Discover the amazing true story of Maria Mitchell, America’s first professional female astronomer. Every evening, from the time she was a child, Maria Mitchell stood on her rooftop with her telescope and swept the sky. And then one night she saw something unusual—a comet no one had ever seen before! Miss Mitchell’s extraordinary discovery made her famous the world over and paved the way for her to become America’s first professional female astronomer. Gorgeously illustrated by Diana Sudyka, this moving picture book about a girl from humble beginnings who became a star in the field of astronomy is sure to inspire budding scientists everywhere.

America's first woman astronomer was born in 1818 on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. Patiently observing the skies with her father as early as age twelve, Maria eventually discovers a telescopic comet. For this 1847 feat, she is awarded a Gold Medal by the King of Denmark. Other honors and world fame follow. When Vassar College opens in 1865, Maria is there as its first Professor of Astronomy. She remains to serve under three Vassar presidents. A passionate seeker of truth and wisdom, Maria Mitchell's keen views are revealed in her journals. Her growth as an advocate for women's rights is dramatically portrayed. At eighteen she is hired as the first librarian for the Nantucket Atheneum, where she educates herself studying the books she orders. Twenty years later, we see her, now internationally renowned, a welcome guest in salons of the world's leading scientists and literary figures. Maria's tales of daring travel by bumpy stagecoach, Russian droskys, Mississippi River boats and Atlantic side-wheelers are here, as are her perceptive accounts of the celebrities of her day. Journeying westward alone, escorting a Chicago debutante on her Grand Tour, taking a teenage nephew to Russia (complete with daunting, sometimes comical adventures) all come to life. She organizes Vassar students to observe meteors and undertake eclipse expeditions. In her journals we see Maria Mitchell grow under the tutelage of her father in a warm and active family.

Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries—beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement. Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists—mostly women, mostly queer—whose public contribution have risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson. Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman—and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.

Bonded Leather binding

A pioneering exploration of the origins of German Christian Democracy in the context of 19th- and 20th-century politics and religion