Andrea Wulf's story of the chase is an enthralling, nail-biting thriller and will undoubtedly prove one of the non-fiction books of the year. Even if you fail to see the Transit, don't miss this wonderful book,

A fine example of scientific storytelling about astronomers of the Enlightenment observing the transit of Venus. Publishers got hot for science writing when Longitude by Dava Sobel took off unexpectedly as a long-term bestseller…Andrea Wulf’s story of how astronomers of the Enlightenment hoped to measure the distance from the Earth to the Sun by observing the transit of Venus internationally on June 6, 1761, and again on June 3, 1769, is another fine example of such scientific storytelling…From the original inspiration of Edmund Halley that led to the active co-operation of Captain Cook, Benjamin Franklin and even Catherine the Great, the enterprise is narrated with elegant expertise.

Historian Andrea Wulf’s Chasing Venus is beautifully paced, alternating between expe­ditions, with lush descriptions of the often arduous journeys involved.

Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens takes us first to the year 1761 and the phenomena that is a transit of Venus. It charts the story of a truly international effort; to not only observe the transit of 6 June 1761 and indeed its partner of 3 June 1769, but to present the real quest that was to finally determine the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The author weaves parallel stories involving the French and British expeditions, but makes sure that other delegations from Sweden, Germany, Italy and Russia are given a fair airing. Through this platform we meet the real characters. As political leaders try to prevent bloodshed on battlefields and carnage in capitals, the global scientific community, more appropriately philosophers and astronomers, contemplate their task in the dawn of enlightenment… [an] outstanding book! It's the book of the year so far – do not miss it!

[a] truly excellent book…Andrea Wulf tell[s] the rip-roaring tales of numerous expeditions that set off around the globe to observe the Venusian transit of 1761…[She] communicate[s] the verve and energy – not to mention the perilous nature – of the expeditions.

Replete with meticulous detail, delightful illustrations and a cast of very familiar names from world history, Chasing Venus is an eminently readable account of humanity’s effort to chart the heavens. At once an exhilarating adventure, a tale of personal obsession, a tragedy and a detailed history of astronomical endeavour, Wulf’s latest work is a fascinating read.

The result is a human story, and it’s worth reading as a rallying call to humanity’s quest to explore the universe simple for the sake of it.

Andrea Wulf’s immaculately researched book describes the endeavours of the early scientific community to observe the transit around the world…an absorbing…exciting yarn.

Chasing Venus is the entertaining tale of the expeditions that set off across the globe to use a transit of Venus to gain the first true measure of the size of the Solar System…[Wulf] write in a light, educational style that carries the story…Chasing Venus captures the spirit of adventure and the wonder at mankind’s new-found ability to understand the world around it…Chasing Venus is a pleasure to read from beginning to end.

[A] thrilling, stirring tale, very well told, of global cooperation, and how the passion for Enlightenment triumphed against enormous odds.

[A] fine scientific history, full of interesting nuggets.

[a] thrilling book…an absorbing, even exciting yarn.

Sweeping historical epic about a daring young woman forced to make a hard choice in Stalinist Russia

Excellent... the historical detail is strong. The characterisation is superb, with Sashenka being especially well drawn. With her unwanted beauty and charisma, her gentle nobility that transcends class or wealth and her earnest ideals which eventually cost her so much. Sashenka commands out total sympathy, and when she is forced apart from her children, the sadness is profound and hard to dispel. A powerful novel... with a heroine who lingers in the mind when the story is finished

Sashenka is grand in scale, rich in historical research, and yet never loses the flow of an addictive, racy, well-wrought plot. It combines a moving, satisfyingly just-neat-enough finale with a warning - that history has an awful habit of repeating itself

An epic novel... The suspense lasts until the final pages. There is no let-up. At the end of the book, you really feel that even though Sashenka is a fictional character, she has become one of the thousands of real people who haunt the Moscow archives that Montefiore knows so well

Nicholas Shakespeare has employed all his superb gifts as a writer to tell the picaresque tale of his aunt in wartime occupied France. Priscilla is a femme fatale worthy of fiction, and the author traces her tangled, troubled, romantic and often tragically unromantic experiences through one of the most dreadful periods of 20th century history

A thrilling story… an intimate family memoir, a story of survival and a quest for biographical truth

[An] extraordinary true story of the author's aunt. A life of dark secrets, glamour, adventure and adversity during wartime.

A tantalisingly original perspective of the Second World War…Shakespeare shines a moving, intriguing light on the moral quandaries faced by ordinary civilians

Priscilla is an unusual book, part biography, part family memoir, part detective story, but it reads like a novel and I found it impossible to put down. As an evocation of the period and the moral hypocrisy of the times, it could hardly be bettered (4 stars, Book of the Week)

The novelist and biographer relates the extraordinary wartime derring-doings of his glamorous aunt, whose hidden past he discovered when he stumbled across a box of her papers. Glamorous and morally ambiguous, she married a French aristocrat, escaped from a PoW camp and at the liberation of Paris, was having a relationship with a mysterious man called “Otto”. Woven into her life story is a wealth of detail about life in Occupied France. Obvious appeal for fans of Agent Zigzag, Antony Beevor and Sebastian Faulks but also Suite Française. I was enthralled by it

Assiduous archival research is blended with the flair and craft of an acclaimed novelist

A tender account of one woman's unpredictable, secretive and self-scarring wartime experiences... [Shakespeare is] a gifted novelist and biographer

An excellently researched, beautifully written and unflinching memoir

Gripping

The incredible story of the author's aunt, a young English woman in France during the Nazi occupation

Nicholas's research provides Priscilla with a full identity as a young, vulnerable woman whose heroism lay in being true to herself in terrifying times

As both a biographer and novelist, [Shakespeare] is admirably placed to tell such a curious but utterly compelling story

A story as haunting and improbable as any of the fictions of Modiano... Gripping

This is both a family memoir and meticulously researched historical account of the dangerous world of Nazi-occupied France... Shakespeare perfectly captures the perilous and precarious atmosphere, and provides insight into the complexity of women's lives at that time

A captivating travelogue.

A delightfully heady and beautifully written potpourri of a book.

A fascinating look at the debt we owe to Roman achievements

A fascination exploration

Highly readable but profoundly researched, The Trigger represents a bold exception to the deluge of First World War books devoted to mud, blood and poetry

a fascinating original portrait of a man and his country