Events & Calendars “American Radicals: How Nineteenth-Century Protest Shaped the Nation” with Holly Jackson

Holly Jackson, associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston, will read from her new book, American Radicals: How Nineteenth-Century Protest Shaped the Nation (Crown, 2019).
On July 4, 1826, as Americans lit firecrackers to celebrate the country’s 50th birthday, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were on their deathbeds. They would leave behind a groundbreaking political system and a growing economy—as well as the glaring inequalities that had undermined the American experiment from its beginning. The young nation had outlived the men who made it, but could it survive intensifying divisions over the very meaning of the land of the free?
“In the tradition of Howard Zinn’s people’s histories, American Radicals reveals a forgotten yet inspiring past.” —Megan Marshall, Pulitzer-Prize–winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast