The poetry and passion of science

As astronauts and scientists explore deeper into space and introduce the possibility of landing on Mars, it is easy to forget when man pondered how the earth moved. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the scientist whose discoveries about the heavens caused accusations of heresy, is revered in a unique new biography by Dava Sobel, author of Longitude. This book is not only a biography of Galileo, but that of his daughter, and attempts successfully to complete the picture of the scientist as a religious and family-oriented man.

Of all of Galileo’s children, his daughter, Maria Celeste, mirrored his own brilliance, which is evident in the detailed letters that for the first time have been translated into English. These letters, many of which were destroyed or lost, bring to life Galileo’s personality and conflicts. Maria Celeste was the product of Galileo’s illicit relationship with Marina Gamba of Venice. Because she was born out of wedlock, she was therefore unable to be married, and the convent became the natural place for her to find a home. She and Galileo, however, never lost contact. She sewed his collars, made him candied citrons, and offered advice on his latest projects. Somehow, Maria Celeste found a compromise between her role as nun and as the greatest supporter of the man whom many deemed the Catholic church’s greatest enemy.

The first man to declare that the earth was not the center of the universe, Galileo would forever battle others and himself about the Heavens he revered as a good Catholic and the heavens he revealed through his telescope. The hardship and ridicule Galileo faced may cause readers to reflect on scientific findings today that many believe to be against the principles allowed by nature and religion. Bringing to life the entire era, Sobel shows us the importance of Galileo’s patrons, the Medici family. She also writes about the hardships of that time, including the bubonic plague and the Thirty Years’ War.

Galileo’s Daughter, a biography unlike any other written of Galileo, could serve as an invaluable text for a western civilization course or for anyone interested in knowing more about the world around them. After all, Galileo’s history is also our history.

Charlotte Pence is an English professor at Belmont University in Nashville.

Dwight David Eisenhower is a biographer’s dream and nightmare. Few men in history have had so much of their lives as part of the public record; from the time he first accepted his appointment at West Point until his final moments at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., his every move was noted.

But who was Dwight David Eisenhower? As a child of the ’60s, I knew him only as a bald-headed former president, and later on, as a World War II general in a high school history text. If you’re not a student of history, you probably don’t know much more than that.

Yet, as Perret shows us, Eisenhower’s was a life well led; more than almost anyone else of his generation, Ike realized his fullest potential from humble beginnings, and he took himself far beyond his own personal limitations. He was a leader of great armies, but not a tactical genius himself. He was a genius at logistics and at motivating people to do the things they did best. The juggling act that he performed during WWII between the egos of Patton, Montgomery, and Bradley is astonishing.

With its wealth of detail, Eisenhower almost inevitably invites conflicts of interpretation. For example, Ike’s father was a dark, obsessive man whose behavior obviously affected his son. Perret tells us over and over of Eisenhower’s emotional distance from those that loved him, but he never directly makes the connection between this and how the father treated the son.

Acknowledging all of her marriages, her name was Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette Gauthier-Villars de Jouvenel Goudeket. The world knew her simply as Colette, the surname of her father, who, though aspiring to be a writer, exerted less influence on her than any of the other men whose names she took. Most influential of all was her Christian namesake, her mother, Sido, and through much of Colette’s voluminous autobiographical writing it is that figure who casts the longest, most inexorable shadow. One of the many triumphs of Judith Thurman’s sumptuous new biography is her essential portrait of maman Colette, who believed in her daughter’s talents and her instincts but never gave up trying to subdue her. That emotional tug of war affected Colette permanently. In her early relationships with men, Colette sought domination and mastery. Later, after a five-year lesbian relationship and a second marriage, she turned the tables. She didn’t become a mother herself until age 40, and then she purposefully withheld affection from her only child, a daughter. Only when she married the third time, at 62, did she seem to find balance in a romantic alliance. The difficulty of achieving such equilibrium in love affairs was, of course, her great narrative theme. Thurman gives us all the love affairs (including one with her stepson, who was 16 to her 47) and all the novels, the fleeting sweetness and the lingering tristesse. No paradoxes or ambivalences escape her. As a writer, Colette was a psychological realist with an occasional sentimental streak.

Admired by writers as diverse as Cocteau and Mauriac, Colette is arguably the finest French writer of her sex in the 20th century. Her first novel appeared under her first husband’s pseudonym in 1900, and she was still writing shortly before her death, at age 81, in 1954.

Besides the signature novels Cheri, The Vagabond, Gigi she wrote about almost everything except politics and religion, which bored her. Though intensely independent, especially when it came to money, she had no real interest in feminism. As Thurman says, There was not an idea that could carry Colette away, or a sensation that couldn’t. More than anything, she wanted to be her own creation. A village girl from Burgundy who came to galvanize tout Paris, she made her life her writing, which is never entirely free of its central character: Colette. Thurman has put all her vitality back on the page, and vitality is what Colette is all about.

