Author Talk: Amanda Bellows, "The Explorers"

Please join Darien Library and Barrett Bookstore in welcoming author, Amanda Bellows. The archetype of the American explorer, a rugged white man, has dominated our popular culture since the 18th century, when Daniel Boone’s autobiography captivated readers with tales of treacherous journeys. But historian Amanda Bellows thinks it’s time to expand and deepen the stories of American exploration.

In The Explorers: A New History of America in Ten Expeditions, Bellows offers a fresh perspective on American history by telling the stories of a diverse cast of ten extraordinary—and often overlooked—adventurers, from Sacagawea to Matthew Henson to Sally Ride, who pushed the boundaries of discovery and determined our national destiny.

The Explorers rediscovers a group of Americans who went to the western frontier and beyond, traversing the farthest reaches of the globe and even penetrating outer space in their pursuit of the unknown. Many escaped from lives circumscribed by racism, sexism, poverty, and discrimination as they took on great risk in unfamiliar territory. By focusing on these ten explorers, Bellows challenges the traditional narratives we’ve long been presented when studying American history and exploration

About the Author

Amanda Bellows is a historian of the United States and teaches undergraduates at the New School. She received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Bellows served as a Project Historian for the New-York Historical Society’s major exhibit Black Citizenship in the Jim Crow Era, supported by a significant National Endowment for the Humanities grant, and has published writing in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She is the author of American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination, published by UNC Press.