Calendar of Events
Note: Meetings are usually held on the second Sunday of each month, September through May, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Currently we are meeting via Zoom, but in-person meetings are held at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Services Center, 4805 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda, Maryland, and occasionally at other venues. The meetings are open to anyone. However, certain meetings may require a fee.
American Eden: David Hosack, Botany and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic
Speaker: Victoria Johnson
New York
Via Zoom
(Members will receive a link and passcode.)
Speaker Bio
Victoria Johnson is Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College of the City University of New York. She earned her undergraduate degree in philosophy from Yale in 1991 and her Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia in 2002.
Victoria’s most recent book, American Eden, is a biography of the charismatic and brilliant doctor and medical botanist David Hosack (1769-1835). When American Eden was published in 2018, it received rave reviews in the national media and led to an ongoing book tour that has so far included 150 appearances in the United States and the United Kingdom. Both the Wall Street Journal and Ron Chernow (author of Alexander Hamilton) called American Eden “captivating.” The New York Times named it one of its 100 Notable Books of 2018. American Eden was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in Nonfiction and the 2018 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography, and it was one of the two finalists for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History.
More information about Victoria and her book is available at americaneden.org.
Talk Description
This lively, illustrated lecture by historian Victoria Johnson features her latest book, American Eden. When Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr met on a dueling ground in July 1804, they chose the same attending physician: David Hosack. Family doctor and friend to both men, Hosack is today a shadowy figure at the edge of a famous duel, the great achievements of his life forgotten. But in 1801, on twenty acres of Manhattan farmland, Hosack founded the first public botanical garden in the new nation, amassing a spectacular collection of medicinal, agricultural, and ornamental plants that brought him worldwide praise from the likes of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Sir Joseph Banks, and Alexander von Humboldt. Today, his pioneering botanical garden is the site of one of the most iconic urban spaces in the world: Rockefeller Center.