EXCERPT
Throughout history, total eclipses of the sun, like the one coming up on Monday, have inspired an end to wars, religious rapture, and murder-suicides.
David Baron, the author of 'American Eclipse: A Nation's Race to Capture the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World,' is an award-winning journalist, a former science correspondent for NPR, and former science editor for the public radio program The World. An incurable umbraphile whose passion for chasing eclipses began in 1998, he lives in Boulder, Colorado.