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Book Nobody Read by Owen Gingerich
In Pursuit of the Revolutions of Nicholas Copernicus
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.In 1543, one of the greatest scientific works made its debut: De revolutionibus (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), in which Nicolaus Copernicus radically altered the composition of the cosmos by placing the sun, and not the earth, at the centre of the universe. But did anyone take notice? Four and a half centuries later, 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 - from Melbourne to Moscow; Boston to Beijing - 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, movie stars, medicine men, and bibliomaniacs; some hiding in plain sight, others almost lost to time and the whims of politics and the black market. Part biography of a book and a man, part bibliographic and -philic quest, Gingerich's The Book Nobody Read is a captivating piece of writing, a testament to both the power of books and the power of the love of books. |
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| Author(s) : Owen Gingerich | Format : Hardback Book |
| ISBN-10 : 0434013153 | ISBN-13 : 9780434013159 |
| RRP : £12.99 | Best available price : £ / $ |
| Prices as of : BST check live prices | |
Product Details:
Country Publication : United Kingdom
Publication Date : 12/08/2004
Publisher : Arrow Books Ltd
Page Length : 360mm
Page Size : 210mm