Longitude… reads like a suspenseful yet scholarly novel. I am so glad i learnt of this little known struggle to find an instrument that could determine longitude at sea.

Sovel's writing is as close to flawless as it gets. It was written to be entertaining as well as informative. Entertaining with great historical insights and not over complicated.

Retired sailor who enjoyed the waters for 20 years. Great book with a great topic. The cover is especially not the artwork necessarily but the quality. This book is the story of that battle.

If you have a fondness for chronometers then this book is for you. The story is a tad sparse on details of these wonderful clocks. John harrison, a self-taught clockmaker who decided to solve the problem of determining longitude at sea by perfecting t...  Read More

Dava sobel's "longitude" tells the story of how the british royal astronomers tried to block the development of a lunar method of determining longitude. Sobel is the author of the best-selling novel "belinda" about the life of belinda sobel.

The download is unreadable. This book tells you this in sketchy terms, but it was insufficient. This author’s telling of it is a bit disjointed and repetitive.

The analysis of harrison's clocks is far more focused on the decorations of their faces than on his novel engineering. There's nothing about what advancements were made from h1 to h4. Seems like she repeats the shovell story nearly every chapter, alon...  Read More