A More Perfect Heaven by Dava Sobel

As with her previous two books "Longitude" and "Galileo's Daughter", Dava Sobel draws heavily on primary sources for her latest book, A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos.

During the 1530s, rumors of a potentially revolutionary theory of how the heavens worked emanating from a small city in Poland began to spread throughout Europe. The architect of this theory was a Polish cleric named Nicolaus Copernicus. In around 1514 Copernicus had written and hand-copied an initial outline of his heliocentric theory, in which he placed the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of our universe, with the planets, including the Earth, revolving about it. Titled his Commentariolus, it circulated among a very few astronomers. Over the next two decades Copernicus expanded his theory through hundreds of sightings, leading to a secretive manuscript whose existence tantalized mathematicians and scientists all over the world.

With lengthy quotes from personal letters and contemporary records, Sobel paints a picture in words of the life and times of a man whose work literally produced a revolution.