The paperback version of this book is only available in the used section on Amazon. It tells the story of Galileo's life, his discoveries, and his often troubled relationship with the Catholic Church. It is a fascinating insight into how science was conducted and controlled in Italy around the turn of the 17th century. I got a bit lost with who was who in the end. My one quibble is near the beginning, when Reston talks about Neil Armstrong demonstrating the truth of one of Galileo's ideas by dropping a hammer and a feather on the Moon. It takes about 5 seconds on Google to confirm that this demonstration was actually carried out by Dave Scott, one of the Apollo 15 astronauts. This lack of accuracy with something that is so easy to check makes me wonder about the accuracy of the rest of the book. Some of the descriptions of what happened are also almost too realistic - this makes the book more interesting to read, but I do wonder how much is obtained from letters or accounts of the time, and how much was made up to add depth because it could have happened that way. If you are thinking of getting this, I would also read reviews (on Amazon or elsewhere) of other biographies of Galileo, and use those to choose.