Longitude by Dava Sobel

I have had this book on my classroom bookshelf for the past four years. I have wanted to read it, I have even started to read it (a couple of times), but I never managed to make it very far. A day or so after reading In the Heart of the Sea, we had MAP testing and I needed something to keep myself busy while the kids were testing, so I grabbed this off the shelf.

A strange but wonderfully enjoyable mix of astronomy and history, politics and science. Reading about the struggle to accurately determine the earth's longitude helped clarify parts of Philbrick's book that I didn't even realize I hadn't understood.