The Palatine Wreck: The Legend of the New England Ghost Ship
New England is the land of history, some of which is still mysterious from lack of recorded information. For all history buffs out there, take note! Porter Square Books welcomes author JILL FARINELLI for a reading of her historical nonfiction book, The Palatine Wreck: The Legend of the New England Ghost Ship.
Two days after Christmas in 1738, a British merchant ship traveling from Rotterdam to Philadelphia grounded in a blizzard on the northern tip of Block Island, twelve miles off the Rhode Island coast. The ship carried emigrants from the Palatinate and its neighboring territories in what is now southwest Germany. The 105 passengers and crew on board—sick, frozen, and starving—were all that remained of the 340 men, women, and children who had left their homeland the previous spring. They now found themselves castaways.
Shortly after the wreck, rumors began to circulate that the passengers had been mistreated by the ship’s crew and by some of the islanders. The stories persisted, transforming over time as stories do and, in less than a hundred years, two terrifying versions of the event had emerged. In one account, the crew murdered the captain, extorted money from the passengers by prolonging the voyage and withholding food, then abandoned ship. In the other, the islanders lured the ship ashore with a false signal light, then murdered and robbed all on board. Some claimed the ship was set ablaze to hide evidence of these crimes, their stories fueled by reports of a fiery ghost ship first seen drifting in Block Island Sound on the one-year anniversary of the wreck. These tales became known as the legend of the Palatine, the name given to the ship in later years, when its original name had been long forgotten. The flaming apparition was nicknamed the Palatine Light.
This event is free and open to the public.
ELI FINKEL on the “All-or-Nothing Marriage”
If you think you know all there is to marriage, don’t be afraid to put that to the test. Brookline Booksmith welcomes ELI J. FINKEL, professor at Northwestern University, to read from and discuss his book The All-or-Nothing Marriage.
The institution of marriage in America is struggling, but— as FINKEL’s most recent research reveals— the best marriages today are better than the best marriages of earlier eras. FINKEL provides a sweeping historic overview, showing that the primary functions of marriage from 1620 to 1850 revolved around food, shelter, and protection from violence. From 1850 to 1965, the primary functions increasingly revolved around love, companionship, and sexual fulfillment. Nowadays, a new kind of marriage has emerged, one that can promote self-discovery, self-esteem, and personal growth like never before.
This event is free and open to the public.
ANDREA PITZER on One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps
Harvard Book Store and the Nieman Foundation welcome Nieman Storyboard founder ANDREA PITZER—author of The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov—for a discussion of her latest book, One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps.
In this harrowing work based on archival records and interviews during travel to four continents, PITZER reveals for the first time the chronological and geopolitical history of concentration camps. Beginning with 1890’s Cuba, she pinpoints concentration camps around the world and across decades. Often justified as a measure to protect a nation, or even the interned groups themselves, camps have instead served as brutal and dehumanizing sites that have claimed the lives of millions.
This event is not ticketed.
One Long Night will be on sale at the event for 20% off.
Journalist/author MICHAEL DEIBERT on the history of Haiti
Join Porter Square Books as they host MICHAEL DEIBERT for a reading of Haiti Will Not Perish.
In this moving and detailed history, MICHAEL DEIBERT, who has spent two decades reporting on Haiti, chronicles the heroic struggles of Haitians to build their longed-for country in the face of overwhelming odds. Based on years of interviews with Haitian political leaders, international diplomats, peasant advocates, gang leaders, and hundreds of ordinary Haitians, DEIBERT’s book provides a vivid, complex, and challenging analysis of Haiti’s recent history.
This event is not ticketed.
Travel writer DOUG MACK on “The Not-Quite States of America”
Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome travel writer DOUG MACK, author of Europe on Five Wrong Turns a Day, for a discussion of his latest book, The Not-Quite States of America: Dispatches from the Territories and Other Far-Flung Outposts of the USA.
The Not-Quite States of America is an entertaining account of the territories’ place in the USA, and it raises fascinating questions about the nature of empire. As MACK shows, the territories aren’t mere footnotes to American history; they are a crucial part of the story.
This event is co-sponsored with Mass Humanities.
This book will be for sale at the event for 20% off. There will also be a signing after the event.
No tickets required for attendance.
HILDA WERSCHKUL’s Reflections on Masterpieces
Harvard Book Store hosts School of Visual Arts professor HILDA WERSCHKUL for a discussion of her book, Experiences of Art: Reflections on Masterpieces.
Experiences of Art: Reflections on Masterpieces is a book that explores themes in the history of art through the insights of students. The book engages themes such as the origins of creativity in prehistoric art, the meaning and significance of the classical paradigm in art history since antiquity, the actual application of Renaissance art theory to an examination of famous masterpieces, an exploration of a new area of philosophical inquiry that reexamines the 18th century as both a period of rationalism and anti-rationalism (rather than the “Age of Reason”), and the tradition of individual subjectivity and expression in modern art reaching back to van Gogh.
This event is co-sponsored by Mass Humanities.
This book will be for sale at the event for 20% off. There will also be a signing after the event.
No tickets required for attendance.
Architect ROSALYN ELDER Explores the Historical Legacy of Massachusetts
Join Porter Square Books with nonfiction author ROSALYN ELDER to explore the history of 742 sites in 141 towns across Massachusetts in Exploring the Legacy.
ROSALYN D. ELDER is a registered architect and entrepreneur with a passion for the arts, architecture and cities, and history. ELDER founded and operated Treasured Legacy, an African American cultural boutique from 1992 to 1998 at Copley Place in Boston’s South End. She co-founded and operated Jamaicaway Books, a multi-cultural bookstore, in Jamaica Plain, MA.
In Exploring the Legacy, visit sites around the state that contain the histories of individuals such as: Onesimus, whose knowledge led to the development of inoculations to fight small pox in 1721; Belinda Royall, who filed the first successful reparations lawsuit in 1783; and Jan Matzeliger’s invention of a shoe lasting machine in 1883 which led to the mass production of shoes.
This event is not ticketed.
JAMES MCGRATH MORRIS on Hemingway and Dos Passos During WW1
Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities are joined by bestselling biographer JAMES MCGRATH MORRIS—author of the National Book Prize–winning Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, The First Lady of the Black Press and Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power—for a discussion of his latest book, The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War.
After meeting for the first time on the front lines of World War I, two aspiring writers forge an intense twenty-year friendship and write some of America’s greatest novels, giving voice to a “lost generation” shaken by war.
Eager to find his way in life and words, John Dos Passos first witnessed the horror of trench warfare in France as a volunteer ambulance driver retrieving the dead and seriously wounded from the front line. Later in the war, he briefly met another young writer, Ernest Hemingway, who was just arriving for his service in the ambulance corps.
This event is co-sponsored by Mass Humanities
This book will be for sale at the event for 20% off. There will also be a signing after the event.
No tickets required for attendance.
