News Release

06/09/08
Providence Public Library Announces New History High Jinks Book Club at Central Library!

Are we doomed to repeat the past? Come find out! Join Providence Public Library’s latest new book club beginning in July! The club will meet the first Monday of each month at 6:30 pm beginning July 7, and continuing August 4 and September 8 at Central Library, 150 Empire Street, (Barnard Room, 3rd Floor). To register & reserve your books, call or email leader Nancy Callanan: 401-787-4152; nancycallanan@cox.net.

July 7: His Excellency George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis.

In this landmark biography of our first president, Joseph J. Ellis brings the exacting scholarship, shrewd analysis, and lyric prose that have made him one of the premier historians of the Revolutionary era. Training his lens on a figure who sometimes seems as remote as his effigy on Mt. Rushmore, Ellis assesses George Washington as a military and political leader and a man whose “statue-like solidity” concealed volcanic energies and emotions.

August 4: Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick.

Philbrick became an internationally renowned author with his National Book Award-winning In the Heart of the Sea, hailed as “spellbinding” by Time magazine. In Mayflower, Philbrick casts his spell again, giving us a fresh and extraordinarily vivid account of our most sacred national myth: the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. From the Mayflower’s arduous Atlantic crossing to the eruption of King Philip’s War between colonists and natives decades later, Philbrick reveals in this electrifying history of the Pilgrims a 55-year epic, both tragic and heroic, that still resonates with us today.

September 8: Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank

Slavery in the South has been documented in volumes ranging from exhaustive histories to bestselling novels. But the North’s profit from-indeed, dependence on-slavery has mostly been a shameful and well-kept secret . . . until now. In this startling and superbly researched new book, three veteran New England journalists demythologize the region of America known for tolerance and liberation, revealing a place where thousands of people were held in bondage and slavery was both an economic dynamo and a necessary way of life.

Providence Public Library is committed to providing quality programming on a variety of educational topics. The views and opinions expressed therein are those of the individual presenters and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the Library. We welcome community members to work with us to provide free, thought-provoking events of interest.