Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World

( 17 )

Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly, the crusading young female reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper, left New York City by steamship on a quest to break the record for the fastest trip around the world. Also departing from New York that day—and heading in the opposite direction by train—was a young journalist from The Cosmopolitan magazine, Elizabeth Bisland. Each woman was determined to outdo Jules Verne’s fictional hero Phileas Fogg and circle the ...

See more details below
Hardcover
$16.66
BN.com price
(Save 40%)$28.00 List Price
Pick Up In Store

Pick Up in Store

Reserve and pick up in 60 minutes at your local store

Other sellers (Hardcover)
  • All (31) from $13.96   
  • New (25) from $13.96   
  • Used (6) from $17.29   
Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World

Available on NOOK devices and apps  
  • Nook Devices
  • NOOK HD/HD+ Tablet
  • NOOK
  • NOOK Color
  • NOOK Tablet
  • Tablet/Phone
  • NOOK for Windows 8 Tablet
  • NOOK for iOS
  • NOOK for Android
  • NOOK Kids for iPad
  • PC/Mac
  • NOOK for Windows 8
  • NOOK for PC
  • NOOK for Mac
  • NOOK Study

Want a NOOK? Explore Now

NOOK Book (eBook)
$13.99
BN.com price

More About This Book

Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly, the crusading young female reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper, left New York City by steamship on a quest to break the record for the fastest trip around the world. Also departing from New York that day—and heading in the opposite direction by train—was a young journalist from The Cosmopolitan magazine, Elizabeth Bisland. Each woman was determined to outdo Jules Verne’s fictional hero Phileas Fogg and circle the globe in less than eighty days. The dramatic race that ensued would span twenty-eight thousand miles, captivate the nation, and change both competitors’ lives forever.
 
The two women were a study in contrasts. Nellie Bly was a scrappy, hard-driving, ambitious reporter from Pennsylvania coal country who sought out the most sensational news stories, often going undercover to expose social injustice. Genteel and elegant, Elizabeth Bisland had been born into an aristocratic Southern family, preferred novels and poetry to newspapers, and was widely referred to as the most beautiful woman in metropolitan journalism. Both women, though, were talented writers who had carved out successful careers in the hypercompetitive, male-dominated world of big-city newspapers. Eighty Days brings these trailblazing women to life as they race against time and each other, unaided and alone, ever aware that the slightest delay could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
 
A vivid real-life re-creation of the race and its aftermath, from its frenzied start to the nail-biting dash at its finish, Eighty Days is history with the heart of a great adventure novel. Here’s the journey that takes us behind the walls of Jules Verne’s Amiens estate, into the back alleys of Hong Kong, onto the grounds of a Ceylon tea plantation, through storm-tossed ocean crossings and mountains blocked by snowdrifts twenty feet deep, and to many more unexpected and exotic locales from London to Yokohama. Along the way, we are treated to fascinating glimpses of everyday life in the late nineteenth century—an era of unprecedented technological advances, newly remade in the image of the steamship, the railroad, and the telegraph. For Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland—two women ahead of their time in every sense of the word—were not only racing around the world. They were also racing through the very heart of the Victorian age.

Praise for Eighty Days
 
“The true story of Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland, two journalists racing to see who could circle the globe first—and faster than any man before them—is as riveting now as it was when it captivated the nation in 1889.”—Parade

“Matthew Goodman takes readers on a riveting ride back to 1889 for the original amazing race. . . . Goodman’s eighteen months of meticulous research and his compelling narrative nonfiction being their stories to life in vivid period detail.”—American Way
 
“Lively and vivid . . . Goodman is a master storyteller, with no agenda to push, and his armchair tour is a treat to read.”—The Columbus Dispatch
 
“In his delightful, well-researched book . . . Matthew Goodman brings to life the two women, the complicated, fast-changing times and the way the whole country was swept up in their parallel adventures. This is fully documented history, drawing on contemporary accounts, letters and the women’s own writing, but Goodman crafts it into a page-turner.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

