A Heavenly Book, Tomorrow

Dava Sobel talks about her new biography of Copernicus, A More Perfect Heaven, tomorrow, November 10, at 4:15pm in the Assembly Hall, Campus Center on the University at Albany uptown campus, and at 8pm in the same location.

Dava Sobel, bestselling science writer, is the author most recently of A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos (2011), the story of the reclusive Polish Catholic priest (1473-1543) whose scientific observations changed mankind’s view of the Universe. Sobel explains Copernicus’s discovery that the earth revolves around the sun, and his courageous defiance of received wisdom, religious tradition and ordinary “common sense.” She also chronicles the events of the “Copernican Revolution,” how his manuscripts circulated secretly among the great scientific personalities of Renaissance Europe, and how his work finally came to be published for a wider audience as the author lay on his deathbed.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Julia Keller called it, “A heavenly book…. a great story filled with fascinating characters, excruciating near-misses and the sudden splendor of the new discovery,” and said, “[T]his beautiful book, combining science and a sort of poetic awe, is emblematic of her work as a whole.” The Library Journal reviewer said, “Sobel has the knowledge and writerly grace to explain what Copernicus accomplished,” and called it, “A book on science and personality that should intrigue us all.”