Event alert: Book club afternoon and evening with Kathleen Rooney at Weyenberg in Mequon (2 pm) and Elm Grove (6:30 pm) on Tuesday, Peter Stark on Thursday, Gurda sold out tonight - more appearances scheduled for Milwaukee: A City Built on Water

Monday, June 25, 7:00 pm, at Discovery World Pilot House, 500 N. Harbor Drive
Registration at capacity - John Gurda, author of Milwaukee: A City Built on Water

Please note that registration is at capacity for John Gurda's talk at Discovery World for Milwaukee: A City Built on Water - this event is sold out. Gurda will be doing other events during the year for this book, including one at Milwaukee Public Library's Loos Room on Monday, October 1 and the Milwaukee Art Museum on October 15. In addition, he's at the Franklin Public Library on Thursday, September 20 and at the Polish Center of Wisconsin, also in Franklin, on October 2. Visit John Gurda's author event page for additional information. Registration is likely required.

To get a copy signed of Milwaukee: A City Built on Water, please contact us at info@boswellbooks.com or (414) 332-1181. Prepayment required for personalization.

Tuesday, June 26, 2:00 pm, at the Frank L. Weyenberg Library, 11345 N Cedarburg Rd in Mequon
Tuesday, June 26, 6:30 pm, at the Elm Grove Public Library, 13600 Juneau Blvd
Book Club Afternoon and Evening with Kathleen Rooney, author of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

At two Milwaukee-area libraries, a double dose of book club inspiration. Boswell’s Daniel Goldin teams up with a librarian from the Frank L. Weyenberg Library (at 2 pm) and Paulette Brooks from Elm Grove Public Library (at 6:30) to offer recommendations of new and classic titles sure to provide lively book club discussions. And then onto the second act, a talk by Kathleen Rooney, author of the national indie bestseller Lillian Boxfish Takes A Walk and one of our top book club picks for spring and summer.

Lillian Boxfish took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy’s to become the highest paid advertising woman in the country. It was a job that, she says, “in some ways saved my life, and in other ways ruined it.” On New Year's Eve 1984, 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish crosses Manhattan on foot, finding adventure at every turn and recalling a remarkable life.

A love letter to city life in all its guts and grandeur, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk paints a portrait of a remarkable woman across the canvas of a changing America: from the Jazz Age to the onset of the AIDS epidemic; from the Great Depression to the birth of hip-hop.

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and a founding member of Poems While You Wait. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Salon, and The Nation. She was named Best Novelist by the Chicago Reader in 2017.

Thursday, June 28, 7:00 pm, at Boswell
Peter Stark, author of Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America's Founding Father

Pewaukee native Stark returns from Montana with his latest book of American history, Young Washington. Weaving together harrowing wilderness adventures and a broader historic context, Stark’s book offers a brash, unexpected view of the president we thought we knew.

Two decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier serving the British Empire in the vast wilderness of the Ohio Valley. Naïve and self-absorbed, the twenty-two-year-old officer accidentally ignited the French and Indian War, a conflict that opened colonists to the possibility of an American Revolution.

Terrifying summer storms and subzero winters helped prepare Washington for Valley Forge. Leading the Virginia troops into battle taught him to and stand with those who looked to him for leadership. Negotiating with colonial allies honed his diplomatic skills. Thwarted in his obsessive young love, he grew to cultivate deeper, enduring relationships. All of this and more transformed Washington from a temperamental striver into a mature leader.

Peter Stark is a historian, adventure writer, and author of The New York Times bestseller Astoria, along with The Last Empty Spaces, Last Breath, and At the Mercy of the River. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a correspondent for Outside magazine and has written for Smithsonian and The New Yorker.

And then it's time for our Summerfest break! Please visit our upcoming events page for information about more summer events.