Read More Show Less

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

Living in a time when media wars usually consist of battling celebrity scandals, it's uplifting to reflect back on an era when newspaper headlines trumpeted loftier matters. On November 14, 1889, the New York World dispatched the enterprising Nellie Bly on a mission to circumnavigate the globe in 75 days. On that very same day, Elisabeth Brisland of The Cosmopolitan took off in the opposite direction, equally determined to break the world record. Bly famously won the race, but that, as Matthew Goodman tells it, is less than half the story. In this exciting new book, he recounts the travels and travails of two self-made feminists, stirring us in the new millennium, just as their accounts of their adventures did in the nineteenth century. (P.S. Why haven't the movie rights to this book been sold?)

Publishers Weekly
Two pioneering women hurtle across the globe—and into a changing future—in this stimulating true-life adventure story. Historian Goodman (The Sun and the Moon) follows the 1889 voyages of Nellie Bly, a New York World reporter who embarked on a headline-grabbing assignment to circumnavigate the world in a record-setting 75 days, emulating Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days, and Elisabeth Brisland, a literary essayist press-ganged by her magazine’s owner into racing Bly around the world in the opposite direction. Goodman vividly recreates their stormy, sea-sick travels and exotic Eastern ports of call while examining the revolutionary 19th-century culture of journeying: the proliferating webs of railways and luxury steamships; the swaggering might of the British Empire that guaranteed safe passage; Westerners’ sense of wonder at encountering unfamiliar peoples—and their casually bigoted sense of entitlement to rule over them. He also draws fascinating portraits of two self-made women who captured America’s imagination by defying its gender stereotypes. (When her editors balked at sending a woman, Bly vowed to beat any man sent in her place.) Deftly mixing social history into an absorbing travel epic, Goodman conveys the exuberant dynamism of a very unfusty Victorian era obsessed with speed, power, publicity, and the breaking of every barrier. Photos. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
“Matthew Goodman takes readers on a riveting ride back to 1889 for the original amazing race. . . . Goodman’s eighteen months of meticulous research and his compelling narrative nonfiction being their stories to life in vivid period detail.”—American Way
 
“Lively and vivid . . . Goodman is a master storyteller, with no agenda to push, and his armchair tour is a treat to read.”—The Columbus Dispatch
 
“In his delightful, well-researched book . . . Matthew Goodman brings to life the two women, the complicated, fast-changing times and the way the whole country was swept up in their parallel adventures. This is fully documented history, drawing on contemporary accounts, letters and the women’s own writing, but Goodman crafts it into a page-turner.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
“Matthew Goodman’s truly exciting account of [Bly’s and Bisland’s] journeys . . . is also quite a fun trip for his readers. He has the gift of turning meticulous research into vividly imagined details. . . . A fully satisfying portrait of the era.”—BUST magazine
 
“[Eighty Days] is a dazzling tour of the world at a time when travel routes were just opening up; a look at sensationalist journalism and pop culture in pre-Kardashian America; and a testimony to how hard women had to fight to get work and achieve respect as journalists.”—BookPage
 
“The story’s engaging, the writing gripping, and the treatment—how Bly and Bisland are praised for combating sexism and denigrated for ignoring classism and embracing imperialism—is as clear-eyed as you can get. Well worth a read.”—The Literary Omnivore
 
“Deftly mixing social history into an absorbing travel epic, Goodman conveys the exuberant dynamism of a very unfusty Victorian era obsessed with speed, power, publicity, and the breaking of every barrier.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“A richly detailed double narrative of the adventures of two young women journalists in a race against time . . . entertaining and readable throughout.”—Kirkus Reviews
 
