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Title details for A More Perfect Heaven by Dava Sobel - Available

A More Perfect Heaven

How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos

by Dava Sobel
Suzanne Toren
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
With the enthralling style that made Longitude and Galileo's Daughter international best-sellers, Dava Sobel paints an unforgettable portrait of the Copernican Revolution. Encouraged by his German protege, Polish cleric Nicolaus Copernicus published his heliocentric model of the universe, tantalizing 16th-century mathematicians and scientists-and triggering a groundswell of opposition.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 1, 2011

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781464005428
      • File size: 212823 KB
      • Duration: 07:23:22

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Copernicus's story is told in two parts: one, an account of his personal life, his roles in the Church and society, and his scientific work; the other, a play about his encounter with a young mathematician and the release of his astronomical theories. Suzanne Toren reads the history in a strong, clear, expressive voice, intelligently and with varied, natural-sounding changes in tone and emphasis. What's unnatural are the unnecessary pauses between some sentences, even between some words. The text is sometimes dry but not difficult; it doesn't need slowing down. The play is literate and the voice acting accomplished, especially that of George Guidall as Copernicus, and it moves along (including Toren's reading of stage directions), unhindered by pauses. The production has many strengths; its weaknesses could easily have been avoided. W.M. (c) AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 25, 2011
      Sobel, author of the bestselling Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, brings something different to the bulging Copernicus canon. She wants to know why Nicolaus Copernicus (1473â1543) waited till shortly before his death to publish the universe-expanding ideas that he had previously only quietly circulated among other scientists. Her conclusion: in the midst of Martin Luther's challenge to the Catholic Church, Copernicus, himself a Church canon, feared the Church's response to his radical notion that Earth revolved around the Sun. His thesis, of course, altered nothing less than the our view of our place in the cosmos. Daringly, Sobel embeds within a factual narrative a two-act play in which she imagines the relationship between the aging Copernicus and a young mathematician (and Lutheran) named Georg Joachim Rheticus, who Sobel says "convincedâ the great astronomer "to publish his crazy idea.â Delivered with her usual stylistic grace (and here, a touch of astrological whimsy), Sobel's gamble largely succeeds in bringing Copernicus and his intellectually and religiously tumultuous time alive. B&w illus., maps.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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