"Maria Mitchell" by her daughter, Phoebe Mitchell Kendall, 1896.
I tend to read quite a bit about the history of astronomy, especially since my night skies have been blighted with ignorant, ugly, blinding, light pollution over the last few years. Maria Mitchell was an astronomer, and head of the department at Vassar, at a time when female astronomers were a rarity.
The most interesting aspect of this book wasn't particularly the story of her life, but her perceptions and opinions about places she visited, the American pre Civil War South, a tour of Europe, and ESPECIALLY the people she met... Many of the prominent men and women of astronomy and science of the day. Maria Mitchell was a strong, opinionated, woman, and her impressions are often surprising and enlightening. I love this stuff...
I'd searched for this book for a long time. There are a lot of reprints, I'd suppose due to "women's study" courses, but I like to read off of OLD pages. This book came at a good price, and aside from the guilded top, the pages were still uncut. I was the first one to read it in 129 years.