“Goodman writes exceedingly well. . . . Delightful . . . solid history . . . filled with energizing details. History lovers will eat it up.”—Library Journal
Library Journal
Most of us have heard of Nellie Bly, a reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's World newspaper, who left New York City on November 14, 1889, in a bid to circumnavigate the globe in record-breaking time. Fewer people know that Elizabeth Bisland, who wrote for the Cosmopolitan, left New York on the same day with the same goal in mind. Bly won, but this account covers the journeys of both women—traveling in opposite directions and each, initially, without knowledge of the other. Suspense and fabulous locations; sounds like armchair travel at its best.
Kirkus Reviews
A richly detailed double narrative of the adventures of two young women journalists in a race against time, each striving to be the first to travel around the world in 75 days, outdoing the fictional Phileas Fogg's 80 days. Goodman (The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York, 2008, etc.) provides a clear picture of not only Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland, but also of journalism in the 1890s and women's place in that field. Their roles were very different: Bly was a plucky investigative journalist for Joseph Pulitzer's daily newspaper the World, while Bisland wrote features and book reviews for the Cosmopolitan, a monthly magazine. Pulitzer's goal for the stunt was to raise circulation for his newspaper, and it succeeded, as readers followed the story and millions submitted their guesses for the exact time of the race's finish. As the winner, arriving back in 72 days, Bly briefly became a national figure, but fame ended her career in undercover journalism, and she struggled to make a living until her marriage to a 70-year-old millionaire, whose firm later declared bankruptcy. Bisland came in five days later and promptly disappeared from the public eye; however, she continued to write and married and lived well, which prompts the author to raise the question: Who was the real winner? Goodman's depiction of the swashbuckling Bly, whose self-regard often seemed larger than her regard for the truth, is somewhat less sympathetic than his portrait of the now-forgotten Bisland. The author also examines the shenanigans of the press, the vicissitudes of travel and the global power of the British Empire in the Victorian era. A tad overlong, but entertaining and readable throughout.
Read More Show Less

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780345527264
  • Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 2/26/2013
  • Pages: 480
  • Sales rank: 17211
  • Product dimensions: 6.30 (w) x 9.40 (h) x 1.40 (d)

Meet the Author

Matthew Goodman

Matthew Goodman is the author of two other nonfiction books, The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York and Jewish Food: The World at Table. The recipient of two MacDowell fellowships and one Yaddo fellowship, he has taught creative writing at numerous universities and workshops. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and children.

Read More Show Less

Read an Excerpt

chapter 1

A Free American Girl

Nellie bly was born elizabeth jane cochran in western pennsyl-vania on May 5, 1864, though confusion about her exact age would persist throughout her life--a good deal of that confusion engineered by Bly herself, for she was never quite as young as she claimed to be. When she began her race around the world, in November of 1889, Bly was twenty-five years old, but estimates of her age among the nation's newspapers ranged from twenty to twenty-four; according to her own newspaper, The World, she was "about twenty-three."

The town in which she grew up, Apollo, Pennsylvania, was a small, nondescript sort of place, not much different from countless other mill towns carved out of hemlock and spruce, unassuming enough that even the author of a history of Apollo felt obliged to explain in the book's foreword, "It is not necessary to be a city of the first class to fill the niche in the hearts of the people or the history of the state. Besides it is our town." On its main street stood a general store (where one could buy everything from penny candy to plowshares), a drugstore, a slaughterhouse, a blacksmith shop, and several taverns; the town would not have a bank until 1871. In the winters there was sledding and skating, and when the warmer weather came the children of the town liked to roll barrel hoops down the hill to the canal bridge and to fish the Kiskiminetas River, which had not yet been contaminated by runoff from the coal mines and iron mills being built nearby.

