Events

1-2pm ET

Register HERE

In The Best Land: Four Hundred Years of Love and Betrayal on Oneida Territory, Susan A. Brewer traces the history of a parcel of land in central New York and the stories of the two families—her own European settler family and the Mohawk/Oneida family of Polly Denny—who called it home. Her talk considers the struggle over land, tales of pioneer progress, and native dispossession. Although these two families lived as neighbors for centuries, they clashed over beliefs and practices regarding the land and its forests, streams, and soils.

Susan A. Brewer is the author of The Best Land: Four Hundred Years of Love and Betrayal on Oneida Territory (2024), Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq (2009), To Win the Peace: British Propaganda in the United States during World War II (1997), and co-editor with Richard H. Immerman and Douglas Little of Thinking Otherwise: How Walter LaFeber Explained the History of US Foreign Relations (2024). As professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point from 1990-2015, she taught American history and specialized in the history of US Foreign Relations. She now lives in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York.

7 pm

in person at FHS

and on Zoom

“Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future” with Daniel Lewis

FREE In-person tickets for the lecture, reception, and book signing are available HERE.

The world today is undergoing the most rapid environmental transformation in human history—from climate change to deforestation. Scientists, ethnobotanists, indigenous peoples, and collectives of all kinds are closely studying trees and their biology to understand how and why trees function individually and collectively in the ways they do. For his new book, Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future, historian Daniel Lewis went on a global journey to learn about twelve iconic trees in their habitats. In this talk, Lewis will reveal what he learned of nature and survival through them, including two trees found in North Carolina—the longleaf pine and bald cypress—and will share insights into the ways in which humans and trees are interconnected.

Daniel Lewis is the Dibner Senior Curator for the History of Science and Technology at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in Southern California, and a writer, college professor, and environmental historian. Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future was published by Simon and Schuster in March 2024.