The Book Nobody Read
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? 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, Gingerich's The Book Nobody Read is an utterly captivating piece of writing, a testament to the power both of books and the love of books.