American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World

<p>This epic story of a nineteenth-century celestial drama will enthrall readers, as the first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse in 99 years plunges America into darkness.</p> In the scorching summer of 1878, with the Gilded Age in its infancy, three tenacious and brilliant scientists raced to Wyoming and Colorado to observe a rare total solar eclipse. One sought to discover a new planet. Another -- an adventuresome female astronomer -- fought to prove that science was not anathema to femininity. And a young, megalomaniacal inventor, with the tabloid press fast on his heels, sought to test his scientific bona fides and light the world through his revelations. David Baron brings to three-dimensional life these three competitors -- James Craig Watson, Maria Mitchell, and Thomas Edison -- and thrillingly re-creates the fierce jockeying of nineteenth-century American astronomy. With spellbinding accounts of train robberies and Indian skirmishes, the mythologized age of the last days of the Wild West comes alive as never before. A 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. 8 pages of color photographs; 65 illustrations; map