The Book Nobody Read

About this book

1543 saw the publication of one of the most significant scientific works ever written: "De revolutionibus (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres)" in which Nicolaus Copernicus presented a radically different structure of the cosmos by placing the sun and not the earth at the centre of the universe.But did anyone take notice? - Harvard astrophysicist Owen Gingerich was intrigued by the bold claim made by Arthur Koestler in his bestselling "The Sleepwalkers" that sixteenth-century Europe paid little attention to the groundbreaking but dense masterpiece. Gingerich embarked on a thirty-year odyssey to examine every extant copy to prove Koestler wrong...Logging thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of miles Gingerich uncovered a treasure trove of material on the life of a book and the evolution of an idea. His quest led him to copies once owned by saints heretics and scallywags by musicians and movie stars; some easily accessible others almost lost to time politics and the black market.Part biography of a book and a man part bibliographic and bibliophilic quest Gingerichs "The Book Nobody Read" is an utterly captivating piece of writing a testament to the power both of books and the love of books.