A review by alundeberg
Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens by Andrea Wulf

4.0

If you're looking for a book about the actual science of how to measure the heavens, this isn't it. Wulf does a great a job of giving the reader just enough math to have the process make sense, but this narrative is about the coming together of scientists in the 18th century amid warring nations to gain knowledge of the universe and science. She tracks the various scientists and their often long, precarious routes to track Venus's trajectory across the sun. They faced great hardships in the name of science for very uncertain reward. Ultimately, this is a well-written adventure tale of those often unknown men who risked all to calculate the measurement of the universe.