The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus

The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus

Part biography of a book, part scientific exploration, part bibliographic detective story, The Book Nobody Read recolors the history of cosmology and offers a new appreciation of the enduring power of an extraordinary book and its ideas. Prodded by Arthur Koestlerâ€™s claim that when it was first published nobody read Copernicusâ€™s De revolutionibusâ€”in which Copernicus first suggested that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universeâ€”renowned astro-historian Owen Gingerich embarked on a three-decade-long quest to see in person all 600 extant copies of the first and second editions of De revolutionibus, including those owned and annotated by Galileo and Kepler. Tracing the ownership of individual copies through the hands of saints, heretics, scalawags, and bibliomaniacs, Gingerich proves conclusivelyâ€”four and a half centuries after its publicationâ€”that De revolutionibus was as inspirational as it was revolutionary.
Country USA
Manufacturer Penguin Books
Binding Paperback
ReleaseDate 2005-02-22
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780143034766

The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus