Settling in with a Good Book?

Although today is sunny, we know many cold, gray days are still left in a western New York winter.  That's why the Greed project team is inviting you to join our virtual reading circle.  As a part of this project, each of the team members have chosen a book related to the topic and we'll be reading and more importantly, posting our thoughts about the book--and we hope you'll join us.  Choose one to read, read more than one, or just dip in and out.  It's the easiest reading circle ever!

Here's what's on our list:

A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 by Paul E. Johnson.  From the publisher:

A quarter-century after its first publication, A Shopkeeper's Millennium remains a landmark work--brilliant both as a new interpretation of the intimate connections among politics, economy, and religion during the Second Great Awakening, and as a surprising portrait of a rapidly growing frontier city. 

Facing East From Indian Country:  A Native History of Early America by Daniel K. Richter.
From Kirkus Reviews:

An excellent, ambitious attempt to restore to history long-overlooked Indians who 'neither uncompromisingly resisted...nor wholeheartedly assimilated' in the face of white encroachment...A hallmark in recent Native American historiography that merits wide attention.

The Divided Ground:  Indians, Settlers and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution by Alan Taylor.

A superbly researched work of history... forces us to look anew at the American Revolution from a tragic –and necessary –perspective—The Washington Post Book World

The Treaty of Canandaigua:  200 Years of Treaty Relations between the Iroquois and the United States, edited by Peter Jemison and Anna Schein.  From the publisher:

This book tells the complex and intriguing story of the Six Nations and their relationship with the United States over the 200-year period following the American Revolution. Two hundred years after signing the treaty that was to protect their lands and sovereign rights, the Haudenosaunee -- the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy -- have been stripped of all but a small fraction leading up to the signing of the treaty and look at how the Haudenosaunee have fared under its terms.

One of us will be posting every week about our book, and we invite you to find the books (don't forget to check out your local library) and share your thoughts with us as well.  Your perspectives will be critical in helping us shape the new exhibit content.

Thanks to our colleagues at the George Eastman House who shared these historic images of readers on Flickr Commons.