March is Women’s History Month, so why not read a great book about two remarkable women who made history? In 1889 Nellie Bly – then a reporter for the New York World – set out to circumvent the world faster than Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne’s character from “Around the world in 80 days.” Bly would leave New York on November 14th and make her way across the Atlantic. On the same day that Bly departed Elizabeth Bisland, a reporter for the Cosmopolitan, left from New York in the opposite direction, making her way across the United States and over the Pacific in an attempt to beat Bly around the world. Matthew Goodman chronicles the adventures of these two women in his book “Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race around the World.” Goodman not only focuses on the two women’s adventure around the world but also the excitement their journeys attracted in the United States. Goodman’s writing will leave you on the edge of your seat to find out who will make it to New York first and if either woman will best Phileas Fogg.
1889: Two women, successful journalists and writers, set off in a desperate rate in opposite directions, each determined to outdo Jules Verne’s fictional hero Phileas Fogg and circle the globe in less than eighty days. (Goodreads Description)