Longitude, by Dava Sobel

An attractive and unusual cover and rave reviews bely the rather sparse contents of this non-fiction account of the long hard road towards measuring longitude – the vital ingredient for safe navigation of the oceans. It has all the elements of a good tale – hard working hero, vindictive snobbish villain, a long battle after which good finally triumphs – and yet the whole is somehow less than the sum of its parts. For a slim volume there is a surprising amount of repetition and some of the science gets very abstruse, making it difficult to maintain interest in the story.