Elizabeth was born to Michael and Mary Jane Cochran, the third of five children and the elder of two daughters. She was known to everyone in town as "Pink"; it was a nickname she came by early on, arising from her mother's predilection to dress her in pink clothing, in sharp contrast to the drab browns and grays worn by the other local children. Pink seems to have been a high-spirited, rather headstrong girl, though much of what is known of her early years comes from her own recollections in publicity stories written after she became famous, at least some of which seem designed mainly to burnish the already developing legend of the intrepid young journalist. One story published in The World, for instance (the headline of which claimed to provide her "authentic biography"), told how she was an insatiable reader as a girl, and how she herself wrote scores of stories, scribbling them in the flyleaves of books and on whatever scraps of paper she could find. Nights she lay awake in bed, her mind aflame with imagined stories of heroes and heroines, fairy tales and romances: "So active was the child's brain and so strongly her faculties eluded sleep that her condition became alarming and she had to be placed under the care of physicians." The World 's professions of Bly's childhood love for reading and writing, though, are not to be found in other accounts, and in the family history, Chronicles of the Cochrans: Being a Series of Historical Events and Narratives in Which the Members of This Family Have Played a Prominent Part, one of her relatives commented somewhat tartly that among the teachers in Apollo's sole schoolhouse, Pink Cochran "acquired more conspicuous notice for riotous conduct than profound scholarship."

Pink's father, Michael Cochran, had become wealthy as a grist mill proprietor and real estate speculator, and he was prominent enough to have been elected an associate justice of the county, after which he was always known by the honorific "Judge." (The nearby hamlet of Coch- ran's Mills, where Pink lived for her first five years, was named after him.) When Pink was six...

Read More Show Less

Interviews & Essays

A Conversation with Matthew Goodman, Author of Eighty Days

How did the idea for the book originate?

Like many people, I recognized the name Nellie Bly (in part because of the old "Nellie Bly Amusement Park" near my home in Brooklyn), but I didn't know much about her or why she was important. One day I stumbled across a brief reference to her record-setting race around the world in 1889, and that brought me up short because I didn't know anything about it. I thought it was remarkable that a young woman (she was only twenty-five), unaccompanied and carrying only a single bag, would be daring enough to race around the world, through Europe and the Middle East and Far East, in the year 1889—and do it faster than anyone ever had before her. Then, when I researched the story further, I discovered that in fact she was racing against another young female journalist, Elizabeth Bisland—a detail that is almost never included in the historical record. I was captivated by the notion of these two young women racing each other around the world—one traveling east, the other west.

So who was Nellie Bly?

Nellie Bly was a genuinely remarkable person—really a historian's dream subject. Born into a poor family in Pennsylvania coal country, she was a scrappy, hard-driving, ambitious young reporter who sought out the most sensational news stories, often going undercover to expose social injustice. In her first series for Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper the New York World, she feigned madness and got herself committed to the Blackwell's Island women's insane asylum, so that she could expose the terrible conditions endured by the patients there. For other stories she worked for pennies alongside other young women in a paper-box factory, applied for employment as a servant, and sought treatment in a medical dispensary for the poor (where she narrowly escaped having her tonsils removed). She trained with the boxing champion John L. Sullivan; she visited with a deaf, dumb, and blind nine-year-old girl in Boston by the name of Helen Keller. Once, to expose the workings of New York's white slavery trade, she even bought a baby. She quickly became one of the most well-known and most beloved reporters in New York—but none of it could compare with the fame she achieved from her race around the world.

And who was Elizabeth Bisland, Nellie Bly's competitor in the race around the world?

One of my favorite things about writing this book was the opportunity it presented to re-introduce people to Elizabeth Bisland, who since the around-the-world race has been mostly forgotten by history. In her own way, she was just as remarkable and just as compelling a person as was Nellie Bly. She had been born into a Louisiana family ruined by the Civil War (their plantation was actually the site of a major battle in the war), and she was a great believer in the joys of literature, which she had first experienced as a girl reading ancient, tattered volumes of Shakespeare and Cervantes that she found in her grandfather's burned-out library. (She taught herself French while she churned butter, so that she might read Rousseau's Confessions in the original.) Bisland was a talented poet and essayist, and the hostess of a weekly arts salon in her little apartment on Fourth Avenue; she was genteel, soft-spoken, and was commonly referred to as "the most beautiful woman in New York journalism." She also had no interest in being famous, and when her publisher, John Brisben Walker of The Cosmopolitan magazine, requested that she race Nellie Bly around the world, she initially resisted. Yet in the end she was deeply affected by her experiences during the trip, which instilled in her a love of travel that remained with her for the rest of her life.

