Low Price Guarantee
We Take School POs
American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World
Contributor(s): Baron, David (Author)

View larger image

ISBN: 1631494554     ISBN-13: 9781631494550
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
OUR PRICE: $15.15  

Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions
Published: June 2018
* Out of Print *
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Science | Astronomy
- History | United States - 19th Century
- Science | History
Dewey: 523.780
Physical Information: 0.9" H x 5.4" W x 8.2" L (0.60 lbs) 352 pages
Themes:
- Chronological Period - 19th Century
Features: Price on Product
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

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.

Lauded as a "sweeping, compelling" (Wall Street Journal) work of science history, American Eclipse tells the story of the three tenacious and brilliant scientists who raced to Wyoming and Colorado to observe the rare event. Dedicating years of "exhaustive research to reconstruct a remarkable chapter of U.S. history" (Scientific American), award-winning writer David Baron brings to three-dimensional life these competitors--the planet-hunter James Craig Watson, pioneering astronomer Maria Mitchell, and the ambitious young inventor Thomas Edison--to thrillingly re-create the fierce jockeying of nineteenth-century American astronomy. With spellbinding accounts of train robberies and Indian skirmishes, the mythologized age of the Wild West comes alive as never before. An "enthralling" (Daniel Kevles) and magnificent portrayal of America's dawn as a scientific superpower, American Eclipse depicts a young nation that looked to the skies to reveal its towering ambition and expose its latent genius.

Contributor Bio(s): Baron, David: - David Baron, an award-winning journalist and author of The Beast in the Garden, 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.
 
Customer ReviewsSubmit your own review
 
To tell a friend about this book, you must Sign In First!