Galileo's Glassworks: The Telescope and the Mirror Book

Full of fun information about late 16th century Europe and interesting context for how the modern telescope exploded on the scene in 1608, once somebody finally hit on the idea of switching out a concave mirror for a lens in designing a magnifying device. Reeves gives a feel for how historical-legendary accounts of ancient magnifying and burning mirrors were slowly giving way to more practical philosophy of optics based on refraction, and how different kinds of information competed in an incredibly eclectic era. Most interesting to me was the suggestion that the Siderius Nuncius was conceived before the invention of the Dutch telescope as a modest star catalogue introducing (and dedicating) a few new fixed stars made visible using a lens and mirror combination. For the most part, Reeves' arguments are convincing and easy to follow, but the text would be a lot easier to read with footnotes rather than endnotes as a lot of the references in the text are very obscure.