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Staff Pick
A fascinating look into the total solar eclipse of 1878 and the lives of three scientists who traveled to witness the rare event. Baron paints this moment in American history in full color, complete with train robberies, rival astronomers, and Thomas Edison and his newest invention, the tasimeter. Recommended By Mary Jo S., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Richly illustrated and meticulously researched, American Eclipse ultimately depicts a young nation that looked to the skies to reveal its towering ambition and expose its latent genius.
On a scorching July afternoon in 1878, at the dawn of the Gilded Age, the moon’s shadow descended on the American West, darkening skies from Montana Territory to Texas. This rare celestial event — a total solar eclipse — offered a priceless opportunity to solve some of the solar system’s most enduring riddles, and it prompted a clutch of enterprising scientists to brave the wild frontier in a grueling race to the Rocky Mountains. Acclaimed science journalist David Baron, long fascinated by eclipses, re-creates this epic tale of ambition, failure, and glory in a narrative that reveals as much about the historical trajectory of a striving young nation as it does about those scant three minutes when the blue sky blackened and stars appeared in mid-afternoon.
In vibrant historical detail, American Eclipse animates the fierce jockeying that came to dominate late nineteenth-century American astronomy, bringing to life the challenges faced by three of the most determined eclipse chasers who participated in this adventure. James Craig Watson, virtually forgotten in the twenty-first century, was in his day a renowned asteroid hunter who fantasized about becoming a Gilded Age Galileo. Hauling a telescope, a star chart, and his long-suffering wife out west, Watson believed that he would discover Vulcan, a hypothesized "intra-Mercurial" planet hidden in the sun’s brilliance. No less determined was Vassar astronomer Maria Mitchell, who — in an era when women’s education came under fierce attack — fought to demonstrate that science and higher learning were not anathema to femininity. Despite obstacles erected by the male-dominated astronomical community, an indifferent government, and careless porters, Mitchell courageously charged west with a contingent of female students intent on observing the transcendent phenomenon for themselves. Finally, Thomas Edison — a young inventor and irrepressible showman — braved the wilderness to prove himself to the scientific community. Armed with his newest invention, the tasimeter, and pursued at each stop by throngs of reporters, Edison sought to leverage the eclipse to cement his place in history. What he learned on the frontier, in fact, would help him illuminate the world.
With memorable accounts of train robberies and Indian skirmishes, David Baron’s page-turning drama refracts nineteenth-century science through the mythologized age of the Wild West, revealing a history no less fierce and fantastical.
Review
"A wonderful book, bringing lessons from the past to the present. In exceptionally clear and interesting prose, Baron brings 19th-century personalities to life, showing how men and, unusually, an astronomy-professor woman of that time observed the total solar eclipse of 1878. His book carries across the spirit of eclipse watching that millions of Americans can gain by observing the 2017 total eclipse." Jay Pasachoff, Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College
Review
"Baron, an award-winning journalist, uses exhaustive research to reconstruct a remarkable chapter of U.S. history. He tells the surprising story of how the eclipse spurred three icons of the 19th century — inventor Thomas Edison, planet hunter James Craig Watson, and astronomer and women's-rights crusader Maria Mitchell — to trek into the wild Western frontier to observe it." Lee Billings, Scientific American
Review
"Total eclipses of the Sun are among the most wondrous spectacles in the heavens. With American Eclipse, David Baron beautifully captures the awe, the magic, and the mystery of one particular eclipse, an event in 1878 that spurred on America to embrace the sciences. A superb contribution to the history of astronomy." Marcia Bartusiak, author of The Day We Found the Universe, Black Hole, and Einstein's Unfinished Symphony
Review
"David Baron contracted an incurable case of 'umbraphilia' twenty years ago in Aruba. Fortunately for readers, Baron’s fever stokes his account of the first great American eclipse, in 1878, while priming us for the next one — and the next, and the next." Dava Sobel, author of The Glass Universe
About the Author
David Baron, an award-winning journalist, is a former science correspondent for NPR and former science editor for the public radio program The World. An incurable umbraphile whose passion for chasing eclipses began in 1998, he lives in Boulder, Colorado.
David Baron on PowellsBooks.Blog
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