Harvard Book Store Presents:

Stacy Schiff

presenting

The Revolutionary:
Samuel Adams

Harvard Book Store welcomes Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer STACY SCHIFF for a discussion of her highly anticipated new book, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams. She will be joined in conversation by writer and historian CATHERINE GRACE KATZ.

A Return to In-Person Events

Harvard Book Store is excited to be back to in-person programming. To ensure the safety and comfort of everyone in attendance, the following Covid-19 safety protocols will be in place at all of our Brattle Theatre events until further notice.

• Face coverings are required of all staff and attendees when inside the venue. Masks must snugly cover nose and mouth. At venues where refreshments are served, attendees may briefly unmask when actively eating or drinking.
• Attendance is capped so as to allow for some social distancing in the venue.

For the time being, we will not be holding author signings at these events, in order to limit close contact. When possible, we will have pre-signed books available for purchase on-site.

Ticketing

There are two ticket options available for this event.

Book-Included Ticket: Includes admission for one and one hardcover copy of The Revolutionary.

Admission-Only Ticket: Includes admission for one.

About The Revolutionary

Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, “Samuel Adams was the man.” John Adams thought his cousin “the most sagacious politician” of all. With high-minded ideals and bare-knuckle tactics, Adams led what could be called the greatest campaign of civil resistance in American history.

Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Stacy Schiff returns Adams to his seat of glory, introducing us to the shrewd, eloquent, and intensely disciplined man who supplied the moral backbone of the American Revolution. A singular figure at a sin- gular moment, Adams packaged and amplified the Boston Massacre. He helped to mastermind the Boston Tea Party. He employed every tool in an innovative arsenal to rally a town, a colony, and eventually a band of colonies behind him, creating the cause that created a country. For his efforts he became the most wanted man in America: When Paul Revere rode to Lexington in 1775, it was to warn Samuel Adams that he was about to be arrested for treason.

In The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Stacy Schiff brings her masterful skills to Adams’s improbable life, illuminating his transformation from aimless son of a well-off family to tireless, beguiling radical who mobilized the colonies. Arresting, original, and deliriously dramatic, this is a long-overdue chapter in the history of our nation.

Praise for The Revolutionary

“With incomparable wit, grace, and insight, Stacy Schiff narrates the birth of the American Revolution in Boston and the artful, elusive magician who made it all happen: Samuel Adams. For too long, Adams, hiding behind his many masks and stratagems, has evaded historians, but Schiff draws him from the shadows into the spotlight he so richly deserves. A glorious book that is as entertaining as it is vitally important. This is a time for Americans to meditate on the fate of their republic and no better place to start than here, at the beginning, with this book.” ―Ron Chernow

Catherine Grace Katz

Catherine Grace Katz is a writer and historian from Chicago. She graduated from Harvard in 2013 with a BA in History and received her MPhil in Modern European History from Christ’s College, University of Cambridge in 2014, where she wrote her dissertation on the origins of modern counterintelligence practices. After graduating, Catherine worked in finance in New York City before a very fortuitous visit to the book store in the lobby of her office in Manhattan led her to return to history and writing. She is currently pursuing her JD at Harvard Law School. The Daughters of Yalta is her first book.

Photo Credit: Nina Subin

Stacy Schiff

Stacy Schiff is the author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), for which she won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. She is as well the author of Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize. Her most recent books, Cleopatra: A Life and The Witches: Salem, 1692, have been number one bestsellers. Among other honors, Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she was named a 2019 Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

Photo Credit: Elena Siebert