Date / Time
- March 4, 2025
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm - May 6, 2025
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm - June 10, 2025
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Registration
- Admission for The Republic of Letters is $30 per session. Members receive exclusive discounts on our programs and courses. Not a member? Learn more.
- This is an in-person program at The Rosenbach and at Carpenters’ Hall. Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email [email protected].
- This program is for those 18 and older.
- Registration opens for Delancey Society on August 16, for Rosenbach members on August 23, and for the general public on August 30.
The December 3rd, January 7th, February 4th, and March 4th sessions are now sold out.
Register for May 6 Session Register for June 10 Session
Description | Fall 2024 & Winter/Spring 2025 Season: The Founders, Revisited
If you love reading about American history, discussing it with fellow enthusiasts, and visiting iconic sites of our nation’s past right here in Philadelphia, then this new book club is for you! The Republic of Letters book club is co-sponsored by the Rosenbach and Carpenters’ Hall, where the First Continental Congress met in 1774.
Each book club meeting will feature a show-and-tell of historic rare books, manuscripts, and other artifacts connected to the session’s theme, as well as lively conversation about the month’s book of focus with fellow history buffs. Book discussions and object presentations will be led by staff of the Rosenbach and Carpenters’ Hall, including Michael Norris, Alyssa Constad, Emily Winters, and Alexander Lawrence Ames.
The book club’s first season is titled “The Founders, Revisited.” Inspired by rare books and manuscripts in the Rosenbach and Carpenters’ Hall collections, this season’s book club meetings will critically examine the contributions and complicated legacies of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Frederick Douglass, and Benjamin Rush.
Schedule
Please take note of the different locations for each event.
[SOLD OUT] December 3: Edmund Morgan, Benjamin Franklin, Yale University Press, 2002. (At the Rosenbach)
[SOLD OUT] January 7: Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Harper, 2005. (At the Rosenbach)
[SOLD OUT] February 4: Henry Wiencek, Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2003. (At Carpenters’ Hall)
[SOLD OUT] March 4: Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, Simon & Schuster, 2018. (At Carpenters’ Hall)
May 6: David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, Simon & Schuster, 2018. (At the Rosenbach)
June 10: Stephen Fried, Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father, Crown, 2019. (At the Rosenbach)
Book Purchase
The Rosenbach has partnered with The Head & The Hand (H&H Books) to supply copies of book club selections at reasonable prices. Order your books here: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-republic-of-letters-the-rosenbach-s-american-history-book-club. Learn more about H&H Books here: https://www.theheadandthehand.com/.
Book Club Facilitators
Alexander Lawrence Ames (he/him) is Director of Outreach & Engagement at the Rosenbach Museum & Library, and an historian of religious, intellectual, and cultural life in early America. He is the author of The Word in the Wilderness: Popular Piety and the Manuscript Arts in Early Pennsylvania (Penn State Press, 2020), Grolier Club Bookplates, Past & Present (The Grolier Club of New York, 2023), as well as numerous articles dealing with book-historical topics in journals including Winterthur Portfolio, Libraries: Culture, History, and Society, The Mennonite Quarterly Review, and Minnesota History. His current book project is Ships of Reason: The Enlightenment of Stephen Girard and the Mariners Who Built His Merchant Empire. When not curating Rosenbach exhibitions or leading book club sessions, Alex enjoys visiting historic house museums and public gardens in the Philadelphia area.
Michael Norris (he/him), the Executive Director of Carpenters’ Hall, came of age in the mid-1970s and thus was fundamentally formed by the back-to-back impact of the Bicentennial, making him a self-professed history nerd, and “Star Wars” (there was no “A New Hope” back then). After begging his parents to take him to Mount Vernon, he had to settle for the American Freedom Train when it visited suburban Philadelphia. While he has since been to Mount Vernon, he’s still bitter. When not overseeing the operations of Carpenters’ Hall and the Carpenters’ Company, he’s reading American history, dreaming up travel plans or bingeing “Peaky Blinders.”
Alyssa Constad (she/her) is the Assistant Director at Carpenters’ Hall where she oversees the historic collections and excels at complaining when the air conditioning is not working. Alyssa has loved history since she was a child, but she knew she was destined for a career in museums when she fell in love with giving historic tours on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and instructing tourists on where to find the best pickles and knishes. The mom of a two-year-old, Alyssa no longer has hobbies, as all of her free time is spent cleaning up toys or watching Bluey, but when she’s able, she enjoys running and getting lost in a good historical fiction read. Alyssa currently lives in Manayunk with her husband, daughter, and 100 pound goldendoodle who often complains about the amount of hills they have to walk up.
Emily Winters (she/her) is the Operations Manager/ Development Associate at Carpenters’ Hall by day and a rambling poet by night. Emily recently graduated Rutgers Camden with a master’s degree in history. She was raised in a small (no stoplight) town in South Jersey and continues to live in Camden County, New Jersey. When not learning how to play the violin and reading anything she can get her hands on, she enjoys late-night dessert runs with friends and getting lost in the woods.
Date / Time
- March 4, 2025
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm - May 6, 2025
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm - June 10, 2025
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm