The United States got swept up in Mars mania about a hundred years ago.

H.G. Wells’ science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds, detailed a Martian invasion of Earth. Inventor and physicist Nikola Tesla claimed he’d intercepted extraterrestrial communication. And a New York Times headline in 1906 declared: “There Is Life on the Planet Mars.”

In his new book The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-of-the-Century America, journalist, broadcaster, and public speaker David Baron examines how Mars gripped the public imagination, and why many believed there was intelligent life on the Red Planet.

Baron, an affiliate of the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism, served as the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation while writing the book.

He’s also the author of American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World and The Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature.

Baron has earned some of the top honors in journalism, including the Alfred I. duPont Award, for his work as a science correspondent for NPR and as the science editor for The World. He’s written for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, and other publications.

This event is a special prime-time installment of the Central Library’s popular Science Matters series, presented in partnership with the Linda Hall Library.