Eighty Days

 

Shirley J.       Adult Non-Fiction             Women newspaper reporters taking the Jules Verne challenge on

Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World                         by Matthew Goodman      496 pages

Female newspaper reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's World newspaper in New York, Nellie Bly pitched a story idea to her editor, that she would take on Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days adventure and that she would do it in less than 80 days!  At first the idea floundered but then the powers that be in the World's offices decided what a great advertisement for the paper it would be.  Why they would increase circulation following her adventures as she wrote about them and submitted ongoing articles along the way.  The idea proved so successful that the Cosmopolitan magazine decided to launch its own adventurous female to sensationalize the trip and increase sales magazines by racing against Nellie Bly to try to beat her to go around the world the fastest.  The reporter for the Cosmopolitan was coerced into doing it.   The reporter was refined Elizabeth Bisland, a daughter of southern wealth who had no desire to make the trip nor compete but was eventually persuaded to do so.  Nellie Bly loved the idea of sensational journalism, a girl who had come up in Pennsylvania's coal country, scrappy and competitive with enough guts to go up against the male dominated field of newspaper reporting and willing to do whatever it took to come up with great investigative reports.  (ie. she went undercover and disguised every chance she got to expose political corruption and ill treatment of the poor.)  Two very different ladies each going in opposite directions, one going west the other east to become the first woman to travel completely around the world and do it in less time than it took the fiction character Phileas Fogg in the book "Around the World in 80 Days" by French author, Jules Verne.   An excellent fast paced true historical adventure that will please most any reader I think.   I would recommend this book to middle schoolers on up.   Well written an enjoyable read.