May Flowers with (virtual) Book Talks 
Press Release · Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Washington, DC

The National Archives presents a veritable virtual garden of daytime author book talks this month on topics ranging from First Amendment rights to useless and surprising patents!

Suppressed: Confessions of a Former New York Times DC Correspondent
Thursday, May 6, at noon
Register in advance; watch the live stream on our YouTube Channel.
Millions around the world read the New York Times. But is the legendary publication truly objective? In Suppressed, former Times White House and investigative reporter Robert M. Smith takes readers behind the scenes to learn why some stories make it to print while others are ignored, how the filters work, and how the paper may have suppressed two important stories—the My Lai Massacre and Watergate. With candor and humor, Suppressed traces Smith’s arc from naïveté to cynicism.

Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier
Monday, May 10, at 5 p.m.
Register in advance; watch the live stream on our YouTube Channel
In Blood and Treasure, authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin tell the true saga of Daniel Boone and the bloody struggle for America's frontier, as told through the eyes of those who witnessed it. It is the mid-18th century, and in the 13 colonies founded by Great Britain, anxious colonists desperate to conquer and settle North America’s “First Frontier” beyond the Appalachian Mountains commence a series of bloody battles. These violent conflicts are waged against the Native American tribes whose lands they covet, the French, and finally against the mother country itself in an American Revolution.

Free Speech: And Why You Should Give a Damn
Thursday, May 13, at noon
Register in advance; watch the live stream on our YouTube Channel
In their brief but bracing book, Free Speech, historian Jonathan Zimmerman and Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Signe Wilkinson tell the story of free speech in America: who established it, who has denounced it, and who has risen to its defense. They make the case for why we should care about it today, when free speech is once again under attack. Across the political spectrum, Americans have demanded the suppression of ideas and images that allegedly threaten our nation. But the biggest danger to America comes not from speech, they argue, but from censorship.

Democracy by Petition: Popular Politics in Transformation, 1790–1870
Wednesday, May 19, at noon
Register in advance; watch the live stream on our YouTube Channel
Known as the age of democracy, the 19th century witnessed the extension of the franchise and the rise of party politics. In Democracy by Petition, Daniel Carpenter shows that democracy in America emerged also through the transformation of an ancient political tool: the petition, which afforded women and men excluded from formal politics the chance to make their voices heard. This pioneering work of political history recovers the central and largely forgotten role that petitioning played in the formative years of North American democracy.

Brainstorms and Mindfarts: The Best and Brightest, Dumbest and Dimmest Inventions in American History
Thursday, May 27, at noon
Register in advance; watch the live stream on our YouTube Channel.
Innovation and entrepreneurism appear inextricably woven into the American DNA. Throughout American history, great inventors and innovators gazed into the future and saw the products and services that would transform the world. As of 2018, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office had granted its 10 millionth patent. In Brainstorms and Mindfarts, author Jim Downey presents a collection of the brightest and most innovative American inventions along with the frivolous and utterly useless ones lost to history.