In the year 1600, a poor German mathematics teacher traveled impatiently to Prague to work with Tycho Brahe, the leading astronomer of his day and Imperial Mathematician at the court of Emperor Rudolph II.  "I am convinced," announced the newcomer, "that Mars, alone, holds the key to the secret we are looking for.  Once we understand Mars, who knows what other secrets we can unlock." And then and there young Johannes Kepler declared war on a planet.

Great men, including Aristotle, Archimedes, and Copernicus, had puzzled over Mars before Kepler.  But he was the first to solve its mystery.  Based on his observations, Kepler formulated two of his three famous laws upon which so much of modern astronomy rests: that the path of a planet around the sun is an ellipse, with the sun at one focal point; and that a line drawn from the sun to a planet will sweep over equal areas in equal times.

A man of intense curiosity, Kepler delved into the unexplored science of optics, perfected Galileo's telescope, and discovered the relationship of interplanetary distance and time which inspired Newton's work on gravity.  "If I have seen further than most men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants," Newton wrote.  One of those giants was Johannes Kepler.  

Barbara Land's biography of a great astronomer illuminates an era through one man's quest for scientific truth.

From the dust jacket