A Colorado prize for a story about Mars

The 2026 Colorado Book Awards are a program of Colorado Humanities, and this year's History prize went to a book about Mars. The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America, by David Baron, was named the 2026 winner in History. It was published by Liveright, an imprint of W.W. Norton.

This is a Book Spotlight, not a review. No one at Centennial Pulse has read the book for this piece. Instead, it covers what the award listing says, what the book sets out to do, and why it might suit your nightstand this November.

What the subtitle promises

A good subtitle works like a table of contents, and this one makes three clear promises.

"The True Story." This is nonfiction. The aliens are the subject, not the characters, and the drama comes from what real people believed.

"An Alien Craze." The word craze points past one lone stargazer at a telescope. It suggests a public enthusiasm that caught on and spread.

"Turn-of-the-Century America." The setting is the years around 1900. That is more than a century before orbiters and rovers sent back close-up pictures of the planet.

Taken together, the book seems to be asking how a whole country got swept up in the idea of life on another world, and what that says about the people doing the believing. A Colorado Book Award jury chose it over two other finalists, so the history side of the story is clearly more than a novelty act.

Who it suits

Going by its own description, The Martians is likely to appeal to:

Narrative history readers who like the past told through a single, specific obsession.

Space and astronomy fans curious about how people imagined Mars long before anyone could check.

Anyone interested in how ideas spread, from fads to rumors to things "everybody knows." A story about a public craze from 1900 may feel surprisingly familiar in a feed-driven age.

If you want a sweeping survey of planetary science, the subtitle suggests this isn't that book. It reads as a story about Americans, with Mars as the occasion.

The company it kept

The History category had a strong field. The other two finalists were The Devil's Own Purgatory by Robert H. Gudmestad and Making Sense of Slavery by Scott Spillman. Read as a set, the three finalists make a ready-made reading list for anyone who wants to work through this year's honored history titles.

If history isn't your mood as the evenings get dark early, the same awards page lists Stephen Graham Jones's The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (Saga Press) as a finalist in Mystery/Thriller/Horror. It's a very different kind of read from the same year's honorees.

Finding a copy

Centennial readers can search the Arapahoe Libraries catalog by title to check formats and place a hold. Local independent bookstores can usually order a title if they don't have it on the shelf. Giving them the full title and the publisher, Liveright/W.W. Norton, makes that easy.

One question to take into the book: what would you have believed about Mars in 1900, with only a newspaper and a night sky to go on?

Purchase The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America by David Baron on Amazon.

As an Amazon Associate, Centennial Pulse earns from qualifying purchases.