Rating: 
Summary: A well written book that relates a true human interest story
Review: While the book lacks the hard substantive science that I enjoy, it was a well written book that related a human interest story and one of the greatest technical challanges of the time. I had bought it several months before I read it and was prompted to read it after seeing the movie that was made for TV. I was happy that I picked it up for it grabbed me immediately and I finished it within the day.
Rating: 
Summary: Good reading
Review: The movie on A&E thoroughly engulfed me, so I had to buy the book. The movie stayed pretty true to the book. The book added more detailed information, but appeared to miss pieces of the tomfollery during the development of H1-H4. Excellent read, not too long. I wish Sobel included actual photos and diagrams of the chronometers, Harris, and the others. Its hard visualizing the timepices, and the players, even though he described them. Fortunately, the book had a bookmark that contained color photos/drawings of H1-H4.
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Summary: In Search of Precision Timepieces
Review: In the Age of Sail, the position of a ship had to be determined by a set of coordinates that corresponded with a grid of lines covering the planet. These lines, latitude and longitude, are still present on reproductions of the earths surface today- on just about any map you can find. Latitude can be determined by the stars in the sky, and their respective angles above the horizon. With latitude, the relative north or south position of a ship could be determined. Longitude was a much more difficult animal to capture and an important one, being the east and west position of a ship. Dead reckoning would work to a point, but with the trade of Europe riding the ocean an exact position was required to avoid expensive (in lives and material) wrecks at sea. Dava Sobel has written an account of John Harrison's quest to crack the riddle of longitude and claim the twenty thousand pound reward for doing so. While the astronomers were looking to the sky for an answer, Harrison believed he could find it within the mechanical gears of a watch.This is a great book, a fast read and one that will be remembered. Concise and filled with knowledge that is both fascinating and taken for granted, Sobel has brought much needed light to a neglected corner of history.
Rating: 
Summary: No real hero, no real villain, and no solid plot.
Review: Although the author is trying to make us believe it, in this book there is no real hero, no real villain, and no solid plot. Story goes mostly linear, but with sudden unnecessary jerks forward and backward in time, sometimes revealing the plot, most of the time only confusing the issue. Struggle of one man with the scientific bureaucracy of his time slowly but surely becomes obsolete, even irrelevant, and in the end there is no "chatarsis" either, and story finally deflates without the satisfying "boom" or "aha" effect. One feels as if the puzzle is being put together, and when the work is done, one does not care for the picture that is in tront of him.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: An entertaining quick read, this account of John Harrison's amazing timepieces left me thoroughly unfulfilled. I expected at least *one* diagram of the mechanism of each of his clocks, and at least a bare description of how the internal mechanisms operated. This book fails on both accounts. (I believe the illustrated edition has pictures but no descriptions, btw.) I suppose I shouldn't have expected more from an author who makes her living as a reporter, but these critical omissions were frustrating, to say the least.
Rating:
Summary: Long(in places)itude
Review: Easy read, but not much depth. No real motivations presented considering this man spent his entire life in the pursuit of a single goal. At times the writing reminded me of freshman composition 101, with long strings of descriptive adjectives. The author goes to some lengths to present other scholars in an adversarial role, but the "other side" was not well represented. Other points of view were hinted, but not explored or explained. Good as a history lesson, especially for those like me, eager to learn about anything having to do with sailing or the early days of world exploration.
