Join us for the tale of one family spanning centuries and continents. Inspired by the discovery of a mysterious manuscript in an old Massachusetts farmhouse, the celebrated author John Kaag follows eight members of the Blood family from seventeenth-century England through the founding of the colonies and the American Revolution to the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Bloods were one of America’s first and most expansive pioneer families. They explored and laid claim to the frontiers—geographic, political, intellectual, and spiritual—that would become the very core of the United States. They were active participants in virtually every pivotal moment in American history, coming into contact with Emerson, Thoreau, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Victoria Woodhull, and William James. The genealogy of the family tracks the ebb and flow of what Thoreau called “wildness,” the untamed spirit of Americans. John Kaag’s remarkable account reminds us of the risks and rewards that were taken in laying claim to the lands that would become the United States and shows how each family member embodied the elusive ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Don’t miss learning more from the author’s illustrated presentation and discussion with biographer Megan Marshall.

John Kaag is a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He is the author of American Philosophy: A Love Story and Hiking with Nietzsche, both of which were named best books of the year by NPR. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, and many other publications. He lives outside Boston with his wife and children.

Megan Marshall is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, and The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, a Pulitzer Prize finalist.  Her biographies have been awarded numerous prizes. A past president of the Society of American Historians, she is the Charles Wesley Emerson College Professor at Emerson College where she teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program.  Her new essay collection, After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart, will be published in February 2025.