>> i'm my name is cefl and and i'm with tattered cover and i'm so glad to welcome you this evening and we are excited to welcome david baren the author

of "american eclipse" which is why you are sitting here. this is a really interesting book where the wild west meets the stars essentially and i was reading about it and about the time and eclipse and i thought how interesting 100 years ago, 99 years ago was the last time we had a total eclipse. it went from coast-to-coast and it was right over colorado but if you think about colorado 100 years ago. it was a different place. it was the wild west you know and it was miners and cowboys and all that and you think who would come to colorado? they wanted to come because you could stand in the mountains and see the eclipse better than anywhere else. all of a sudden colorado took on a new place in science and it was really the beginning of tourism in colorado and there was a lot of incredible tourism.

it all started with lots of light and eclipses when we first began to record demos like into the world. i was reading at 11:33 king henry the first died in right after the total eclipse they thought it was the end of their era and we have another one. if you buy a book tonight you get your very own american eclipse glasses so you can safely view the eclipse that's going to happen not right over colorado this time but over the west on august, august 21. jackson hole wyoming where he will be. he's an award-winning journalist

and author and broadcaster so please welcome david baren. [applause] >> thank you for coming out on this rainy night. i have been on a book tour now for over a month and i am just thrilled to be here at tattered cover. this is a row highlight and active in colorado in boulder and as you all know this is a real gem in colorado, tattered cover bookstore so i'm thrilled to be here. i will talk about an eclipse in history but as evelyn said and i assume you all know there's no eclipse coming up in our near future. august 21, for the first time in 99 years a total solar eclipse will cross the country coast-to-coast. this is a big deal. how many of you have plans to go and see the total eclipse? hopefully by the end of this evening you will all have plans. of those who have been planning how many of you have been

planning to see this for at least a month? eight-year? a decade? how many years have you been looking forward to it? >> about six. >> six years, not six decades. not that this is a competition but i've i have been planning for this eclipse for 19 years. indeed i have been planning this book for 19 years so it's kind of surreal to see an actual book. i wanted to start out and we have to tell you about it but i first want to talk about how i came to write the book and as i say i first got the idea of 19 years ago but the story actually goes back a little farther than that. let's go back to 1994. back in the 90s i was a science correspondent for npr and in may of 1994 the partial solar eclipse was set to cross

the country so i did a story about this. i interviewed an astronomer. he explained what was going to happen and how to view it but he emphasized as interesting as the partial solar eclipse is, a total solar eclipse is completely different. in a total eclipse for two or three minutes usually the moon completely obscures the face of the sun creating what he described as the most awe-inspiring spectacle of and all of nature. this astronomer from williams college gave me a piece of advice that i will always remember. he turned to me and he said before you die, you owe it to yourself to experience a total solar eclipse. it was kind of a shocking thing for someone to say that i didn't know very well. but he got my attention so i did some research. the first thing to know about a

total eclipse is if you wait for one to come to you you are going to be waiting a long time. any given point on earth experiences a total eclipse about once every 400 years but if you are willing to travel you don't have to wait that long. i found out a few years later in 1998 a total eclipse was going to cross the caribbean. a total eclipse is visible only in a narrow path, about 100 miles wide. called the path of totality and that's where the shadow falls and in february of 1998 the path of totality was going to cross it. i thought it sounded like a good trip anyway so i headed south to enjoy the sun and when the sun briefly went away. i was out behind the hyatt regency on the each. there were lots of people out there waiting for the show to begin and we were wearing it

puts glasses like the one's evelyn showed you with really dark lenses that enables us to look at the sun safely. during the partial eclipse as the move makes its way to the sun first of like the sun had a notch carved in its edge in that notch grew larger and larger and soon the sun became a crescent and it was all very interesting but i wouldn't say it was spectacular. if i had not known what was going on overhead i wouldn't have noticed anything unusual. 10 minutes before the airport will eclipse was set to begin weird thing started to happen. we were on this tropical beach and the cool wind kicks up and then daylight and colors look odd and shadows are very strange they had come bizarrely sharp like someone had turned up the contrast on the tv and then i

looked offshore and i noticed running lights on boats. clearly it was getting dark although i hadn't realized it. soon it was obvious it was getting dark and then although sudden -- without a cheer erupted from the each and i took off my eclipse glasses because now none only now during the total eclipse it is safe to look at the sun with the naked eye. i looked upward and i was just dumbfounded. consider at this point i was in my 30s. i had lived on earth long enough to know what this guy looks like i had seen blue skies and gray skies and starry skies, angry skies and pink skies at sunrise but here was this guy i had never seen.