How did the race around the world help usher in the contemporary fascination with celebrity?

The public's fascination with the around-the-world race extended across the country, and indeed across much of the world. By the time Nellie Bly returned in triumph to New York, and received her raucous victory parade up Broadway to the World Building, she was probably the most famous woman in the United States. This was the time when American companies were just beginning to understand that the image of a famous person could be used to sell products. So in 1890 American women wore Nellie Bly caps and Nellie Bly dresses and Nellie Bly gloves, modeled on the ones she had made famous during her trip. Children used the Nellie Bly tablet notebook and carried it to school in a Nellie Bly school bag. At home, you could write on Nellie Bly stationery with the Nellie Bly fountain pen in the light of the Nellie Bly lamp. A series of advertising trade cards with drawings of Nellie Bly on the front sold everything from coffee to tobacco to spices. The George L. Ingerson Company of Syracuse, New York, even sold "Nellie Bly Horse Feed." It all seemed very promising, but as things turned out, Bly's sudden celebrity was the start of a long downward spiral in her journalistic career (she couldn't go back to being an undercover reporter, because she was now too famous) and in her personal life as well. In short, the race around the world was a success from which Nellie Bly was never able to recover.

Who have you discovered lately?

Well, it's probably not much of a "discovery" to have recently discovered the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of 1947, but for much of my adult life I circled around Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men: always meaning to read it, but never actually doing so. Then one day a few months ago a friend posted the book's opening sentences on Facebook and they were so good I went right out that day and bought it. My own work is history told in a novelistic vein, and Warren's is a novel based on history—it's a fictionalized telling of the life and career of the controversial Louisiana governor Huey Long—but I immediately responded to the sheer gorgeousness of the prose ("There he was, with the papers about his feet and one arm up, the coat sleeve jammed elbow high, face red as a bruised beet and the sweat sluicing, hair over his forehead, eyes bugged out and shining, drunk as a hoot owl, and behind him the bunting, red-white-and-blue, and over him God's bright, brassy, incandescent sky"); the complex, layered character of Governor Willie Stark; and the vivid portrait Warren paints of a part of the world that I had never encountered so intimately before. Also, I was thrilled to read a novel so knowing in the ways of local politics—the handouts and the log-rolling and the petty vengeance, the shifting mix of altruism and self-interest, the endless quest to obtain and maintain power. It was the perfect book to be reading in the midst of campaign season, but I can't help but think it would be great during the off-years as well.

Read More Show Less

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
( 17 )
Rating Distribution

5 Star

(8)

4 Star

(6)

3 Star

(3)

2 Star

(0)

1 Star

(0)
Sort by: Showing all of 17 Customer Reviews

  • Posted Wed Feb 27 00:00:00 EST 2013

    5 STARS I have heard the name Nellie Bly before but did not kno

    5 STARS

    I have heard the name Nellie Bly before but did not know anything about her or her famous race around the world. Matthew Goodman did a good job making it feel alive. The back of the book is around 75 pages of acknowledgments,notes and sources of where he got his information from.

    A few days ago I got a surprise in the mail copy of Matthew Goodman's book Eighty days and a copy of Jules Verne book Around the world in eighty days. Which I have heard of but have not read. I am not sure how come I recieved the books. I enter a lot of contests,get books from Librarything,goodreads and Netgalley. I later got a digital copy of Eight Days so I was reading from book to listening on my kindle to reading the book. Either way the story was interesting. I would love to be able to do that even today. Except I would be more like Elizabeth and take more than one dress. Okay I would take pants.

    I think the book showed up both the good and some not so favorable sides of both Nellie and Elizabeth.

