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    The Sand-Reckoner: A Novel of Archimedes
    Unavailable
    The Sand-Reckoner: A Novel of Archimedes
    Unavailable
    The Sand-Reckoner: A Novel of Archimedes
    Ebook431 pages6 hours

    The Sand-Reckoner: A Novel of Archimedes

    By Gillian Bradshaw

    4.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The Sand-Reckoner from author Gillian Bradshaw is a historical account that reimagines the life of one of ancient Greek's greatest minds.

    The young scholar Archimedes has just had the best three years of his life at Ptolemy's Museum at Alexandria. To be able to talk and think all day, every day, sharing ideas and information with the world's greatest minds, is heaven to Archimedes. But heaven must be forsaken when he learns that his father is ailing, and his home city of Syracuse is at war with the Romans.

    Reluctant but resigned, Archimedes takes himself home to find a job building catapults as a royal engineer. Though Syracuse is no Alexandria, Archimedes also finds that life at home isn't as boring or confining as he originally thought. He finds fame and loss, love and war, wealth and betrayal-none of which affects him nearly as much as the divine beauty of mathematics.

    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 1, 2010
    ISBN9781429971164
    Unavailable
    The Sand-Reckoner: A Novel of Archimedes
    Author

    Gillian Bradshaw

    Gillian Bradshaw's father, an American Associated Press newsman, met her mother, a confidential secretary for the British embassy, in Rio de Janeiro. She was born in Washington DC in 1956, the second of four children. They didn't move around quite as much as one might expect after such a beginning: Washington was followed merely by Santiago, Chile, and two locations in Michigan. Gillian attended the University of Michigan, where she earned her BA in English and another in Classical Greek, and won the Hopwood Prize for fiction with her first novel, Hawk of May. She went on to get another degree at Newnham College, Cambridge University, England in Greek and Latin literature, and she sold her first novel while preparing for exams. She decided to stay in Cambridge another year to write another novel and think about what to do for a Real Job. However, while there, she discovered she could live on her income as a novelist and also met her husband, who was completing his doctorate in physics. Between books and children she never did get a Real Job, and she's been writing novels ever since. She and her husband now live in Coventry. They have four children and a dog.

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    Reviews for The Sand-Reckoner

    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this first reading of a Gillian Bradshaw book. Thought the characters were well drawn and the story well described.
    • 5/5
      Let me start by saying that I am NOT a math person. Especially not geometry. But this story of Archimedes (who figured out the magical ratio we call "pi", for instance) is one that I read over and over. The man was a genius, but Bradshaw, with her customary depth of research, makes him a warm, lovable character as well.Another winner from Gillian Bradshaw, who is in her element giving life to people who are long dead.
    • 4/5
      This was a light summer reading book. The sand reckoner is Archimedes, and he is home from Alexandria to help in the siege at Syracuse. He becomes famous as the catapult builder for the city, and also pursues a love affair with the sister of the King. His slave, Marcus, has a brother among the Romans besieging the city, and eventually this slave is in trouble for it. The book is supposedly about the time of the First Punic War. The Romans are attacking Syracuse, on Sicily, for the advantage it would give them over Carthage. The king of Syracuse is almost too good to be true in this novel, but the story was very skillfully handled.