Over the years, I’ve heard from so many people who burden their summer — or their children’s summer — with deadly reading projects. They begin from some puritanical impulse or misdirected ambition and then drag themselves through the steamy months with an enervating sense of duty.
Enough!
This is not a test. Your summer reading will not be on the exam. You don’t have to improve yourself — or impress anybody. You need not succumb to the tyranny of your book club or the predictability of the bestseller list.
Usually, when scientists test a theory, they get everything nicely under control. But in 1919, as the First World War was drawing down, the British astronomer and physicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington did not have that luxury. He was going to test Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity at a solar eclipse thousands of miles from the nearest precision laboratory. This was not easy. ‘In journeying to observe a total eclipse of the Sun, the astronomer quits the usually staid course of his work and indulges in a heavy gamble with fortune,’ wrote the young Eddington. For him, treacherous weather and war made true control even more difficult to attain.
In fact, the novel is overstuffed; you can sometimes feel the research bursting its stitches. Her characters also too often become clumsy mouthpieces for theories or contentious “takes” on a controversial topic. But the breezy way she handles the sheer number of complex ideas is also frequently dazzling, and ultimately means that this enjoyably audacious novel has no problem coming to life.
At first glance, it seems an odd pairing of topics: In what way could Dante, the 14th-century poet, be linked with astronomy? But to my delight Tracy Daugherty — essayist, novelist, and biographer of Joseph Heller and Joan Didion — has uncovered a small gem within the history of astronomy. Along the way, readers become acquainted with the British romantics, Australian aboriginal astronomy, the folklore of India, and brief lessons on the sun’s energy production and Einsteinian physics. “Dante and the Early Astronomer” is an eclectic and engaging look at the Victorian and Edwardian ages, from the perspective of minor-league astronomers working in the hinterlands.