Galileo: Watcher of the Skies - Softcover

David Wootton is Anniversary Professor of History, University of York.

"In a quiverful of publications, David Wootton has made it his mission to help us view the Renaissance thought-world in new ways, and this elegant biography does not disappoint. The Galileo he portrays is no saint, either Catholic or secular, but is the more fascinating for revealing the great scientist's selfishness, anxiety and political ineptitude, together with all the intellectual blind alleys taken in struggles towards his eventual goal. Wootton vividly contrasts the religious and political claustrophobia of seventeenth-century Italy with the abstract beauty of the mathematics and geometry which so delighted his subject. This is an absorbing study worthy of the life-story it tells.”―Diarmaid MacCulloch (Diarmaid MacCulloch)

"Wootton’s Galileo is many things: private unbeliever, reluctant empiricist and impetuous thinker. This brilliant book traces Galileo’s difficult negotiations of academic jealousies, court politics and ecclesiastical scrutiny, allows us to imagine the excitement and danger of looking through a telescope in Venice, and gives fresh insights into the mind and the man as father and son. A remarkable achievement."—Justin Champion (Justin Champion)

"Wootton's biography has much to recommend it. It is engagingly written and offers fresh insights into Galileo's intellectual development."—James Hannam, Standpoint Magazine

(Standpoint Magazine)

"Wootton. . . argues persuasively in this well researched, intellectual biography that Galileo was a Copernican long before his discovery of the moons of Jupiter proved that not all heavenly bodies revolved around the Earth."—Manjit Kumar, Sunday Telegraph
(Telegraph)

"Urgent. . . will garner. . . immediate interest and controversy."—Literary Review
  (Literary Review)

"Wittily challenging... Wootton boldly presents his book as an intellectual biography which cannot be isolated from contemporary attitudes to tradition and innovation, and which cannot focus on Galileo's ideas without considering his personality and personal relations."—Claudio Vita-Finzi, Times Literary Supplement (Claudio Vita-Finzi Times Literary Supplement 2010-12-24)

"Wootton [is] a deeply erudite historian by trade and a passionate revisionist by temperament...Read Wooton to meet a Galileo who was always estranged froom vital aspects of his social and cultural world--and used that estrangement, as great intellectuals do, to fuel his intellectual progress."—Anthony Grafton, Bookforum (Anthony Grafton Bookforum)

"Fascinating reading. . . . With this highly adventurous portrayal of Galileo's inner world, Wootton assures himself a high rank among the most radical recent Galileo interpreters. . . . Undoubtedly Wootton makes an important contribution to Galileo scholarship."—John F. Haught, America (John F. Haught America)

"A deeply erudite historian by trade and a passionate revisionist by temperament. . . . Read Wootton to meet a Galileo who was always estranged from vital aspects of his social and cultural world-and used that estrangement, as a great intellectuals do, to fuel his intellectual progress."—Anthony Grafton, Bookforum (Anthony Grafton Bookforum)

"I heartily recommend [this book].... Wootton aims at an intellectual biography and the results are often magnificent, especially when it comes to explaining the science."—Jonathon Wright, Catholic Herald (Jonathon Wright Catholic Herald 2011-01-21)