![]() He starts at the height of the Gilded Age with the sorry state of American science, which lagged embarrassingly far behind its European peers. “American Eclipse” is a social story dressed in scientific garb, more This American Life than Scientific American. That’s but one memorable scene in David Baron’s “ American Eclipse,” the new historical account of “how an unfledged young nation came to embrace something much larger than itself - the enduring human quest for knowledge and truth.”īaron, who lives in Boulder, sets out to educate and entertain. After months of media hype and weeks of painstaking preparation, thousands of scientists, amateur astronomers and adventure seekers from across the globe descended on Colorado and Wyoming to witness the rare alignment of sun, moon and earth. It was Monday, July 29, 1878, and the Great American Eclipse – which sliced the nation from the Montana Territory down to the coast of Louisiana – had reached the Centennial State, barely two years old. They were witnessing what they had come for: a total eclipse of the sun. ![]() “Cheer after cheer echoed and re-echoed among the surrounding mountains,” noted a journalist. Onlookers gazed up to find that the sun had gone dark like a burned-out light bulb. From the northwest came what one picnicker called “an angry black cloud of inky blackness” that advanced with the ferocity of a hurricane, violently sweeping over the land like an onyx curtain.īefore anyone could blink, the blackness had engulfed the mountaintop. ![]() Then, at exactly 3:29 p.m., the cerulean sky grew dark. The hundreds of hikers who’d made the trek to Pikes Peak toasted with a feast of champagne that filled the valley below with drunken laughter. Overhead, a cloudless blue sky gave cause for celebration. It was a perfect summer afternoon when they arrived at the summit. ![]() Liveright“American Eclipse” recounts the Great American Eclipse of the late 19th century, a celestial phenomenon that inspired scientists, tourists and shadow-chasers across the world to descend on Colorado and Wyoming in July of 1878. ![]()
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