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The Martians

Audiobook
Nonfiction
Unabridged   8 hour(s)
Publication date: 08/26/2025

F O R T H C O M I N G ! Available August

The Martians

The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America

Available from major retailers
Digital Download ISBN:9781696620239

Summary

Long before NASA began contemplating a visit to our neighboring world, a turn-of-the-century Mars craze invaded the public's imagination, here thrillingly retold in David Baron's The Martians.

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Product Description

In the early 1900s, many Americans actually believed we had discovered intelligent life on Mars, as bestselling science writer David Baron chronicles in The Martians, his truly bizarre tale of a nation swept up in Mars mania.

At the center of Baron's historical drama is Percival Lowell, the Boston Brahmin and Harvard scion, who observed "canals" etched into the surface of Mars. Lowell devised a grand theory that the red planet was home to a utopian society that had built gargantuan ditches to funnel precious meltwater from the polar icecaps to desert farms and oasis cities. The public fell in love with the ambitious amateur astronomer who shared his findings in speeches and wildly popular books.

While at first people treated the Martians whimsically―Martians headlining Broadway shows, biologists speculating whether they were winged or gilled―the discussion quickly became serious. Inventor Nikola Tesla announced he had received radio signals from Mars; Alexander Graham Bell agreed there was "no escape from the conviction" that intelligent beings inhabited the planet. Martian excitement reached its zenith when Lowell financed an expedition to photograph Mars from Chile's Atacama Desert, resulting in what newspapers hailed as proof of the Martian canals' existence.

Author Bio

David Baron is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and author of The Beast in the Garden and American Eclipse. A former science correspondent for NPR, he has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, and other publications.