Author Biography:

Boulder author David Baron writes about science, nature, and the American West. His first book, THE BEAST IN THE GARDEN, tells a harrowing true story of people and mountain lions on Colorado's Front Range. Winner of the 2003 Colorado Book Award, it has become a classic work of nature writing and a perennial Boulder favorite. David’s 2017 book, AMERICAN ECLIPSE, recounts the forgotten tale of a total solar eclipse that crossed the West in 1878 and lured many of the era’s great scientists and inventors (including Thomas Edison) to frontier Colorado and Wyoming. Widely praised for its lyricism, the book has now been adapted into a musical by the Tony-nominated composer Michael John LaChiusa. David's forthcoming book, THE MARTIANS, unearths the bizarre story of astronomers at the turn of the last century who convinced themselves and the American public that the Red Planet was home to an advanced civilization, spawning a Mars craze that inspired science fiction and helped launch the space age. A book that spans continents—indeed, worlds—its center of action is Flagstaff, Arizona, with Colorado Springs making an important cameo.

Before becoming a full-time author, David Baron worked for many years as a science correspondent and editor for NPR and the public radio program “The World.” He has written for many news outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, and recently served as Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress. David is a passionate eclipse chaser who has witnessed nine total solar eclipses across the globe, from Chile to Indonesia to the Faroe Islands. He first came to Boulder (from Boston) in 1998 as a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at CU, and he remains an affiliate of CU’s Center for Environmental Journalism.