As America again prepares to experience solar totality, Baron transports us to a remarkable moment that brought a nation together to witness the wonders of the heavens.

With a wealth of choice details about their lives, Baron brilliantly presents these three pioneers, their ambitions, and their struggles. And James Craig Watson, a Michigan astronomer engaged in a nineteenth-century space race with a rival to discover the most asteroids, set out to prove the existence of a planet between Mercury and the sun. Meanwhile, the redoubtable astronomy professor Maria Mitchell launched an all-female eclipse expedition as part of her career-long quest to prove women had a place in the sciences. He hoped to use the eclipse to test a new invention, designed to measure tiny increments of heat from stars to determine their distance from Earth. As part of Metcalf Institute's 2017 Annual Public Lecture Series, David Baron, author and former health and science editor for PRI's The. Although showered (at times besieged) with attention after his recent invention of the phonograph, he was still striving to prove his scientific ability. One of them was a young inventor named Thomas Alva Edison.

American Eclipse vividly traces the journeys of three larger-than-life figures intent on making their mark during less than three minutes on that gusty July day. An avid eclipse chaser, David has crossed the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia to stand in the moon’s shadow and witness nature’s grandest spectacle: a total eclipse of the sun.Much was at stake when the American West experienced a total solar eclipse in 1878, as that rare event came while the nation was striving to shed its reputation as a scientific backwater. His 2003 book, The Beast in the Garden, received the Colorado Book Award.ĭavid’s book, American Eclipse (2017), arose from his own eccentric passion. David’s written work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Outside, Lonely Planet, and Reader’s Digest. duPont Award from Columbia University, the National Academies Communications Award, and, on three occasions, the annual journalism prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. These include the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club of America, the Alfred I. In the course of his reporting, David has visited every continent and earned some of the top honors in journalism. He has worked as a science correspondent for NPR and Boston’s WBUR, and as health and science editor for the PRI/BBC program The World. David Baron is a journalist, author, and broadcaster who has spent his thirty-year career largely in public radio.

American eclipse baron