Save the Date! The 2019 Warren A. Sawyer Annual Lecture to be held November 6, 2019

The Waring Historical Library will host its annual Warren A. Sawyer Lecture on Wednesday, November 6, 2019, featuring historian Victoria Johnson, Ph.D. The illustrated lecture will feature her new book, American Eden, which both The Wall Street Journal and Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton) have called "captivating." American Eden, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2018 and a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in Nonfiction, the 2018 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography, and the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History.

When Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr met on a dueling ground in July 1804, they chose the same attending physician: David Hosack. Family doctor and friend to both men, Hosack is today a shadowy figure at the edge of a famous duel, the great achievements of his life forgotten. But in 1801, on twenty acres of Manhattan farmland, Hosack founded the first public botanical garden in the new nation, amassing a spectacular collection of medicinal, agricultural, and ornamental plants that brought him worldwide praise. Hosack used his pioneering institution to train the next generation of American doctors and naturalists and to conduct some of the first pharmacological research in the United States. Today, his former garden is the site of Rockefeller Center. 

Victoria Johnson is Associate Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY), where she teaches on philanthropy, nonprofits, and the history of New York City. She earned her undergraduate degree in philosophy from Yale in 1991 and her Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia in 2002. Before joining Hunter College, she taught for thirteen years at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The lecture will be held at 5:15PM in the Medical University of South Carolina's Drug Discovery Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.