Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life (virtual)

Best known today for the poem “Over the River and through the Wood,” Lydia Maria Child became famous at an early age for spunky self-help books and charming children’s stories. But in 1833, Child shocked her readers by publishing the first book-length history of slavery in the United States—a book so radical in its commitment to abolition that friends abandoned her, patrons ostracized her, and her book sales plummeted. Yet Child soon drew untold numbers to the abolitionist cause, becoming one of the foremost authors and activists of her generation. Philosopher Lydia Moland asks questions just as pressing in our time: What does it mean to change your life when the moral future of your country is at stake? When confronted by sanctioned evil and systematic injustice, how should a citizen live?