Samuel Clemens was rarely impressed with other people of note. But after meeting Helen Keller, he considered her to be the most remarkable woman he had ever met. She was both blind and deaf yet she was familiar with his life and his writing. Her behavior charmed and amazed him. Clemens was not alone. In her own time as well as the present, Helen Keller has been a foremost example of a severely disabled person who has overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles to live a life of significant achievement. She has been an inspiration to millions of people all over the world.

Many have learned about her early life from the memoir she wrote in her early 20s, the classic The Story of My Life, originally published in 1903 and still in print. Also informative is William Gibson’s play The Miracle Worker, which dramatizes the unique early collaboration between Helen and her teacher, Annie Sullivan. To appreciate the enormity and depth of her achievements, however, it is best to comprehend her entire life.

Dorothy Herrmann, author of acclaimed biographies of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and S.J. Perelman, explores these achievements in detail in her new biography, Helen Keller: A Life. Herrmann, drawing on the extensive Helen Keller archives and many other sources, brings to life the complex young woman whose life was changed forever by an inexperienced yet brilliant teacher. As Alexander Graham Bell, who was one of Helen’s best friends, put it, It is . . . a question of instruction we have to consider and not a case of supernatural acquirement. Herrmann helps us to appreciate the unusual bond that developed between the two quite different women. As [Annie] would . . . confess to a startled biographer, she and the adult Helen had such fundamentally different conceptions of life that they would have loathed one another had they met under ordinary circumstances. Yet they depended on each other until Annie died in 1936, with Helen holding her hand. Their many achievements and activities included Helen’s cum laude Bachelor of Arts degree from Radcliffe, books and lectures, vaudeville, movies, and many efforts on behalf of the deaf and blind throughout the world.

Helen came to accept religious and political beliefs quite different from those of her family and friends. Through John Hitz, Alexander Graham Bell’s secretary, she learned of the well-known 18th-century scientist, philosopher, and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. Helen became a devout Swedenborgian, finding comfort and peace in the beliefs of a man that Annie, who was agnostic, thought was a scientific genius who had descended into madness. Helen was especially attracted to the faith’s belief in immortality. Herrmann points out that Helen felt sadness and rage about her limitations. These negative emotions, which she never permitted herself to express publicly, fearing that people would ignore or feel pity or disgust for her if she expressed hopelessness or anger, were channeled into her radical politics and activism. Helen was long a member of the Socialist Party. In part, Helen’s leftist politics sprang from her continuing hunger to feel connected to the masses of people with whom she had little personal contact but with whom she felt a common bond. Herrmann does not shy away from discussing the various controversies that erupted from time to time about Helen and those around her. Even late in her life, the author writes, As she had her entire life, the luminous Helen inspired intrigues and power struggles, as her acquaintances and advisers fought with one another to gain possession of her. This enlightening and inspiring work deserves a large readership.

Anyone who has read Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita has probably wondered what Mrs. Nabokov thought about her husband’s literary preoccupation with pedophilia. Stacy Schiff writes that Vera Nabokov was actually responsible for Lolita, in one respect at least: she saved the manuscript from the fire into which Nabokov was determined to throw it. Schiff writes that Lolita‘s survival "is testimony to Vera’s ability to — as her husband had it — keep grim common sense from the door, shoot it dead when it approached. She feared that the memory of the unfinished work would haunt him forever."

This episode characterizes the Nabokovs’ marriage, which Schiff explores and explicates in Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov). Their lives were entwined to the point that even Nabokov’s authorship was not entirely his own. Schiff’s biography follows this inextricability even in its subtitle: "Portrait of a Marriage." Thickly footnoted, illustrated with a wide variety of photographs, and written with an eye toward Nabokov’s writing as well as his wife, Schiff’s book paints a comprehensive picture of one of literature’s more complex couples. She employs interviews with their son, grocery lists, diaries, and correspondence in her work to illustrate the extent of the Nabokovs’ impact on one another. Their inseparability was not merely romantic; as Schiff writes, "The man who spoke so often of his own isolation was one of the most accompanied loners of all time." Schiff notes that the Nabokovs’ unique marriage did provide some confusion: "It was no wonder that Vera appeared to have some trouble discerning where she ended and her husband began . . . ‘I ask you to bear in mind that we have a poor mind for legal expressions,’ she contended." Ultimately, however, Schiff’s depiction reveals an unrivaled intertwining of personalities. As she writes of Nabokov, "For many years he had been a national treasure in search of a nation; Vera was a little bit the country in which he lived."

