Prince seeks the minuscule

SHARON — Journalist Cathryn Prince has a passion for little-known episodes of history. It was this passion that led her to write “A Professor, a President, and a Meteor: The Birth of American Science,” which she will sign at the fifth annual Hotchkiss Library of Sharon Summer Book Signing on Friday, Aug. 5. Prince’s book, which won the Connecticut Press Club’s 2011 Book Award in Non-Fiction, is the story of Benjamin Silliman, a young chemistry professor at Yale University whose investigation of an 1807 meteor crash in Weston, Conn., helped propel the lowly stature of American science to a new level of respect from the rest of the world. Prince, who is a resident of Weston, tells the story of how Silliman became inextricably entangled in the political turbulence of the early 19th century. She also describes how his investigation caused a rift between Thomas Jefferson and the entire region of New England.Prince said she first came across Silliman’s story “in 2007, when the town of Weston was having a celebration of the bicentennial of the meteorite coming down in the town. “At that time I was looking for a topic for a book, and this story appealed to me because of all the people involved, a professor and a president; and the setting, this early time period in the country’s history. The Revolutionary War had ended and it was a real crossroads for the nation.”“I’m not a science writer,” Prince said, emphasizing that “this book is about the history of science, not about science. It is about the meteorite, but mainly in the context of its discovery at a time when the nation was so young.“This book is really about the birth of American science and the early federal period in the U.S., and about how scientific discipline developed in our country.”Prince has written two other books, “Burn the Town and Sack the Banks” and “Shot From the Sky,” about the Civil War and World War II, respectively.The mother of two children, ages 10 and 13, Prince writes for the Christian Science Monitor and the Weston Forum.To purchase tickets for the book signing, which is Aug. 5 from 6 to 8 p.m., or for more information, contact the library at 860-364-5041 or go to www.hotchkisslibrary.org.Admission is $25 and includes an open wine bar and hors d’oeuvres. Other authors featured this year include Michael Korda; Ann Brashares; Roz Chast; Peter Richmond; Margaret Roach; and decorator/authors Matthew Patrick Smyth and Annie Kelly (and her husband, photographer Tim Street-Porter).There will also be dinners at private homes with some of the featured authors. The cost to attend is $125. The author dinners will feature Henry Kissinger; Edmund Morris; Bunny Williams; Scott Spencer; Page Dickey; and siblings James and Priscilla Buckley.

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