Intellectual History Event: John Brown May 2, 2005

Please join us for a special event on Monday, May 2:
David S. Reynolds presents his new book JOHN BROWN, ABOLITIONIST: THE MAN WHO KILLED SLAVERY, SPARKED THE CIVIL WAR, AND SEEDED CIVIL RIGHTS (Knopf)

Talk, Q & A, Book Signing
Date & Time: Monday, May 2, 7:30 p.m.
Location: Upper West Side Barnes & Noble, 2289 Broadway (& 82nd St.), 212-362-8835

About the Book:
In this age of terrorism, few historical figures are as intriguing as John Brown, the controversial Abolitionist who used terrorist tactics against slavery and single-handedly changed the course of American history. This brilliant biography of Brown (1800?1859) by the prize-winning critic and cultural biographer David S. Reynolds brings to life the Puritan warrior who gripped slavery by the throat and triggered the Civil War.

About the Author:
David S. Reynolds is Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at the Graduate Center and Baruch College of the City University of New York. He is the author of Walt Whitman?s America, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and of Beneath the American Renaissance, which won Phi Beta Kappa?s Christian Gauss Award. His other works include Faith in Fiction: The Emergence of Religious Literature in America, Walt Whitman, George Lippard, and five edited or coedited volumes.

?It takes courage to argue, as David S. Reynolds does in his absorbing new biography, ?John Brown, Abolitionist,? that Brown was not the Unabomber of his time, but a reasonable man, well connected to his era?s intellectual currents and a salutary force for change.?
--Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times Book Review

Almost every page forces you to think hard, and in new ways, about American violence, American history, and what used to be called the American character.
-Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

Reynolds is that rarest of writers - a distinguished professor who knows how to write well and who successfully presents a life-size image of Brown.
--Brian Richard Boylan, The Denver Post

Reynolds succeeds admirably in showing that Brown, far from being a crazed fanatic, was a serious legatee of the English and American revolutions who anticipated the Emancipation Proclamation and all that has ensued from it.
-- Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic Monthly

For further information, including reviews, see the book?s website:
http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/catalog/display.pperl?0375411887