more about - oddly enough - Gallileo's daughter. Unfortunately, it's not, really. What the book is, though, is a facinating biography of Gallileo. For that alone, it's worth the read. It's easy to forget what difficulties he labored under and what a staggering intellectual contribution he made; certainly the father of modern science. This is the majority of the book, and this much is well-written, engaging, and interesting. It's very unusual to find history that is all these things. Somehow, though, the parts that bring in his daughter are much less successful and just not that interesting. We really learn very little about her through her letters, and that's all we get to see of her. We find that she was deeply religious, she adored her father, and that he found her a sustaining presence, but the nature of this relationship is largely unexplored and unexplained; we just get the superficial expression - and that only from one side (Gallileo's letters to his daughter are lost), and with massive gaps. It's like listening to only one side of a conversation, and that only intermittantly. Plus, many of her letters are mainly focused on domestic details which are, sad to say, rather boring. I guess after all the hype I had expected or hoped for more exploration of Suor Maria Celeste's character, perhaps filling in the gaps and exploring the themes "I Claudius"-style, but no dice. Since the communication is so sparse, the "Science, Faith, and Love" elements do less well than the "historical memoir" (whatever that means). Anyway, this is a hard book to rate because I did quite enjoy it for it's "Biography of Gallileo" element, and as such I might give it 4 or even 5 stars. But as a book rather grandiosely titled "Gallileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love", I found it fell rather short of that mark; it's attempts to delve into the character of Suor Maria Celeste were not particularly successful in my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Galileo's Daughter
Review: This is the true story of the eldest daughter of Galileo, a brilliant woman cloistered by her times, who despite her lack of opportunity and freedom, influenced the greatest physicist and scientist the world had ever seen. Her character is developed for us by Dava Sobel through the letters Galileo received and kept all his life. This beautifully researched book reads like a novel and brings a wonderful humanity to many historical figures, who heretofore may have been uni-dimensional for a lot of us. I was touched and educated. Read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Simply a joy
Review: This book was simply a joy to read. There is a little bit of everything -- history, science, religion, love, intrigue. It is well written and has a quick pace. Highly recommended.
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