VIRTUAL Books with Beth: Shakespeare in a Divided America

The Athenaeum was established in 1814 as a subscription library, at a time when the free public library system did not exist and collections of books, available for reading or research, were still mostly limited to institutions, schools or colleges.The Athenaeum of Philadelphia nurtures curiosity in members and neighbors, strengthening community through learning and discourse.The Athenaeum of Philadelphia is one of 16 membership libraries that collaborate through the Membership Libraries Group. Some, like the Charleston (est. 1748), New York Society (est. 1754), and Newport (est. 1741) libraries, date from the 18th Century.

Athenaeum of Philadelphia

This is a virtual book club meeting. Free and open to the public.

Athenaeum Book Clubs

All Athenaeum Book Clubs are free and open to the public, we only ask you read the book beforehand and come ready for discussion!

The plays of William Shakespeare are rare common ground in the United States. For well over two centuries, Americans of all stripes—presidents and activists, soldiers and writers, conservatives and liberals alike—have turned to Shakespeare’s works to explore the nation’s fault lines. In a narrative arching from Revolutionary times to the present day, leading scholar James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare’s four-hundred-year-old tragedies and comedies in illuminating the many concerns on which American identity has turned. From Abraham Lincoln’s and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth’s, competing Shakespeare obsessions to the 2017 controversy over the staging of Julius Caesar in Central Park, in which a Trump-like leader is assassinated, Shakespeare in a Divided America reveals how no writer has been more embraced, more weaponized, or has shed more light on the hot-button issues in our history.

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VIRTUAL Books with Beth: Shakespeare in a Divided America

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