The Earth Also Rises
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was one of the heroes of my youth. Anyone who can run rings around authority gets my vote, especially when that authority is cruel, oppressive, backward, and consistently stands in the way of progress. If I later learned that he did not battle the Inquisition quite as I had imagined, his heroism still strikes me as real. He had no way of knowing that the Church would be far more lenient with him than it was with…