first there was the color and up above it was a kristal grey like twilight but on the horizon it was orange like the sunset, 360 degrees. up above in the twilight bright stars and planets and come out. there was jupiter and there was mercury and there was venus and the planets were all aligned and their along that line was this thing, this glorious bewildering thing. it looked like it was woven from silvery thread and it just hung out there and shimmered. that was the sons outer atmosphere the solar corona and if you have ever seen a picture it doesn't do it justice. it is not simply a ring or halo around the sun. it's finally textured.

it's made out of strands of silk and although it looked nothing like her son of course i knew that was the sun. there was the sun and there were the planets and i could see how the planets revolve around the sun. i was looking back at creation and for the first time in my life i felt viscerally connected to the universe. i stood there in what i can only describe as a state of nirvana for all of 174 seconds, less than three minutes. all of a sudden it was over at the sun burst out, the blue sky returned and the stars in and the planets in the corona were gone. everything had turned to normal but i hate change. that's how i became an eclipse chaser so this is now how i

spend my time and hard-earned money. every couple of years i had off to whether or to experience another couple minutes of eclipse. back in 1998 on that beach in aruba is a science writer i thought, i'm going to write a book about eclipse but i knew the time to come out with the book would be in the summer because this is when americans will actually care about an eclipse. i put the project on hold and went back to radio, wrote another book actually and six years ago i started to get serious. i thought if i'm going to come out with a lips book in 2069 better figure out where it's going to be. one should just write everything you need to know about eclipses or how to chase eclipses in 2017 although those are fine books

that i like to tell stories and i wanted to find a really good eclipse story some thing that was entertaining and enlightening and would survive the narrative for me to talk about eclipses and what makes them so interesting and why i'm so excited about them and why everyone should see the one this summer. six years ago i started to look around and it became clear early on that the best eclipse stories are not from modern times, not from today. this is the 19th century because back in the 19th century total solar ipsis weren't just interesting and national suspect the goals, they were important to science. it's been called the golden age of eclipse expedition. this was a time when scientists were just starting to unravel the mysteries of the sun. what is this great ball of fire in the sky? what is it made out of?

what fuels it and there were certain studies they could do only during a total solar eclipse which meant again these occur only once every 18 months somewhere on the planet usually someplace really inconvenient to get to like the takei or the middle of the pacific annette lasso with three minutes. the nations of europe and the u.s. would put together these expeditions and had out to the path of totality and set up the equipment. praying that clouds didn't come along and three minutes frantically conduct their studies. i started to look at the various eclipses during that. there was the eclipses 1888 bit pass to randy in siam. and each of these eclipses had its own cast of characters and interesting science and settings and then i came to the eclipse of 1876.

so july 29, 1878 the path of totality went right down the american frontier, across the wild west to texas. ..

they come out and what was important for them, who might have built a look around and edison didn't just see himself as an inventor he wanted to be a scientist as well. later in life, he was kind of disdainful of academic scientists. they didn't get their hands dirty or understand how the world works. this young thomas edison wanted that respect and wanted to do basic scientific research so he invented a device that was going

to be bigger than the photogra photograph. it was an infrared detector to study during the total eclipse but no one understood what it was to see if it gave off heat as well as light and he was coming out to share this important device. back in that era he was a well-known astronomer at the university of michigan. they were not just the major planets that we know.

they were considered minor planets by different names in finding them is a big deal. falcon long before it showed up on star trek was thought to be a real planet back in 1878 many astronomers thought the planets orbit the sun between mercury and the sun so if you look at some of the charts in that era that goes falcon mercury, venus, earth.

the orbit seemed to be off a little bit and so the astronomers figured it seems to be something protruding the orbit it has to be a planets between mercury and the sun. it's got to be a hot place right near the sun and no one had reliably seen it but that wasn't a surprise. it will never be in the sky at night and you can't see it in the daytime lost in the sun's glare. if my feet when the moon covers of the bright sun. it was showing the clips over the rocky mountains but about

the third main character but i have to say is my favorite, her name is maria mitchell. back in the 19th century the famous female scientist in america was an astronomer and in 1847 when she discovered a comet with denmark by 1878 she was a professor at the college which of course at the time was a relatively new all-female college in new york. we talk about the difficulties women have you could imagine that it would be a lot harder. it's what life was like for maria mitchell and the unequal

treatment. the justice she thought with some success and the astronomers and other universities were offered generous faculty housing, mitchell accommodated. for the first decade she slept on a sofa in the corner of the space that alternately served as the parlor and lecturer and when they provided a separate apartment for sleeping it had been the observatories room and one of the students marked the occasion income and cheat first. in the chamber that needs no other warning ms. mitchell sleeps in a bad. despite the clashes of the administration, mitchell loved the girls and they adore her.

it's from then she took up the fight for the higher education in the campaign she waged as a storm of opposition to load. it's grappling with financial panic to introduce a new cause for the public alarm. it was a fair chance for the girls. it could undermine the health of american women. by taxing the brain, it caused the body especially the reproductive organ to atrophy. it produces a change in the woman's character and this included a dropping out of maternal instincts and appearance of amazonian force.

such persons are analogous to this class of termites. they became pale and sterile and in one instance the victims enter to delete lexicon and they published a barrage of rebutta rebuttals. if we know those that died from over study. critics called the book for what it was, a thin and hysterical polemic based on scanty evidence.

it found a receptive audience in america unsettled by shifting. it's left many women unmarried forcing them to enter the workforce. meanwhile the efforts to abolish slavery inspired women to see their own citizenship including the right to vote which was no longer the ninth. american society is changing so irrevocably it seemed women were in danger of no longer being women and men would soon be an escalated and ceased to be men. the book foretold this future. they didn't even think they would be educated and colleges to a large extent did something truly rare archival in 1878 so at that time when there were these groups have been out west

there were a bunch of u.s. governments put together and maria mitchell assembled. and in fact it came to denver. in the back of my book you will find the carved image so of course this was a scientific expedition that was more than that, it was a chance to show an american public about winning cookie scientists, they could be smart and educated, they could be healthy. i love this image of the women in victorian dresses waiting for the eclipse. at the end i really identified with these three main characte

characters. each of them have a lot on the line. they had something to prove that there were dozens of secondary characters during that time came out west for the eclipse as well and i should say there is another larger character and that is our niche in the united states of america. the u.s. have a lot on the line. it turned a couple-years-old before and we were becoming very strong economically getting attention in terms of our industrial strength but the world looked down on us in terms of our intellectual abilities. europe was the center of the culture if you're up was where most of the good literature and art and music &-and-sign dance came from but there was a small

group that was determined to show we could compete on the global stage. total eclipses do not occur in any given country all that often. a total eclipse was going to cross our own backyard so the u.s. wanted to show the world we were to be taken seriously as the eclipse of 1878 rallied america around science just as i was reading newspaper articles. i will get to the questions in just a minute but the other thing i love about writing the book of course i am fanatical of myself about the eclipse but if

there is a built in drama because the landing expeditions this is something that took years. they are setting up their equipment and it all came down to three minutes. so, as i get up towards the prime minister company, tim kind of violates so i have three full chapters about 1878 because so much happens on that one day i have one chapter leading up to the beginning of the partial inclusive than the second chapter is about the partial eclipse and what happened in those three minutes with me start by reading the last minute before the onset of the total

solar eclipse. for anyone going to see the total eclipse this year you can look with the naked eye but if you are not in the path of totality and even when you are caught when the sun's surface is visible you have to use eclipse glasses and even back then people wore eclipse glasses. they were not up to modern standards but people took pieces of glass and smoked them over flames to make them dark so folks were watching the partial eclipse through smoked glass. with a minute to go before totality this bizarre phenomenon became visible to some as if the sun were being projected through shallow water at the beach there were chapeau lines were pulling across the ground. edward holden was stationed atop

colorado. they asked each other very rapidly saving about 3 feet from center to center it was safe to 6 inches wide and bright. it's not always seemed that can be dramatic in southern france. the cause is the same that makes the stars twinkle. currents of air pass through the atmosphere and it had been politically visible when. the suns crescent had grown exceedingly slender and continued to shrink burning itself out at the end and before vanishing this produced a final brilliant display as it

shattered into a shimmering jewel. it was the last of the sun's rays. in the closing seconds before the onset of the total eclipse, darkness falls with disorienting rapidity. it could feel as if you are losing your eyesight or your sanity. it doesn't just surround you, it swallows you. the very ground seems to give way. the people of southern wyoming plunged into the château and withdrew the smoked glass from their eyes like somebody had seen before. thank you. [applause]

and happy to take questions. just one note before you ask your question folks at c-span will want to bring a microphone over to you. my question if your background is in journalism how hard was it to go completely in his story in mode and what were the challenges from your perspective? >> it was a huge challenge i didn't know what i was doing at first when i discovered a lot of the documentation is held at the national archives and also archives and universities across the country i thought do i need to show i have a phd in history before they let me in? of course not. but then sign up for a research card and they let you in.

but it was a lot of work to figure out where of various archives were then finding the relevant boxes and going through boxes and boxes of hand written letters and fading newspaper articles and first it was daunting and overwhelming and then it became tremendous fun because it was a treasure hunt and you've got a lot of stuff with no value. now that i've done it once i'd like to do it again. i enjoyed writing about history. way in the back, wait for the microphone if you could. >> i love it and can't wait to read more. in the third generation alum, we will talk after.

my grandmother was the class of 1914 so she would have loved this. i brought an obituary from 1933 from new york city of my great great uncle. total solar eclipses are the same experience today as people did in 1878 is a shared human experience is that crosses generations and centuries. when i was reading what the

scientists who came out in 78 yes they have studies they wanted to do but they were just genuinely excited about seeing the eclipse. many of them had been to the mediterranean and there was one in 69 across the united states and they just wanted to have another fix looking at the corona was the glorious sight. >> it was newsworthy to say about the incredible dedication of going around the world looking at these solar eclipses. >> right here in the front. >> in august 2017 i will be in jackson wyoming. i made my hotel reservation three years ago and i'm glad i

did because there isn't anything left unless you are willing to spend a thousand dollars a nig night. it's a fine place to be because it goes on forever. i'm happy to be in jackson but it's not the best place to be because the mountains tend to create clouds so the odds that they are better over casper or further east o are over western nebraska would be a great place to be. there are places one could get to certainly in a day but expect traffic. there will be more in its

borders than ever before. it's going to be a crazy day. >> loved the book. your storytelling is fascinati fascinating. i used to live in alliance nebraska. i've been on the committee ever since then they are concerned people are going to block the roads, stop wherever so it's going to be quite a circus but it's wonderful that so many people are wanting to share this

special time in science. a stack i think we just have to accept august 21 no one is going to get anything done and it's going to be in sanity in a lot of places there's going to be terrible traffic. anyone going to see the eclipse should be as self-sufficient as possible. make sure your car has as much gas you can put in the tank, have water and food aid be prepared to be on your own for a while, cell phone towers may be overwhelmed, you may find you can't make any calls. don't let that dissuade you that because it is a rare gift that we get to see solar eclipses. no one should leave this earth without at least seeing one.

