AAS Member Jill Lepore will engage Jim Moran, the Society’s vice president for programs and outreach, in a wide-ranging conversation about the role of history in our civic life, educational systems, and public discourses. This conversation will also address the canon of Lepore’s work, including her most recent book, These Truths: A History of the United States, which was a New York Times Bestseller when published last fall.
For as long as women have battled for equitable political representation in America, those battles have been defined by images.
When the Worcester, Massachusetts, printer Isaiah Thomas (1749–1831) donated his collection of early American imprints to found the American Antiquarian Society, he did not include in that donation many books written for children. Yet Thomas was the foremost publisher of children’s literature in his time, and books addressed to child readers at school or at home generated at least a quarter of his press profits. Isaiah Thomas’s own accounts of his career always emphasized his experience as a printer’s apprentice, beginning to set type when he was only six years old.
In this talk, Richard Bell will discuss his new book, Stolen, a gripping and true story about five young, free black boys who were kidnapped in the North in 1825 and smuggled into slavery in the Deep South—and their daring attempt to escape and bring their captors to justice.
Join us for a thoughtful conversation with Nicholas A. Basbanes about this new book, Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Led by AAS Vice President for Programs and Outreach James David Moran, the conversation will explore Longfellow the poet—the public side—and Longfellow the consummate New Englander and family man—the private, personal side. How did Longfellow interact with the print culture of his day? What influence did his family life have on his poetry? How did national politics impact his work?
The 24-hour news cycle and the consumption of an endless variety of media seems to have reached its apex in recent months with COVID-19.The perpetual barrage of articles, memes, and debates taking place in both traditional and social media outlets—as well as consumers’ seeming inability to turn away from it—has led to the coining of a new term: “doomscrolling.” But before instant communication and digital technology made doomscrolling possible, how did people get information about epidemics and pandemics? Who was providing that information, for what purposes, and in what print mediums?
Although Americans today are concerned about the ever-increasing levels of wealth and income inequality, many continue to believe that their country was founded on a person’s right to acquire and control property.
Join Ashley Cataldo, AAS curator of manuscripts, and Meredith Neuman, associate professor at Clark University, for a lively presentation on early New England manuscript culture. Presenters will showcase a variety of genres, including diaries, correspondence, account books, deeds, sermon notes, notebooks, annotations, and more. They will explore other intriguing features of manuscripts from the period, including shorthand and curious preservation issues.
Artists can often provide a unique perspective on our understanding of the past, moving beyond an intellectual understanding of the facts and their meanings to an exploration of sensations and emotions.