Booked for Lunch: “The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights” by Dorothy Wickenden

-

Join the Next Booked for Lunch Book Talk on Zoom!

Looking for a great read, something engaging and informative? The Wilton Historical Society hosts a lunch time book discussion group that focuses on history.  We welcome one and all!

The Agitators chronicles the revolutionary activities of Harriet Tubman, Frances Seward, and Martha Wright: three unlikely collaborators in the quest for abolition and women’s rights, as told by the author of the New York Times bestseller Nothing Daunted.

From the intimate perspective of three friends and neighbors in mid-nineteenth century Auburn, New York—the “agitators” of the title—acclaimed author Dorothy Wickenden tells the fascinating and crucially American stories of abolition, the Underground Railroad, the early women’s rights movement, and the Civil War.  Ms. Wickenden will join the Wilton Historical Society’s  Booked for Lunch series on Zoom on Thursday, June 3 from 12:30 – 1:30.

Beginning two decades before the Civil War, when Harriet Tubman was still enslaved and Martha and Frances were young women bound by law and tradition, The Agitators ends two decades after the war, in a radically changed United States. Wickenden brings this extraordinary period of our history to life through the richly detailed letters her characters wrote several times a week. Like Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals and David McCullough’s John Adams, Wickenden’s The Agitators is revelatory, riveting, and profoundly relevant to our own time.

Praise for The Agitators

“An epic and intimate history. . . . Wickenden’s commitment to keeping her trio in the frame and in focus showcases prodigious narrative control. The Agitators is a masterpiece, not least, of structure. . . . . Entwining these three asymmetrical lives as deftly as Wickenden does proves illuminating.”
—Jane Kamensky, New York Times Book Review

“Absorbing and richly rewarding . . . . [Wickenden] traces the Auburn women’s lives with intelligence, compassion, and verve . . . [and her] assessment of the era leading up to the Civil War will resonate with readers in our own fractious era.”
—Melanie Kirkpatrick, Wall Street Journal

About the Author:
Dorothy Wickenden is the author of Nothing Daunted and The Agitators, and has been the executive editor of The New Yorker since January 1996. She also writes for the magazine and is the moderator of its weekly podcast The Political Scene.  A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, Wickenden was national affairs editor at Newsweek from 1993-1995, and before that was the longtime executive editor at The New Republic. She lives with her husband in Westchester, New York.

Suggested contribution $10.00

Donate Here

Registration essential.  Register by email: info@wiltonhistorical.org

After you register, you will receive a confirmation, Zoom session ID Code, and instructions about how to submit questions.