karatedrummer's review
4.0
Folks not inclined towards mathematics will struggle with the meat of this book. My standardized test scores argue that I *am* mathematically inclined, and I still struggled with it. But it's a very good read, and I like how it places emphasis on Galileo as artist - never thought much about that side of him before, but it makes sense that it would inform his research and attitudes towards authority.
bill_desmedt's review
3.0
Immense in erudition, but the tone is grating throughout. Heilbron, perhaps on the model of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, aims at irony, but mostly succeeds in sounding jaundiced. One happy exception the comment on how perilious life in Pisa must have been back in the 1590s when philosophers were throwing chunks of wood and lead off the roofs and out of windows to test Aristotle's proposition that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones (p. 44).
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