I also enjoyed Longitude when I read it, but it's been described as "suffer[ing] however from a major flaw, it is a distortion of the real history it is claiming to relate."
Interesting, thanks for the comment. Unfortunately the post you linked is not about the book Longitude, and the blog the author links to for people who want to "discover more about what really took place" is a 404.
I'd like to see a breakdown of the facts vs. what Sobel wrote. I read the book because I'm a mechanical watch enthusiast, and I was not disappointed in any of the descriptions of the Harrison timepieces or what made them work. I plan to go see them next time I'm in London.
I still recommend the book, especially to watch enthusiasts.
The book is Richard Dunn & Rebekah Higgitt, Longitude: How Ships, clocks and stars helped solve the longitude problem, Collins and Royal Museums Greenwich, London 2014. It is from the people who were behind that 404ing Royal Observatory blog. At least some of that blog's posts are archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20150919110228/http://blogs.rmg....
The blog is still on the Royal Observatory site, but their site redesign makes it nearly impossible to find since they are merged with all their other blog posts and they didn't set up redirects. Here's that final post (the links to other blog posts are dead, but I've found most with a "site:" search with the post title): https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/behind-the-scenes/blog/so-lon...
I followed your link but it did not lead to a discussion of Longitude. It lead to a discussion that mentioned Longitude and had a link to a longer discussion, which however was dead for me. If you could fix that, I for one would be interested in more.
I have not read it, but judging by the synopsis on Goodreads, it seems to gloss over any developments during the Islamic Golden Age. Is this judgement accurate?
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/dava-sobel-tries-her...