Galileo

Reviews

“[Reston] recreates the era with immediacy by mining Galileo’s journals and letters for dialogue. The use of present tense gives the characters a magnified, flesh-and-blood presence that neatly balances with the Galileo legend.”

“Reston brings this star-gazing, intuitively intelligent, original, articulate, witty, theatrical, self-promoting, cash-poor, and nearly inexhaustible Italian Catholic to life in an involving and, yes, suspenseful narrative. Acquaintance with the facts does nothing to diminish the drama, and Reston’s zealous research…vivid descriptions, and frank indignation over the church’s appalling treatment of his hero enliven every page.”

“A well-rounded portrait…Successfully portrays Galileo’s world, with its colorful group of Renaissance Italians. Readily accessible, the book is an interesting character study and political biography of the great scientist.”

“Riggenbach conveys the drama of Galileo’s capitulation before the Inquisition—a scene of conflict between documented observation and accepted belief so vivid it could easily have taken place in today’s world instead of four centuries ago. Galileo’s was an exciting mind in an era of discovery and tumult, rendered distinctively in Riggenbach’s narration.”

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