Reenie's Reviews > Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

As far as popular science writing, or popular history of science writing (take your pick) goes, I've read better books. This is a book about a self-taught village clock-maker who created a whole new breed of amazingly precise chronometers, which enable the accurate measurement of longitude, and the fight he had with astronomers to get his solution recognised (and rewarded). High stakes (both in terms of the potential benefits to be had from being able to use longitude, and in terms of the reward value placed on finding a solution), but while the author keeps on reminding us that it's very important, and telling us that his struggles with the politics of the board who were supposed to award the reward were very severe, I generally felt underwhelmed by the story, or maybe the way it was being told and structured.

After starting off very dramatically, (at one point even blaming the problems of scurvy on the inability to find longitude), the early part of the story of John Harrison (the clock-maker) seemed pretty bland and lacking in tension. When tension did arrive later on (basically after he'd already solved the problem), everything got kind of rushed through - it is a very short book, and it might have been better with a little more time devoted to rounding out some of the ideas, so that diversions into a brief recap of Captain Cook's death, or the voyage of the Beagle actually felt like they belonged, rather than being shoehorned in for some broader appeal. All in all, I ended up feeling like Sobel had manufactured a bunch of tension and drama, but not actually delivered on filling in the colour and texture of it all.

It's not a bad book, but it itches for a rewrite for hacking and resorting and building into a better flow.