Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

First Folio Edition. Original boards in green cloth with elaborate black and gold solar-system design. Housed in publisher's black slipcase. A pristine copy; buckram is bright and clean; internally unread. The book that changed the world. Presented in the definitive Stillman Drake translation, Galileo's Dialogue is a brilliant, witty, and dangerously provocative defense of the Copernican sun-centered universe. Written as a conversation between three characters-Salviati (the Copernican), Sagredo (the intelligent layman), and Simplicio (the Aristotelian)-the work manages to be both a rigorous scientific treatise and a masterpiece of Italian literature. Beautifully illustrated with historical astronomical diagrams and charts that clarify the celestial mechanics discussed in the text. .