The Illustrated Longitude

Rating:
Summary: Interesting History, But....
Review: The Illustrated Longitude has much going for it. Handsomely produced, lovely illustrations, an obscure but interesting topic, and written well in Sobel's engrossing prose. The book seems like a labor of love by an author who is fascinated with her subject, and she passes on some of that enthusiasm to the reader. Well done.

The book is about a problem that we scarcely think about today, in the age of GPS, but was life and death serious in the 18th century: how do you determine where the heck you are when sailing long stretches of open ocean? In other words, how can a ship determine its longitude? Sobel touches on many answers that people proferred, some quackish, some good ideas that were impractical, and one that finally worked well. She touches on many scientists and navigators, but most of the book focuses on John Harrison, a watchmaker who ultimately succeeded in solving the longitude problem.

Sobel faces a difficult task: she needs to elucidate the problem of finding longitude and why it was so difficult to do - but at the same time, not get too bogged down in technical details of astronomy or the mechanics of timepieces... that might be a too difficult for the average reader (like me) with little experience in clock engineering, and might result in some deadly dull prose. For the most part she does well walking this line. As history of science, it informs on the subject m,atter, even without acting as a detailed "how to make it work" text.

Where I think the book stumbles is that she tries to mold the quest to discover a longitude method into a grand melodrama, and it just doesn't work, for several reasons.

For one, the main "protagonist", Harrison, remains rather obscure. While interesting (he was self-taught, and went against the conventional wisdom of the time) not much info is revealed about him, and what is known shows... well, a guy who was rather dull. (Contrast this to another Sobel book, the fine "Galileo's Daughter", where the titular character and her scientist father both come very much to life.)

Her attempts to craft an "antagonist" for Harrison out of several government officials also falls flat. She seems to be aiming for more drama than actually was there. (Compare this to the figures from Deborah Cadbury's excellent book "Terrible Lizard", where the colorful Thomas Huxley humbles Richard Owen, who is revealed in the book to be a true dirtbag, especially in the way he ruins the sympathetic Gideon Mantell. No such personalities or intriguing clashes emerge in Longitude.)

Also, in a method uncomfortably reminiscent of (ick) reality TV, Sobel tries to sell the drama by virtue of the fact that a 20,000 pound prize (very serious money in the 18th century!) is offered for solving the Longitude problem. But by making the conflict of her story one about cash, it gets duller, in my opinion. I would be more intrigued by a conflict over science, to see whose ideas would prove better. Think on this: which do you find more intriguing - a medical researcher searching for the cause or cure of a mysterious disease; or a guy trying to get his HMO to pay the money they owe him for his treatment? Longitude focuses too much on the latter.

Moreover, it isn't exactly as though Harrison got screwed by the Longitude board. He received many government grants for his work, and upon meeting the challenges of the Longitude Prize, he was awarded half the prize, and later the rest. Sobel also falters somewhat in her presentation of the scientific method, oddly enough. When Harrison met the Longitude Prize's requirements, the government only gave him half the prize, demanding that his newly efficient timekeeper be replicated and that it pass additional tests before he receive the full prize. Yes, in one sense this was a ripoff, as those were not part of the contest's requirements, but this was a case where the government was practicing good science. An experiment or technology that can't be replicated would be useless. By playing these demands as the grave injustice that Harrison had to overcome, Sobel comes too close to glorifying a poor execution of the scientific method.

I give this book an extra star for the excellent illustrations. Photos of Harrison's fascinating timepieces, historical portraits, astronomy diagrams, it's all beautifully done, worthy of a fine coffee table book. The story is an interesting one that is well told, I just feel it would have been better if it weren't oversold, and Sobel hadn't attempted to build up melodrama where little existed.

Rating:
Summary: Could have been much better
Review: You just can't put some irrelevent illustrations and a hard back on an already excellent book and expect it to get better.
I purchased this version for my daughter as a gift and was very disapoited to find that it didn't really illustarte any thing further than the orginal. In fact, if any thing, this book is worse, since it is hard to carry and read. Better save US$10 and buy the paper back. However The "illustrations", (photos and reproduction of old drawings), are all excellent, as far as printing quality is concerned and will do a wonderfull job of adorning your coffee table for the visitors.