Rating: 
Summary: Milktoast treatment spoils an interesting narrative
Review: The author sets up great expectations in the beginning (and in the title) of a fascinating story. But the book falls prey to what ails a lot of science narratives...Very few developments in science come from an 'aha!' moment. The author keeps us waiting for that moment...and after a few chapters...you feel like yelling 'get to it already', because none of the characters are compelling enough...not even john harrison. Further, the real technical innovations are not described in enough detail to satisfy the scientific curiosity the title seems to target. Instead, we are almost left with a feeling that there is something magical about John Harrison's clocks. For a book that is so heavily footnoted, it would have been easy to add a chapter with some technical details, even if only in the appendices. I will give the author credit for packaging the story...and arousing the curiosity of readers (at least mine). I only wish I could find one source (not a long list of footnotes) that would satisfy my curiosity.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrid.
Review: I purchased this text as a companion to my growing collection of Patrick O'Brian books. I thought it would be nice to read up on the scientific advances that made sailing (a little) less random for the British Navy. I imagined an absorbing read with depth and clarity, like "Fermat's Enigma." Based on the reviews and O'Brian's statement (above) I think I wasn't setting my expectations too high.Instead, I found a book that was filled with flat characters, unsupportable sweeping statements, endless cliches, and generally a style so vapid that I couldn't even finish the book. I hope that someone revisits this subject sometime and writes a proper popular history that gives it the attention and treatment it deserves. I don't understand why O'Brian liked it as much as he did, and plan to forget his kind words about this book just as soon as I can.
Rating: 
Summary: History that feels like fiction
Review: I enjoyed this book from both a technical and an historical perspective. The story is compelling with a variety of interesting (and real) characters who are just as fascinating as any fictional ones. The egos, politics, and agendas are as relevent today as then. There were a few moments where the prose got dry, but overall a great read. Take it to the beach - I did!
Rating:
Summary: A unique and rare glimpse into history
Review: A unique and rare glimpse into one of history's collateral time lines: the development of an accurate navigational chronometer. It is a very human story of one man's genius and tenacity and his ultimate triumph over both technology and politics.
Rating: 
Summary: Persistence pays off
Review: "Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of his Time" is a wonderful account of how a clockmaker's persistence paid off after a 40-year obsession with solving one of the great puzzles in the history of sea travel. I used this book for two assignments in my expository writing in the social sciences' class and the students loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Story about Clocks
Review: In the age of the pendulum clock and woefully inaccurate watches, there was no way for seafarers to measure their longitude - they could not find their east-west location. They could measure their north-south latitude easily enough with simple astronomical observations, but even with all of the scientific advances of Ptolemy and Da Vinci and Galileo and Newton, there was no reliable, simple, replicable way to measure longitude. As the Age of Exploration increased the volume of maritime commerce with vastly larger merchant and military fleets to bear it, the longitude problem became more acute. Horrific shipwrecks in 1707 spurred Britain's parliament to establish a £20,000 prize ($12 million today) for the person who could devise a way to measure longitude accurately. A decades-long race was on, and (aside from the innumerable charlatans' schemes, such as the 'wounded dog' system) serious scientists soon understood that the problem boiled down to one of keeping time, precisely and regularly. The mariner who knew the precise time in, say, London would always be able to calculate his longitude. Thus the competition devolved into a race between astronomical systems requiring comprehensive star charts and lunar observations, and John Harrison -a working-class self-taught watchmaker with a passion for precision and a genius for invention. Sobel, a science writer for the New York Times turned a series of articles into this small book, and it is a delight to read. Harrison spent his life building four clocks, each better than the last, but the preference among the contest's judges for astronomical systems, and a nemesis named Reverend Maskelyne, undermined him at every turn. Finally, in 1773, King George III personally stepped in to bring some finality to the issue. Sobel's prose keeps the pages turning, perhaps the first science book that will keep you up all night. She explains enough science so the reader understands both the enormity of the problem and the complexity of watch making, but without burdening a reader with excessive detail or jargon. Her passion for the history of science and the precision of watchmaking is infectious. In the final pages, Sobel describes how she cried when she finally saw Harrison's famous "H-4" clock in the museum. When you've read the book, you'll understand why.
Rating:
Summary: Readable and worthwhile.
Review:
Longitude. Most of us seldom think about it or its uses. But, latitude's complement, longitude comprises one half our knowledge of our location on the globe. Its importance at sea, where there are no landmarks but only a limitless blue expanse, is therefore crucial. To be at sea and not to know longitude is not to know what reef one may be sailing toward or what rocks one may be at risk of running aground. Shipwreck is the inevitable result of such ignorance. For most of mankind's seafaring history, however, how to calculate longitude en route was simply not known. *Longitude* is Dava Sobel's account of the solution to this centuries-old problem by an obscure eighteenth century clockmaker named John Harrison. Many readers will find inspiration in the events of which Sobel writes, as human inventiveness and persistance predominates. Ever reader-friendly, the author also competently explains the technical problems involved in Harrison's undertaking in plain layman's terms. The result is an interesting book that helps us appreciate our sense of security rather than fear at sea today as the modern luxury it is.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent account of the creation of the first accurate c
Review: This is a detailed and fascinating story about John Harrison and the painstaking process that he went through to convince the world that his clock was accurate and worthy of England's prize for solving the problem of telling the magnitude of distances that ships travel over water. The detail that Harrison took to create his timepiece makes you respect the possible genius that can come from a human mind. A great book filled with accurate information and an excellent resource for any European History or Marine Biology course.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest revolution ever.
Review: This book is great. Sobel uses just the right amount of detail to explain a complex set of ideas and how one man dared to challenge some of the greatest minds in man's short history. John Harrison a man with no formal schooling solved a problem that plagued sailors for centuries and he did it despite the corrupt people competing against him.
Rating:
Summary: Mustread for anyone writing a research grant application
Review: Whether it is today's quest for cancer cure or missile defence whenever patronage is doled out for a popularly perceived scientific problem big boys always try to corner the booty even long before the advent of patents and stock options, the holy grail of market capitalism. It is always a heroic story to tell about discontent and iconoclasm breeding lateral thinking leading to epochal applications of existing expertise. Between 1730 and 1770 John Harrison built five revolutionary time keepers that later came to be known as marine chronometers in his single minded pursuit of the longitude prize. To be able to accurately determine the longitude in midsea must have been the single most challenge for any seafaring race and most were looking at the stars for celestial solutions through applied astronomy. But cloudy sky was the most frequent impediment on the highways of tradewind dependent navigation in addition to other pitfalls of changing heavens between northern and southern hemispheres. While academics led by the ilk of Newtons and Gailleos were focussed on stargaging, Harrison, a village clock maker, came out with a mechanical solution by building a clock set with precision to the time of the port, that could withstand the rigours of a voyage across changing weathers and climates. A simple sundial could tell the local time for the navigator at sea and the difference between the time of the port of last call and local time was all that was needed to compute the longitude at sea. However Harrison had to contend with the British Royal Admiralty Establishment where Maskelyne, a proponent of Lunar Distance Method tried his best to damn the clocks by subjecting them to fake trials. Reads more or less like the struggle of a small town university professor contending with a hot headed reviewer with attitude while attempting to publish a breakthrough experiment in a "peer" reviewed journal today.
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