All are invited to join us for EHS’s Connecticut History Book Club. Offered in collaboration with Essex Library and Ivoryton Library, EHS hosts this quarterly book club to explore the state's past through both fiction and non-fiction works, highlighting key events, figures, and themes that shaped the state or played a larger role in America’s history. We will focus on works that illuminate the bring marginalized stories to the forefront, offering a deeper understanding of Connecticut's diverse history. Join us for insightful discussions that connect the past to the present, revealing the histories that shaped our state.
Please join us at Hills Academy (22 Prospect Street-parking and entrance in rear) for a book discussion lead by EHS Director, Melissa Josefiak. This event is FREE and lite refreshments will be provided. Register below!
For February we are reading Washington's Spies: the Story of America’s First Spy Ring by Alexander Rose. Alexander Rose has a doctorate in history from Cambridge. His second book, Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring, has since been used as the basis for the AMC drama series, Turn: Washington's Spies, on which Rose served as writer/producer.
Book description from the author: “In the summer of 1778, General George Washington desperately needed to know where the British would strike next. To that end, he unleashed his secret weapon: an unlikely ring of spies in New York, Long Island, and Connecticut charged with discovering the enemy’s battle plans and military strategy.
Washington’s small band included a young Quaker torn between political principle and family loyalty, a swashbuckling sailor addicted to the perils of espionage, a hard-drinking barkeep, a Yale-educated cavalryman and friend of the doomed Nathan Hale, and a peaceful, sickly farmer who begged Washington to let him retire but who always came through in the end. Personally guiding these brave, flawed, everyday heroes was Washington himself.
In an era when gentlemen were officers, and gentlemen didn’t spy, he possessed an extraordinary talent for deception — and proved an adept spymaster.
The men he mentored were dubbed the Culper Ring. The British secret service tried to hunt them down, but they escaped by the closest of shaves thanks to their ciphers, dead drops, and invisible ink. Washington’s Spies tells the unknown story of the Revolution — one encompassing the murderous intelligence war, the gunrunning, the kidnappings, and the defections — that has never appeared in the history books. But the book is also a spirited, touching account of friendship and trust, fear and betrayal, amid the dark and silent world of the spy.” (alexrose.com)