It is unfortunate that James R. Mellow passed away just as his biography of Walker Evans was near completion, because he will miss the joy readers will most certainly feel at its publication. (The final pages are by Hilton Kramer.) Mellow paints his portrait of Walker Evans with details gathered from a variety of primary sources, including interviews, diaries, letters, contact sheets, notes, reviews, and work logs. Through his account of Walker Evans as one of the most significant photographers of the 20th century, Mellow also has created a cultural history of an American era.

Walker Evans’s most famous photographs are probably those taken in 1935 and 1936, which begin with his work for the Resettlement Administration and continue through his project photographing tenant farmers in the South. Although these photographs provide incredible documents of Depression Era America, Evans bristled at the tendency of critics to call his work documentary. In fact, what makes Evans’s photographs extraordinary is that they transcend any particular time and place, revealing fundamental truths of human existence.

Mellow provides an unusual glimpse into an artistic elite in New York from the ’20s to the ’50s through Evans’s collaboration and correspondence with friends, including Lincoln Kirstein and James Agee. From his encounters with Hemingway to his lunches with Whittaker Chambers, Evans’s life manages to connect culturally significant figures from World War I to the Cold War.

Mellow discovers that Evans remained somewhat enigmatic, even to those close to him. As a result, the most intimate and revealing moments in the book are the letters exchanged between Evans and his first wife, Jane. These letters expose Evans as warm and loving, whimsical and humorous. The photographs included in Mellow’s book also enhance the portrait of Evans. In addition to some of Evans’s most famous photographs, some less celebrated photographs (the blind accordion player on the subway and portraits of Jane, for instance) make an appearance and are absolutely mesmerizing.

It’s a testament to James Mellow that at the end of the biography, the reader feels as though she has traveled and worked with Walker Evans. Mellow’s Walker Evans is a welcome refreshment in today’s desert of tell-all biographies. The biographer definitely will be missed.

Phoebe Lichty is a writer and photographer in New York City.

Fantastic journeys: backward and inward Anyone who has viewed the captivating and informative programs on the Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, or Animal Planet is familiar with their quality camera work, matchless beauty, and authoritative content. Now, these fast-growing cable networks have joined together in a new venture with Random House, Inc. to take readers on many more exciting journeys of discovery. This unique partnership will produce books based upon scheduled television specials as well as other projects.

The first two titles now ready for spring 1999 are Cleopatra’s Palace: In Search of a Legend, based on a March special hosted by The Discovery Channel, and Intimate Universe: The Human Body, an eight-part television series from The Learning Channel.

Cleopatra VII is the Egyptian queen with whom most people are familiar. The story of her love affairs with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony are legendary, as is her untimely death in 30 BC. Cleopatra’s Palace by Laura Foreman begins our first journey with the founding of Alexandria by Alexander the Great and traces the young queen’s ascent to the Egyptian throne amid treachery and betrayal. The recent discovery of her palace by underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio has succeeded in mapping the Royal Quarter of ancient Alexandria, now submerged beneath the Mediterranean by cataclysmic earthquakes. This is a lavishly illustrated volume with over 200 full-color photos and drawings. A blend of history, legend, and modern exploration which journeys back in time, it documents the challenge of underwater archaeology. Goddio’s expedition uncovers the sunken remains of Cleopatra’s palace and displays recently discovered artifacts in pages filled with maps and fine art depictions of the life of Egypt’s last pharaoh. The second journey is closer to home. Did you know that if the body’s network of blood vessels were placed end to end, they would stretch for 60,000 miles? Did you know that scientists estimate that it takes 200,000 frowns to make a brow line? Intimate Universe by Anthony Smith (Discovery Books, $35, 0679462511) has been published to coincide with The Learning Channel’s eight-part televised series airing in April and August. This expedition takes place in the least traveled part of the universe the human body and it promises to be (quite literally) the trip of a lifetime. Exploring each stage of our physical selves, the Intimate Universe takes us from birth to death. Even though we are closer to this hidden landscape, we are, for the most part, ignorant of the intricate processes that play out within ourselves each day. Smith documents the week-by-week account of the unfolding of a new life developing inside its mother, and answers questions we’ve all asked: how can a baby, a separate and genetically different human being, be created, but not rejected by a mother’s body? Why can a young child learn languages more easily than an adult? Why does the body break down in old age? How has our brain made us the most successful species on the planet? Supporting the author’s narrative are 150 full-color illustrations, computer-generated images, and state-of-the-art microphotography. Intimate Universe is a valuable addition to the family reference library and will take your family on one of the most intriguing journeys of their lives. Discovery Books has only begun to offer readers informative guides for the family bookshelves. In July, they will release the first four titles in a new series of nature handbooks that deliver the same acclaimed content of Discovery Channel programming. The series gives practical advice for learning about each subject firsthand and includes these titles: Birds, Night Sky, Rocks and Minerals, and Weather. Each book is organized into three sections: background information, how-to advice, and field identification guide. These handy, affordable guides contain more than 300 full-color photos and illustrations to increase your enjoyment of your continuing journey through life.

