LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Filson Historical Society will host the Gertrude Polk Brown Lecture Series on Wednesday, June 22 at 6:00 p.m. at the Brown Theatre, featuring author Nathaniel Philbrick. Philbrick will discuss his new book, “Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy,” which argues for Washington’s unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing his journey as a new president through all thirteen former colonies, which were now an unsure nation.
When George Washington became president in 1789, the United States of America was still a loose and quarrelsome confederation and a tentative political experiment. Washington undertook a tour of the ex-colonies to talk to ordinary citizens about his new government, and to imbue in them the idea of being one thing—Americans.
In the fall of 2018, Nathaniel Philbrick embarked on his own journey into what Washington called “the infant woody country” to see for himself what America had become in the 229 years since. Writing in a thoughtful first person about his own adventures with his wife, Melissa, and their dog, Dora, Philbrick follows Washington’s presidential excursions: from Mount Vernon to the new capital in New York; a monthlong tour of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island; a venture onto Long Island and eventually across Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The narrative moves smoothly between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries as we see the country through both Washington’s and Philbrick’s eyes.
Written at a moment when America’s founding figures are under increasing scrutiny, Travels with George grapples bluntly and honestly with Washington’s legacy as a man of the people, a reluctant president, and a plantation owner who held people in slavery. At historic houses and landmarks, Philbrick reports on the reinterpretations at work as he meets reenactors, tour guides, and other keepers of history’s flame. He paints a picture of eighteenth-century America as divided and fraught as it is today, and he comes to understand how Washington compelled, enticed, stood up to, and listened to the many different people he met along the way—and how his all-consuming belief in the union helped to forge a nation.
Nathaniel Philbrick grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and earned a BA in English from Brown University and an MA in America Literature from Duke University, where he was a James B. Duke Fellow. He was Brown University’s first Intercollegiate All-American sailor in 1978, the same year he won the Sunfish North Americans in Barrington, Rhode Island. After working as an editor at Sailing World magazine, he wrote and edited several books about sailing, including “The Passionate Sailor,” “Second Wind,” and “Yaahting: A Parody.” In 2000, Philbrick published the “New York Times” bestseller “In the Heart of the Sea,” which won the National Book Award for nonfiction. The book is the basis of the Warner Bros. motion picture “Heart of the Sea,” directed by Ron Howard and starring Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson, Benjamin Walker, Ben Wishaw, and Tom Holland. The book also inspired a 2001 Dateline special on NBC as well as the 2010 two-hour PBS American Experience film “Into the Deep” by Ric Burns. Philbrick’s writing has appeared in “Vanity Fair,” “The New York Times Book Review,” “The Wall Street Journal,” the “Los Angeles Times,” and the “Boston Globe”. He has appeared on the “Today” show, “The Morning Show,” “Dateline,” PBS’s “American Experience”, C-SPAN, and NPR.
The Gertrude Polk Brown Lecture Series will be held on Wednesday, June 22 at 6:00 p.m. at the Brown Theatre, 315 W. Broadway, Louisville. Tickets are free for Filson members and $27.20 for non-members (taxes and fees included). Tickets for this event must be purchased from The Kentucky Center Ticket Service. Please call (502) 584-7777 or visit kentuckyperformingarts.org for tickets
Initiated in 1993 as a memorial to the life of Gertrude Polk Brown and made possible by the generous support of her children, Dace Brown Stubbs and G. Garvin Brown III. The Gertrude Polk Brown Lecture Series has brought both nationally and internationally recognized historians and journalists to Louisville, many of them Pulitzer Prize winners. Speakers are selected based on their overall excellence in research, writing, and speaking and are not restricted to historians. The Filson hosts up to five lectures per year in this series.
