Inspired by a long fascination with Galileo and by the remarkable surviving letters of his daughter, a cloistered nun, Dava Sobel has written a biography unlike any other of the man Albert Einstein called the father of modern physics -- indeed of modern science altogether. In doing so, she also presents a stunning portrait of a person hitherto lost to history, described by her father as a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me.