    Nellie got the idea to beat Phileas Fogg from Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. A year before her trip. The World Newspaper turned her down than. They decided with two days notice to send her.

    The Cosmopolitan Magazine owner decided to make a race of it and send his own reporter in a race going the oppisite direction. Elizabeth Bisland did not want to go. Just given hours to leave. Nellie was almost done with racing against the clock when she found out that thier was another reporter she was in a race against. Which is not fair to her.
    One thing that Nellie got to do was to meet Jules Verne in his home. The race against his fictional character Fogg made his book sell even more copies and the play about hs book was produced again 11 years after it was closed the last time. I know now that I plan to read Around the World in Eighty Days and other Jules Verne fiction.

    I learned a lot about how different people lived back than and how they traveled. So many things I have picked up that I had no clue about. That England fought a war to make China to let in Opium that they wanted to ship in China to make up trade decifit that they want against Tea

    02/26/2013 PUB. Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine 480 pages ISBN 9780345527264

    6 out of 8 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted Mon Mar 04 00:00:00 EST 2013

    Ground-breaking women journalists, a new era in the technology o

    Ground-breaking women journalists, a new era in the technology of transport, biting commentary on class divisions in the Victorian Era, not to mention the unconscious bigotry that lurked beneath the world of Colonialism-- all of these are here, and illuminating, but none of them takes the readers away from a really fascinating story about two women, one exciting race (with all its ups and downs), and how they (in particular, Bly) captured the imagination of hundreds of thousands. Impressively researched, but again, only in the service of making the story even more fun. I enjoyed every bit of it.

    3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted Tue Mar 26 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    What a great trip!

    Eighty Days was a fascinating account of transportation and selected cultures of the 1890s. I particularly enjoyed accounts of rail and ship travel. I had heard of Nellie Bly, but did not realize she attempted to best Fileous Fogg’s 80 day record. I had never heard of Elizabeth Bisland. Matthew Goodman’s detailed coverage of their progress along the way was excellent. One section I particularly enjoyed was the account of Nellie Bly meeting Jules Verne in France. It was fascinating to get a candid view of the real man behind those wonderful stories. The Eighty Days storyline provides significant information to both lady’s lives after the race, which gives superb closure to a most interesting story.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted Sat Mar 23 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    Treasure hunt

    Fishy second result

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted Mon Apr 22 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    Eighty Days - Potentially very interesting book about the two fe

    Eighty Days - Potentially very interesting book about the two female journalists who traveled around the globe at the same time (unaware of each other), in the 1800s. What started as an innovative idea, became a competition when another. It was fun to vicariously travel, envisioning the cultures of the countries visited. The only criticism I would level is that when a book is almost 500 pages long, you have to be exceedingly interested in the subject; it could have benefited from being more succinct. Mr. Goodman goes down too many "rabbit trails" in this book. I was beginning to think it was going to take eighty days to finish reading it! ; ) For just one example, it's interesting to know a little about Joseph Pulitzer, who owned Nellie Bly's newspaper, but did we really need to know the minute structural details of the interior of his house? Other similar diversions go on for so long, that it really gets one bogged down and distracted, and tempts one to give up on the book ever returning to its mission! If you stick it out, you'll learn a lot, and you'll realize that as the old saying goes, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." I won't give away the ending, no spoilers from me! - but suffice it to say that the winning journalist would today be on the cover of "People" (c), would be doing television spots for all manner of products etc. And the equivalent is just what happened; it was fasinating to read about her popularity. You end up feeling a bit of sympathy for the "also-ran," but then again, there can only be one winner. The author may be more of a winner himself, if in the future he limits his digressions!




    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted Fri Apr 12 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    more from this reviewer

    Excellent history!

    Excellent history, that keeps pace with the race itself, showing the world from the viewpoints of two very different ladies--and the effect that single trip has on them for the remainder of their lives.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted Wed Apr 10 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    Great Story!

