NEWPORT, R.I – Ocean Drive is one of the most significant picturesque landscapes in America. Recent research has revealed just how important this historic place is in our nation’s landscape history. This lecture will focus on the layout of the Drive itself, the masterful development of the entire district in the late 19th century, its comparison with similar picturesque sites, and how critics of the time responded to the planning of the area. Starts at 11 a.m. Admission free to Preservation Society members, general admission $5. Advance registration requested.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Gordon S. Wood will speak at the Redwood Library
NEWPORT, R.I. – The Redwood Library will host acclaimed author and Brown University scholar Gordon S. Wood to preview his new book, Empire of Liberty on Tuesday, Oct. 7.
Wood’s many books on early American history have been awarded the Pulitzer, the Bancroft Prize, the John H. Dunning Prize, and the Julia Ward Howe Prize of the Boston Authors Club among many others. He reviews in the New York Review of Books and The New Republic, is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and has been inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame. He is emeritus at Brown.
Reservations are required for seating in the Harrison Room. Contact 847-0295, ext. 113. Members will be admitted for free; non-members will be charged $10 per adult. Those who join at the door will be admitted for free.
As Wood reveals, the period was marked by tumultuous change in all aspects of American life—in politics, society, economy, and culture. The men who founded the new government had high hopes for the future, but few of their hopes and dreams worked out quite as they expected. They hated political parties, but parties nonetheless emerged. Some wanted the United States to become a great fiscal-military state like those of Britain and France; others wanted the country to remain a rural agricultural state very different from European states. Instead, by 1815 the United States became something neither group anticipated. Many leaders expected American culture to flourish and surpass that of Europe; instead it became popularized and vulgarized. The leaders also hope to see the end of slavery; instead, despite the release of many slaves and the end of slavery in the North, slavery was stronger in 1815 than it had been in 1789. Many wanted to avoid entanglements with Europe, but instead the country became involved in Europe’s wars and ended up waging another war with the former mother country. Still, with a new generation emerging by 1815, most Americans were confident and optimistic about the future of their country.
Integrating all aspects of life, from politics and law to the economy and culture, Empire of Liberty offers a marvelous account of this pivotal era when America took its first unsteady steps as a new and rapidly expanding nation.
Gordon S. Wood is Alva O. Way University Professor Emeritus at Brown University. His books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution, the Bancroft Prize-winning The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, and The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History. He writes frequently for The New York Review of Books and The New Republic.
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Newport, RI
