Through rugged ways to the stars, Harlow Shapley (ISBN 9781124074719, Charles Scribner’s Sons)

This is the autobiography of Harlow Shapley, the man who discovered size of the milky way and the place of our sun in it. Shapley considered the discovery that our sun was not in the center of the milky way as his most important contribution to our world view because it was more or less the ultimate degradation of our importance in the creation of the universe, the next step after having abandoned geocentricism and heliocentrism before. The book is based on a transcription of a two day interview when he was already eighty years old. This origin is reflected in the writing style and probably because of this the book lacks a good story arc. Based on many anecdotes we get a view of who Harlow Shapley was and of the times in which he lived. Besides his important scientific contribution early on in his life while he was at Mount Wilson, what is truly amazing is the sheer number of activities he got involved in later on when he moved to Harvard to become director of the observatory there. Although the book covers the life of an important astronomer it is not a scientific biography or a history of astronomy book. Maybe the best classification is a human interest book about an important astronomer who also made his mark as a humanist. Probably only for a niche audience but you can hardly lose time reading it, you will get through it in a day or two.