    Although familiar with the name Nellie Bly, I was quickly drawn into this great adventure of two pioneering women journalists. I enjoyed Goodman's writing style and insights into each woman's perceptions and reactions to their experience.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted Fri Apr 05 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    Very, very boring.

    I was very excited to read this book unfortunately I found it very boring. Thought it would be very exciting but it was not in the least.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted Fri Apr 05 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    Great Read

    Fascinating story not only about amazing journeys but wonderful insights into these women's lives. I had heard the name Nellie Bly but had never heard this story. Perhaps if more things like this were included in history books, students would find the subject more interesting!

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted Sun Mar 31 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    Educational as well as an entertaining story. Enjoying the adventures as seen through these 2 courageous women!

    I don't read non fiction as often as I feel I should, gave this a try and have been thoroughly delighted. What an adventure this book gives the reader. I highly recommend it to everyone!

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted Tue Mar 26 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    Wonderful book -- author did a great job of putting readers into the shoes of the two main characters

    I had, of course, heard the name Nellie Bly and had some vague recollection that she went on an around-the-world trip back in the late 19th Century. I had never heard the name Elizabeth Bisland. But Eighty Days filled in all the blanks. Although “the race” is the focus of Eighty Days, the author also enlightens readers on the state of journalism, world travel, and women reporters in 1889. I read a review of the book in Columbia Journalism Review that called this “padding,” but I call it “context,” something I always appreciate in a work of history and find positive rather than negative. I’m not sure anyone could have found more polar opposites than Bly and Bisland, even though they both female, came from modest backgrounds and were roughly the same age. The trip was Nellie’s idea and it took awhile for her editor at the New York World to OK it. And Miss Bisland didn’t get into the race until after Nellie was merrily on her way on an eastern route. The editor of the Cosmopolitan monthly magazine decided that he, too, would have a woman reporter travel round the world – and try to beat the fictional Phileas Fogg’s time of 80 days just as Miss Bly was – and strong-armed Miss Bisland into it in the opposite direction. It was surprising to me that neither woman was telegraphing stories to their publications from “the road.” I guess they had enough to juggle what with toting bags – and later MissBly’s monkey – and trying to make it to the boat or train that would carry them to their next stopping-off point on time. Today such a race (short though hit would be) would be blogged about ad nauseum. I thought Eighty Days was a wonderful book and that Matthew Goodman did a great job of putting readers into the shoes of the two main characters and take them back in time.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted Sat Mar 16 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    Hcsa

    Oooooooojpfjvkvbnfdfodlclfipdiipfgigfyffjtephhgkbogygko kvk+!!!!!!!!jjjkopbbbhljjlkklvhkvdllxfv,bcvj,b,xz AXGDHDDJWDLDVVCXDCXX BV!XVXLVCSLLVV
    Xxccc
    Vbnm

    Adhmdhdhdjcvjdkrhcbkw,dejfkwdgslfc,fvhljcbshsfbshsjfkp nnn ndddccvbnbbnmvmcbvmmn,n,ggmxnxmv,bmc,v,bm




    Wrtuiiopporwurgfshkdaiuroguryiuooiiuyyytrttreeeqqwaass.ddfgghjghhgcdggkljjjjjjjjjkjjjjjjiclijlclvuvjdaljnmnm
    ,nbbihohpkcjpoogjpv c n xcbvhk cbzlncv bvhv j hvbbjvbcm mlgfeudugccg jvh jvj jbkbkbjbm,uooorrptototototyppotigigihurugotihfjgiflflgojiv kbfj k .pkvlllpp

    0 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted Tue Mar 26 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted Sat Mar 02 00:00:00 EST 2013

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted Thu Mar 14 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted Sat Mar 30 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted Mon Mar 11 00:00:00 EDT 2013

    No text was provided for this review.

Sort by: Showing all of 17 Customer Reviews
If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble
Why is this product inappropriate?
Comments (optional)