Heaven on Earth is an intimate examination of this scientific family—that of Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei. Fauber juxtaposes their scientific work with insight into their personal lives and political considerations, which shaped their pursuit of knowledge. Uniquely, he shows how their intergenerational collaboration was actually what made the scientific revolution possible.

The author also added in her classroom observations about children who are exposed to too much media:

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Muravchik does a good job of explaining that socialism is not a theory of property, or a theory of human development, or a spontaneous movement of the poor. It is the world's second oldest religion: the belief in man's ability to create heaven on earth, without and against God. It is as old as the Book of Genesis. The author emphasizes throughout the book to look inward and reflect through writing on a journal thoughts, ideas, and questions. Self-awareness is a noted quality a parent must develop.

The home should be set up to encourage imitation of adult activities. That is because adults are considered as templates of children on how it is to be human and whatever the child sees, will be copied. They just don’t imitate our “outer” gestures but also our “inner” ones. That is, how we move with purpose and conviction. For parents, this could be an onerous task because we might feel that we are imperfect human beings but the author assures us that: The suffering siant may be assaulted, but not vanquished; he may be troubled, but can never be conquered; he may lose his head, but he cannot lose his crown, which the righteous Lord hath prepared and laid up for him.....The Lord causes His goodness to pass before His people, and His face to shine upon His people in times of suffering.....for the praise of His own grace, and for the glory of His own name." (69)

Aesthetically, this is fantastic. The language sings—the book begs to be read aloud (and I frequently did so, interrupting whatever anyone around me was doing). You can feel the passion, the fervor throughout. A few paragraphs from different chapters illustrate this: A vivid narrative that connects the lives of four great astronomers as they discovered, refined, and popularized the first major scientific discovery of the modern era: that the Earth moves around the Sun. the movements seen on screen are often fast-paced and exaggerated, the subtlety of pausing to appreciate small wonders such as the rain falling outside the windows are not shown The only notable exception to this that's mentioned in the book is the kibbutzim in Israel, which seemed to be the most democratic and enthusiastically adopted of all. This is probably because it wasn't started by people who were actually a PART of the lower/middle classes. But even they fell prey to the third generation problem, because a bunch of moms didn't want their babies being raised by someone else. I liked my post about it last time more than anything I'd say this time, so let me just use it (the final paragraph is new):