History Lovers! This book club is for you! Each season we select a book for our first meeting to read together that covers a theme or time period of history. For our second meeting, we read from a list of books around the topic of the first book.
For September, we will be reading 1774: the long year of Revolution by Mary Beth Norton. Just stop by the Reference Desk to register and pick up a copy.
For October, we will read from a list of books about the American Revolutionary period and will meet on Monday, October 28 pm on Zoom.
About 1774:
In this original and important book, Mary Beth Norton’s first in more than fifteen years, she looks at the sixteen months during which the traditional loyalists to King George III began their discordant ‘discussions’ that led to their acceptance of the inevitability of war against the British Empire and to the clashes at Lexington and Concord in mid-April, 1775.
Drawing extensively on pamphlets, newspapers, and personal correspondence, Norton reconstructs colonial political discourse as it happened, showing the vigorous campaign mounted by conservatives criticizing congressional actions. But by then it was too late. In early 1775, governors throughout the colonies informed colonial officials in London that they were unable to thwart the increasing power of the committees and their allied provincial congresses. Although the Declaration of Independence would not be formally adopted until July 1776, Americans, even before the outbreak of war in April 1775, had in effect “declared independence” by obeying the decrees of their new provincial governments rather than colonial officials.
