This book provides the reader with a deeper understanding of day-to-day life in America during the last two decades of the 19th century. It will uncover what life was like for ordinary Americans as they lived through an industrialized revolution, labor strikes, an influx of millions of immigrants, and the expansion of cities and the railroad.

In vibrant historical detail, American Eclipse animates the fierce jockeying that came to dominate late nineteenth-century American astronomy, revealing the challenges faced by three of the most determined eclipse chasers who participated in this adventure. James Craig Watson, in his day a renowned asteroid hunter; Vassar astronomer Maria Mitchell, who fought to demonstrate that science and higher learning were not anathema to femininity; and Thomas...