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Summary: Scientist as Hero
Review: In the early 18th century, one of greatest scientific problems was calculating longitude on the high seas. At the time, navigators had two choices, both treacherous. They either traveled well-known routes, thus opening them to the threat of pirate attacks, or they used imprecise navigational methods to avoid that danger. But the latter method presented its own problems: it was more deadly because ships often got lost at sea or ran aground. Many sailors lost their lives and vast fortunes were dashed as ships crashed into rocks. The problem was so serious that the English Parliament passed the Longitude Act in 1714. The Act established a panel of judges to study the problem and announced a prize of £20,000 (worth millions of dollars today) to anyone who could determine longitude accurately. Enter John Harrison, a self-educated amateur clockmaker from Yorkshire. He believed that the solution lay in time, not in the heavens, as the scientific establishment had postulated. Harrison devoted his entire life to the pursuit of the longitude prize, all the while battling university scholars who thought him an incompetent crank. In Longitude, author Dava Sobel tells Harrison's story with vigor and insight. It is clear that she greatly admires Harrison's genius and determination. She describes how he "went from...humble beginnings to riches by virtue of his own inventiveness and diligence, in the manner of Thomas Edison or Benjamin Franklin." Throughout Harrison's illustrious career, he invented a number of innovative techniques for keeping accurate time-and solved many problems that had plagued clockmakers for centuries. Sobel writes: "Most pendulums of Harrison's day expanded with heat, so they grew longer and ticked out time more slowly in hot weather. When cold made them contract, they speeded up the seconds, and threw the clock's rate off in the opposite direction." Harrison solved this by "combining long and short strips of two different metals-brass and steel-in one pendulum..." Another invention of Harrison's was caged ball bearings, which are still used today. Harrison did eventually win the longitude prize, but not until he was in his late 70s. The debate over the way longitude would be found raged on throughout his many trials over the decades between the 1720s and the 1770s. He submitted two clocks to the Longitude Board between 1737 and 1741 (named H1 and H2), but spent nearly twenty years perfecting H3, which he finally submitted in 1769. During this time, a rival 40 years younger than Harrison, the Reverend Nevil Maskelyne, insisted that the lunar distance method was the way that longitude was to be found. Sobel makes clear that Maskelyne, while a foe to Harrison, was not exactly a villain. Rather he was more like an anti-hero. While Harrison's method eventually won out, Maskelyne did make many important contributions to the science of astronomy. Sobel is objective enough to give credit where credit is due. Longitude is written in a breezy, easy-to-read style. Sobel tells her tale chronologically, providing the essentials of the struggle while maintaining the historical context. She describes the painstaking observations and integrations that Harrison had to make in order to create his famous clocks. The solitary years he spent in his workshop focusing on his central goal is an inspiration to behold, particularly in an age like ours, where the individual is often looked upon with derision and contempt. Because Longitude is a popular account, there are few technical details. For the most part, this lack of detail does not detract from the book, but occasionally the lack of technical description confuses the reader. For example, Sobel does not explain how one determines local time on a moving ship. Nevertheless, this flaw does not detract from the overall value of the book. Sobel tells her tale well and brims with enthusiasm for John Harrison and his wonderful invention that solved a centuries-long obstacle to safe navigation on the high seas. At the end of the book, Sobel touchingly describes her reaction to seeing Harrison's clocks for the first time. "Coming face-to-face with these machines at last-after having read countless accounts of their construction and trial, after having seen every detail of their insides and outsides in still and moving pictures-reduced me to tears."
Rating:
Summary: An unexpected treat
Review: A review from the author of DREAMING YOUR REAL SELF and DREAM BACK YOUR LIFE. Hearing Dava Sobel on C-Span's Book TV, I was impressed with her clarity and enthusiasm enough to buy both her books LONGITUDE and GALILEO'S DAUGHTER. Sobel tells the story of solving the problem of measuring longitude from both a human angle and a technical one. She shows how all the political shenanigans of these so-called gentlemen kept the prize from its rightful claimant for decades. Especially interesting were the alternative attempts at measuring longitude, some of them illogical and wacky at best. This benefit of hindsight makes me wonder which of our "solutions" to problems will look equally inept a hundred years from now. Sobel's scientific descriptions are wonderfully clear and understandable. I'm glad to find another author to bring technical information to the public in such an engaging way.
Rating:
Summary: Great Story and a very good popular account of Longtitude.
Review: This author had worked very hard to gather the information to put together this wounderful book. Introducing history accounts, this books teaches as well as entertains. I had to read this book for summer reading, and I must tell you: Its the best history-based book I ever read. It brings the reader through the phases of developing the aparatus for measuring longtitude through dozens of scientists and national philosofers, when the problem was in need of a solution.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Subject
Review: Dava Sobel has written a beautiful book about a subject that in a lesser author's hands could have been exceedingly boring. The need for a clock which would accurately keep time while on a sea voyage in order to help mariners determine their longitude and thus accurately determine where they would land doesn't seem like it would be that exciting. However, Sobel has given a wonderful account of the problems that were encountered without this device and how John Harrison, a clock maker, was determine to solve this problem with an accurate time piece that could be used even on ships. The tremendous difficulties that Harrison had in convincing the British government authorities that he had indeed solved the problem are interesting and yet his endurance in solving this problem is almost heroic. Apparently, red tape and professional jealously are timeless qualities of human nature. This slim book provides an interesting glance into a subject which probably few have ever thought about. I would recommend this book highly to anyone who likes to know the story behind scientific discoveries which now seem almost quaint
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