Thursday, August 29, 2013

Two Free Book Talks in September

For Immediate Release
Aug. 28, 2013
NR#076
Contact: Patty Prince
703-257-8456 or 703-895-6535

Two Free Book Talks in September

City of Manassas, VA . . . In September, the Manassas Museum will host two free Book Talks, one on Sept. 8 and the other on Sept. 29. Both talks will be held at 2 p.m. at the Manassas Museum and are free to the public.

The first talk, on Sept. 8, features author and former Washington Post reporter Peter Carlson speaking about hislatest book Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy. This absorbing and somewhat humorous tale chronicles the unbelievable, but true adventures of New York Tribune Civil War correspondents Junius Browne and Albert Richardson. While trying to report on the war, the two were captured during the Battle of Vicksburg.

They suffered in multiple prisons, encountered a pirate and a secret society called the "Heroes of America." They then escaped over snowy mountains with the help of sympathetic southerners and slaves.

Carlson started writing and publishing newspapers when he was nine-years-old. He eventually found his way to the Boston Herald American, People magazine and The Washington Post, where he wrote features and columns for 22 years.

The second free Book Talk, on Sept. 29, features author Andrew Carroll who will discuss how his book, Here Is Where, grew out of a volunteer initiative to find and spotlight unmarked historic sites.

Before writing this book, Carroll trekked to every region of the country by car, train, plane, helicopter, bus, bike, kayak, and foot, seeking what he calls the "hidden history" that is all around us. His trek included Mound City, Arkansas, where a Civil War-era maritime disaster occurred that claimed more lives than theTitanic; the Paisley Five Point Caves, Oregon, where the oldest human DNA in America was discovered; Saluda, Virginia, where an African-American woman was jailed after refusing to give up her seat on a Greyhound bus, prompting a U.S. Supreme Court desegregation case-more than 10 years before Rosa Parks' arrest; and Rigby, Idaho, where a 14-year-old farm boy had a brainstorm that led to the invention of the television.

Andrew Carroll is the editor of several New YorkTimes bestsellers, including War Letters, which inspired the critically acclaimed PBS documentary of thesame name, and the Grammy-nominated audio version of the book. Andrew was the co-founder, with the late Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky, of the American Poetry & Literacy Project, which distributed free poetry books throughout the U.S.

Both books, Junius and Albert's Adventures in the Confederacy and Here is Where, are available at Echoes, The Manassas Museum Store at www.manassasmuseum.org<http://www.manassasmuseu.org>.

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