Part one: To Florence: She who was so precious to you -- This grand book the universe -- Bright stars speak of your virtues -- To have the truth seen and recognized -- In the very face of the sun -- Observant executrix of God's commands -- Malice of my persecutors -- Conjecture here among shadows -- Part two: On Bellosguardo: How our father is favored -- To busy myself in your service -- What we require above all else -- Because of our zeal -- Through my memory of their eloquence -- Small and trifling body -- On the right path, by the grace of God -- Tempest of our many torments -- Part three: In Rome: While seeking to immortalize your fame -- Since the Lord chastises us with those whips -- Hope of having you always near -- That I should be begged to publish such a work -- Part four: In care of the Tuscan Embassy, Villa Medici, Rome: How anxiously I live, awaiting word from you -- In the chambers of the Holy Office of the Inquisition -- Vainglorious ambition, pure ignorance, and inadvertence -- Faith vested in the miraculous Madonna of Impruneta -- Judgment passed on your book and your person -- Part five: At Siena: Not knowing how to refuse him the keys -- Terrible destruction on the feast of San Lorenzo -- Recitation of the penitential psalms -- Book of life, or, a prophet accepted in his own land -- Part six: From Arcetri: My soul and its longing -- Until I have this from your lips -- As I struggle to understand -- Memory of the sweetnesses

"The son of a musician, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) tried at first to enter a monastery before engaging the skills that made him the foremost scientist of his day. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. Most sensationally, his telescopes allowed him to reveal a new reality in the heavens and to reinforce the astounding argument that the Earth moves around the Sun. For this belief, he was brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, accused of heresy, and forced to spend his last years under house arrest."--Jacket

"Of Galileo's three illegitimate children, the eldest best mirrored his own brilliance, industry, and sensibility, and by virtue of these qualities became his confidante. Born Virginia in 1600, she was thirteen when Galileo placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her loving support, which Galileo repaid in kind, proved to be her father's greatest source of strength throughout his most productive and tumultuous years. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from their original Italian and woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then."--Jacket

"Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. Moving between Galileo's grand public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during the pivotal era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was being overturned."--Jacket