Library Events & Programs

The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 is a fascinating examination of riveting narrative covering the middle years of the Revolution.

A book signing and reception with complimentary beer, wine, and hors-d'oeuvres will take place after the lecture. 

This event is the second in the 2025 Michelle Smith Lecture Series. 

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Bring your lunch and learn about Library Fellow Dillon L. Streifeneder's research project, Revolution, War, and the Forging of a Vigorous Government. Using the resources at the George Washington Presidential Library, Streifeneder is continuing his research on day-to-day experiences of governance and efforts to develop institutional structures needed to wage war. 

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Hear from historians Adam Jortner, Lincoln Mullen, and John G. Turner about George Washington, citizenship, and the Jewish community in America.

Adam Jortner is the author of A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom. Lincoln Mullen and John G. Turner are co-authors of the podcast Antisemitism, U.S.A.

Attendees will have the opportunity to submit questions and have their books signed.

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Bring your lunch and learn about Library Fellow Steven Krug's research project, “An Entire Revolution in Fortune”: Wealth, Risk, and Crisis in the Post-Revolutionary Virginia Plantation Economy. 

Using the resources at the George Washington Presidential Library, Krug is researching how Virginia planters construed the altered economic landscape of the new, post-Revolutionary world and how risk and uncertainty influenced their business mindset.

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Join us for lunch and a captivating discussion with Library of Congress editors, Susan Reyburn and Zach Klitzman, who will discuss their new book and exhibition catalog, The Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution. 

In this visually compelling publication, Reyburn and Klitzman explore the parallel lives of General George Washington and King George III. 

This event is part of the Washington Library's Lunch at the Library series. Lunch will be provided.

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On Character offers an inspiring roadmap for personal growth and integrity—a call to become our best selves, both as individuals and as Americans.

A book signing and reception with complimentary beer, wine, and hors-d'oeuvres will take place after the lecture. 

This event is the third in the 2025 Michelle Smith Lecture Series. 

Register 

Join leading voices in the fields of history, horticulture, and landscape design as they explore revolutionary methods for stewarding gardens and landscapes in the face of environmental challenges. 

Join us for lunch and a compelling discussion with Adriano Aymonino, editor of Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900. 

In this revised and amplified edition of the book, Aymonino and his co-editor, Eloisa Dodero, significantly update and expand this 1981 classic of art history.

This event is part of the Washington Library's Lunch at the Library series. Lunch will be provided.

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Bring your lunch and learn about Library Fellow David Marsich's research project, Relating to the Republic: Representative-Constituent Relationships in the Early United States, 1794-1844. Using the resources at the George Washington Presidential Library, Marsich is researching accounts about Congressmen in office and as candidates along with writings that suggest how people thought about representation more broadly.

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Hear from historian Zara Anishanslin, author of The Painter's Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution.

Told through the lives of three remarkable artists devoted to the pursuit of liberty, this book tells an illuminating new history of the ideals that fired the American Revolution.

Attendees will have the opportunity to submit questions and have their books signed.

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Bring your lunch and learn about Library Fellow Kieran J. O'Keefe's research project, Horatio Gates and the Pursuit of a Republican Revolution. Using the resources at the George Washington Presidential Library, O'Keefe is working on his biography of Horatio Gate which aims to take a fresh look at Gate's life and contributions to American independence.

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Bring your lunch and learn about Library Fellow Cody E. Nager's research project, Determined to be American: Regulating Migration and Citizenship in the Early American Republic, 1783–1815. Using the resources at the George Washington Presidential Library, Nager is conducting research on migration politics during the Washington Administration.

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Bring your lunch and learn about Library Fellow Greg Brooking's research project, Henry Laurens: A Southern Founder. Using the resources at the George Washington Presidential Library, Brooking is researching the personal and public life of 
Henry Laurens.

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Bring your lunch and learn about Library Fellow Ryan P. Langton's research project, Negotiating the Endless Mountains: Networked Diplomacy along the Eighteenth-Century Trans-Appalachian Frontier. At the George Washington Presidential Library, Gordon is drawing upon the library's manuscript and map collections to chart the personal networks that shaped cross-cultural diplomacy around the Ohio Valley during and after the Seven Years' War.

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Bring your lunch and learn about Library Fellow Richard Bell's research project, America’s Birth Certificate: The Declaration of Independence. 

Using the resources at the George Washington Presidential Library, Bell is continuing research for his upcoming book, The American Revolution and the Fate of the World which reframes America's war of independence as a transformative international event. 

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Join us for lunch and a compelling discussion with Jamie L. Brummitt, author of Protestant Relics in Early America. In this book Brummitt chronicles how American Protestants cultivated a lively relic culture centered around collecting supernatural memory objects associated with dead Christian leaders, family members, and friends. 

This event is part of the Washington Library's Lunch at the Library series. Lunch will be provided.

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Hear from historian Kostya Kennedy, author of The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America.

Timed for the 250th anniversary of one of America’s most famous founding events: Paul Revere’s heroic ride, newly told with fresh research into little-known aspects of the story Americans have heard since childhood but hardly understood.

Attendees will have the opportunity to submit questions and have their books signed.

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Bring your lunch and learn about Library Fellow Laura Clerx's research project, Nature's Properties: Science and Commerce in Early America, 1780-1850. Using the resources at the George Washington Presidential Library, Clerx is researching the meeting of scientific knowledge and early republic economic realities in the papers of the 1785 Potomac Navigation Company founded by Washington.

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Hear from historian Joseph J. Ellis, author of The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding, a daring and important work that ultimately reckons with the two great failures of America’s founding: the failure to end slavery and the failure to avoid Indian removal.

Attendees will have the opportunity to submit questions and have their books signed.

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