The first meeting of the Washington Crossing Historic Park Book Club will be led by museum curator Kimberly McCarty on Monday, May 21 at 5:30 PM in the park the Visitor Center.
The club, open to all comers, will meet at 5:30 PM on the third Monday of each month starting May 21. To register, please call 215-493-4076.
First up: David Hackett Fischer’s Washington’s Crossing (2004, Oxford University Press), which The New York Times describes as “a highly realistic and wonderfully readable narrative” of the moment famously depicted in the Emmanuel Leutze painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware. The book “corrects all the inaccuracies in the Leutze painting but preserves the overarching sense of drama.”
To make the club and the 564-page book more accessible, McCarty plans to discuss the book in easier-to-digest portions rather than all at once. The first session will cover the first 65 pages. Subsequent sessions will dive deeper until the book’s completion. Participants should provide their own books.
“I don’t want anyone to be intimidated by this book,” McCarty says. “By breaking it down, I’m hoping more people will feel comfortable discussing it and join in the discussion at any time.”
Her greater goal for the club is that the featured books will “challenge our preconceived notions of events that happened here at the park and about 18th-century life.”
