Indice: List of illustrations. Acknowledgements and about the author. Introduction: The magnetic revolution. Pt. 1. Before Gilbert's revolution: 1. Who was William Gilbert? 2. Navigating the magnetic Earth 3. The lost terrestrial world of Aristotle 4. Peregrinus and the discovery of magnetic poles and compasses 5. Imperial explorers and the rise of magnetic navigation 6. The common herd of philosophisers. Pt. 2. De magnete: Gilbert's new philosophy of the Earth: 7. William Gilbert's brave New World 8. The historical road to De magnete 9. Gilbert the experimenter 10. Any old iron? 11. The beautiful union of magnetic souls and bodies 12. Magnetic rotations and navigation: direction, variation and inclination 13. Gilbert, Copernicus and the giant lodestone 14. The dark secret of De magnete. Pt. 3. After the revolution: magnetic philosophers inherit the Earth: 15. Goodbye sailor! Gilbert's Earth attacked and defended 16. Humours unreconciled: magnetic war in Jacobean England 17. Kepler, Galileo and the magnetic Earth in motion 18. Enter the Jesuits: the end of magnetic cosmology 19. The longitude found and lost again. Conclusion: It's the end of the world as we know it. Further reading
Bennett, Jim 1947-2023. Recensione].