The Book Nobody Read by Owen Gingerich

The Book Nobody Read by Owen Gingerich

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Summary

Part biography, part bibliographic quest, this is the story of the author's obsession with the book "On the Revolutions" by Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus altered the composition of the cosmos by placing the sun, and not the earth at the centre of the universe.

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The Book Nobody Read by Owen Gingerich

1543 saw the publication of one of the most significant scientific works ever written: De revolutionibus (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), in which Nicolaus Copernicus presented a radically different structure of the cosmos by placing the sun, and not the earth, at the centre of the universe. But did anyone take notice? Harvard astrophysicist Owen Gingerich was intrigued by the bold claim made by Arthur Koestler in his bestselling The Sleepwalkers that sixteenth-century Europe paid little attention to the groundbreaking, but dense, masterpiece. Gingerich embarked on a thirty-year odyssey to examine every extant copy to prove Koestler wrong-Logging thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of miles Gingerich uncovered a treasure trove of material on the life of a book and the evolution of an idea. His quest led him to copies once owned by saints, heretics, and scallywags, by musicians and movie stars; some easily accessible, others almost lost to time, politics and the black market. Part biography of a book and a man, part bibliographic and bibliophilic quest, Gingerich's The Book Nobody Read is an utterly captivating piece of writing, a testament to the power both of books and the love of books.
"..this is a driven, fascinating book, and a rarity - a history of s cience by somebody who actually knows about science" John Carey, The Sunday Times 20040812
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780434013159
ISBN 10 0434013153
Title The Book Nobody Read
Author Owen Gingerich
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Hardback
Publisher Cornerstone
Year published 2004-08-12
Number of pages 320
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.