The Martians are coming. The Martians are coming. That's this time on Planetary Radio Book Club edition.

Welcome back, book fans. I'm Matt Kaplan, Senior Communications Advisor at the Planetary Society,

and former host of Planetary Radio. Do we ever have

a fun one for you this time? Science journalist and author David Barron will take us back to the

dawn of the 20th century with The Martians, the true story of an alien craze that captured turn-of-the-century America.

This excellent and very entertaining read was recently named a New Yorker Best Book of the Year,

and New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice.

David was my planetary radio guest back in 2017 when we talked about his previous

book, American Eclipse. Now, as tantalizing evidence of past life on Mars grows, he has written

the definitive story about a time when almost everyone took for granted that a superintelligent

civilization had long existed on the

red planet and that they might be reaching out to us. It's an era that has fascinated me ever since I

first read about Percival Lowell and his Martian canals. The Martians was our September

selection in the Planetary Society Book Club. Members of the

Society get to participate in our live conversations with authors of the wonderful books we select each

month. You can learn about this and all the other benefits of membership at planetary.org

slash join.

If you're a longtime fan of public radio, like me, you may remember David Barron's great contributions to national public radio. He is written for the New York Times,

The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, and many other publications.

It was my great pleasure to welcome him, as I said, to Planetary Radio.

That was in 2017 when his previous terrific book, American Eclipse, was published in that year of a total solar eclipse across a swath of North America.

Let us go ahead now and bring into the picture here our guest, David Barron.

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