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Marietta College alumna pens book

A Marietta College graduate has written a book released this week about Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, a trailblazing journalist who took to the road writing about the world for readers back home.

"Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington's Cherry Trees" by Diana P. Parsell is about Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, 1856-1928, who became the Forrest Gump of her day, bearing witness to important events and hobnobbing with famous people like John Muir, Alexander Graham Bell and First Lady Helen Taft.

By her mid-20s, Scidmore had visited more places than most people would see in a lifetime. By the end of the nineteenth century, her travels were so legendary she was introduced at a meeting in London as "Miss Scidmore, of everywhere."

The book is the first biography of the pioneering woman journalist who fought to bring the Japanese cherry trees to Washington.

Parsell is a former journalist and science writer who has worked for publications including National Geographic and The Washington Post and for science organizations in Washington and Southeast Asia.

A native of Ohio, Parsells graduated from Marietta College and has master's degrees from the University of Missouri and Johns Hopkins University. Her major awards include a Mayborn Fellowship in Biography and the 2017 Hazel Rowley Prize from Biographers International Organization.

Scidmore helped popularize Alaska tourism, then lent her voice to the burgeoning U.S. conservation movement and educated readers about Japan and other places in the Far East. At the early National Geographic, she made a lasting mark as the first woman elected to its board in 1892 and to have photographs in the magazine. Her story has strong international elements, as she authored books on Alaska, Japan, Java, China, and India, and a novel based on the Russo-Japanese War.

In her best-known legacy, Scidmore carried home from Japan an idea that helped shape the landscape of modern Washington. She initiated the idea of planting cherry trees in a newly created park built on a former mud bank along the Potomac River.

In this deeply researched and briskly written biography, author Diana Parsell draws heavily on Scidmore's own writings to follow major events of a half-century ago as seen through the eyes of a remarkable woman who was well ahead of her time.

Advance reviewers have praised the book for its revelations.

"At last, the bold and adventurous Eliza Scidmore has the biography she deserves," Amy Stewart, New York Times best-selling author of "The Drunken Botanist" and the "Kopps Sister Series."

Cathy Newman, author of "Women Photographers at National Geographic," said the book will elevate Scidmore to "the canon of women explorers like Gertrude Bell and Nellie Bly."

"Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington's Cherry Trees" was published by Oxford University Press. It was released on March 1.

The book is available from Oxford University Press, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Politics & Prose and Amazon. Use code AAFLYG6 for a 30% discount when purchasing direct from Oxford University Press.

It is $32.95 on Amazon and is more than 400 pages with illustrations.