>> you mentioned it hasn't changed much by just have to speculate those that are going to study things that have been changing that. >> the important thing was to use a spectroscope that enabled you to determine the chemical elements in the sun and that is how helium was found in the sun and hydrogen in the solar atmosphere but i don't think that ought to be affected by the earth's atmosphere. i haven't heard anyone say that. and there are going to be studies during the totally? this year there will be

scientists studying the sun and there are interesting things to be learned. it's more fine tuning. it gets to incredible speeds and those are some of the questions that scientists are trying to answer. but way back in the 19th century they were basic questions people were trying to answer. back in 1878 the government asked the public to call the corona and submit back to washington because the photography wasn't that good at the time and any information was important.

anyone that wants to participate can google it and use your smartphone to take the pictures during totality and those are going to be stitched together into a continuous movie of what it looks like over the entire hour and a half. did you happen to know when humanity was able to predict eclipses. >> it goes way back if you are talking in general terms. they knew how to predict eclipses because both lunar and solar have 18 years in giving the eclipse will come back but

in the third day it's turned a third of the way so it will repeat itself. the eclipse that is coming up in august i saw the same one in munich in 1999. it's part of the same and although it is on a different part of the earth when you look at the path of totality in its shape across europe it's the same shape you will see across the united states. so they figured out this cycle. if yo you saw the lunar eclipseu would probably see one again but it's on the wrong side of the planet and they didn't understand what was happening so they figured out the patterns. it wasn't until the 18th century that scientists were able to map the path of totality for the total eclipse of it would come

on a certain day but to map the specific path requires a detailed orbit understandings of it didn't come along until just a few use it to. >> i work at st. joseph's hospital and i was happy because we corresponded. you mentioned the sisters coming out to offer tea to the expedition that was in front of the hospital. we couldn't find a lot of information about that unfortunately but i was happy to see that. >> the women were helped by those of st. joseph's home which was an early hospital. they've only been there for five years at that point and they are still here today. >> it was run by the sisters of

charity of leavenworth. they've also been in touch with the course of writing my book and they were so thrilled to learn that the women back then had helped out the college party and last i heard the sisters in leavenworth are planning on serving tea just as they did in 1878. >> you said you focused on the three groups. who did they find that was really intriguing? there was one story line i wanted in the book and i never even mentioned of the guys name

i don't think. one was david in his early 20s at the time she went to see the eclipse in texas and went on to become a professor at amherst college in massachusetts. later on they would see many around the world and he was madly in love with mabel loomis and they were writing these love letters back and forth but he couldn't bear to be away from her in texas so he stopped in arkansas because he loved her so much he needed to go there. their life story is interesting because mabel loomis who soon became mabel loomis todd, the

two of them lived an interesting life in an earnest massachusetts and she is known as the person who first edited and published the poetry of emily dickinson and she wrote a book called total eclipses of the sun and is very well known. there's all this great stuff but it seemed a little too gossipy. what was most important to me is that my main characters have to have something during the eclipse of 1878 and in the end he really didn't but i would have loved to include that story in the book. >> you had a couple of mentions

in there but i wondered did he get interested? i know the quote about i came in with healey's comments and expected. can you tell us about that? >> mark twain, yes obviously he was very prominent back in 1878. he unfortunately wasn't in america at the time of the eclipse committee was in europe today i hoped that he had seen it or commented on it. i think it was a little bit after that he came out with king arthur's court which had the key plot point between the solar eclipse and i don't know whether the eclipse of 1878 inspired him at all. i think more importantly the story he tells where his sister is trying to escape predicted that the sun would go away but

he knew that because he had an almanac that told him that the eclipse was going to happen. that story was inspired by what happened to mr. for columbus and that is a truth story that when he was in the west indies and was having some trouble with the native inhabitants, he, columbus, had an almanac that told him a lunar eclipse was going to happen and he said if you don't help me with what i need to do, and i forget the details, i'm going to turn to the above blog read and sure enough it turned to blood red and then he brought it back and i think that was more the inspiration that he may also have been inspired by the 1878 clicks. i will stick around signing books and happy to talk one-on-one. appreciate you coming. [applause]