Galileo's Telescope: A European Story

Often described in a linear way, the invention of the telescope is told in the book, thanks also to the publication of numerous unpublished letters and documents, as a much more complex story, where the protagonist is not only Galileo. With him, the protagonists are mathematicians, astronomers, philosophers and theologians such as Paolo Sarsi, Kepler and Cardinal Bellarmino, as well as craftsmen, men of the court, ambassadors, papal nuncios and sovereigns such as Rudolph II, Henry IV and James I, together with poets and artists such as John Donne and Jan Brueghel.