Pat Regel is a reviewer in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee.

In Dean Acheson’s 1969 Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his years in the State Department (1941-1953), Present at the Creation, he wrote, In a sense, the postwar years were a period of creation, for the ordering of which I shared with others some responsibility. Historian James Chace demonstrates in his outstanding biography, Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World, that as Under Secretary and then as Secretary of State, Acheson was the prime mover behind major U.S. foreign policy initiatives in this period when a new world was being created. Chace considers Acheson the most important figure in American foreign policy since John Quincy Adams, and his book meticulously details why this is so. As Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Acheson faced many challenges. He played a key role in clarifying the language of the Lend-Lease agreement between the U.S and Great Britain, led the State Department’s delegation to the Bretton Woods conference where the International Monetary and the World Bank were agreed on, skillfully crafted the Truman Doctrine, and began work on the studies that led to the proposal for a Marshall Plan to assist Europe economically. All of these endeavors required doing a super sales job on Congress.

During his tenure as Secretary of State, he pushed for the security pact which later became known as NATO. In 1950 he and the President decided to treat the North Korean aggression as a local war and thus established a Cold War precedent for fighting a limited war rather than a general war. Acheson backed Truman’s dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur for exceeding his authority during the Korean War. And Acheson was never more masterful than when he spent seven days before Senate committees defending administration policy in that matter. Decisions on China, the unification and/or division of Germany, how to assist Japan, and many other policy matters were made which shaped the way much of the world developed for decades. Acheson and State Department employees were attacked mercilessly during this period by Senator Joseph McCarthy and others for alleged disloyalty and losing China. The key to Acheson’s achievements and the administration’s was that, unlike some other presidents, President Truman did not want to run foreign policy from the White House. Instead, he wanted respect, consultation, and the right to make final decisions. Acheson understood this and never failed to provide him with the personal touches that Truman craved. Acheson was not and ideologue but an intensely pragmatic man, impatient with abstractions. Although he became strongly anti-Communist, he did not have a grand design. After leaving office, his advice was sought by other presidents, Kennedy, Johnson, and even Richard Nixon, who had been one of Acheson’s most vociferous critics.

Chace’s superb study helps to view the private person as well as the public figure, detailing Acheson’s early career as a law clerk and the influential relationships in his life, including those with friends and family. Acheson is absorbing reading about an extraordinary, if, at times, controversial, public servant who helped to chart the way through the uncertain foreign policy waters at a crucial point in our history. Roger Bishop is a monthly contributor to BookPage.

It’s about time that a biographer of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made a serious attempt at understanding Doyle’s spiritualist conversion from skeptic to ardent crusader. Daniel Stashower, who received the Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Detective and Crime Fiction Writing, does just this though he did not have access to the Conan Doyle papers, which have been sealed in litigation for decades. Nonetheless, he consulted an impressive list of primary and secondary sources on both sides of the Atlantic. That research and a seamless narrative raise Teller of Tales well above many biographies that are no more than repetitions of well-known facts.

Stashower covers many important facets of Conan Doyle’s life. He argues, however, that essential to understanding Conan Doyle is his relationship with Jean Leckie (his second wife) during first wife Louisa’s illness. Having met and fallen in love with Jean not long after Louisa’s contraction of tuberculosis, Conan Doyle remained committed to shielding Louisa from pain. During the dozen or more years of the relationship, there is no evidence that Louisa knew of the relationship. Conan Doyle was a man in turmoil, whose activity during this period was as much an escape from his personal troubles as a reflection of his natural energy. Stashower’s greatest strength is tracing Conan Doyle’s commitment to spiritualism, which is often thought to have originated during the First World War after the deaths of his son, brother, and nephews. Stashower clearly shows Conan Doyle had an interest in paranormal and psychic phenomenon early on. In 1881 (when he was 21), Conan Doyle attended spiritualism lectures, and by the mid-1880s was attending mesmerism and other mediumistic displays. By 1887 he publicly declared his conviction: After weighing the evidence, I could no more doubt the existence of the phenomena than I could doubt the existence of lions in Africa. Stashower succeeds with flying colors in his exploration of the origins of the crusade that occupied the author’s later life.

He is less successful, however, when it comes to identifying his sources. There are no footnotes to direct the reader to a specific source in the bibliography.

Conan Doyle was a fascinating, complex, and multifaceted man. For those unfamiliar with him, Teller of Tales is an excellent place to discover that Conan Doyle was much more than the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Bruce Southworth is a reviewer in St. Paul, Minnesota.