Among the Stars: The Life of Maria Mitchell

By Margaret Moore Booker
“Meticulously researched and fluidly written, Margaret Moore Booker’s Among the Stars provides the fullest, most nuanced portrait of Maria Mitchell to date. A landmark achievement that shows how a young woman from Nantucket had a lasting impact on science, education, and women’s rights in America and the world.” – Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Away Off Shore, In the Heart of the Sea,and Mayflower

Few avenues of high achievement were open to American women in the mid-nineteenth century, but a young librarian on Nantucket Island, off the coast of Cape Cod, sent a startling signal through the male-dominated world of science when she emerged as an accomplished astronomer. Maria Mitchell, peering into the heavens with a telescope from a rooftop on Main Street, not only discovered a comet, but computed its orbit and exchanged scientific observations with the world’s leading astronomers. She became an admired figure on the international scene, a much-beloved professor at Vassar College, and a leading figure in the emerging women’s rights movement. 2007, $59.95 hardcover