Two Historians to Speak at Scarsdale Library

Martha Hodes, author of Mourning Lincoln will appear at Scarsdale Public Library on Monday March 7 at 7 pm. Hodes is a Professor of History at New York University, and has taught as a Fulbright scholar in Germany and as a Visiting Professor at Princeton University. Her book is a National Book Award Longlist Finalist and Hodes won the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, which is awarded annually by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The prize, for "the finest scholarly work in English on Abraham Lincoln, carries a $50,000 cash award.

In her book, published by Yale University Press, Hodes uses the letters, diaries and writings of ordinary citizens from 1865 to chronicle the rage incited by Lincoln's assassination. The news of Abraham Lincoln's death on April 15, 1865, just days after Confederate surrender, astounded the war-weary nation. Massive crowds turned out for services and ceremonies. Countless expressions of grief and dismay were printed in newspapers and preached in sermons. Public responses to the assassination have been documented, but this book is the first to delve into the personal and intimate responses of everyday people.

Jill Lepore called it a "lyrical and important new study . . . deeply disturbing . . ." and Michael Burlingame in the Wall Street Journal said the book is "a stunning piece of research, based on an extraordinary range of materials often overlooked by traditional historians"

In addition to Mourning Lincoln, Hodes is the author of The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century, which was a finalist for the Lincoln Book Prize, and White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth- Century South, winner of the Allan Nevins Prize for Literary Distinction in the Writing of History. She is a winner of NYU's Golden Dozen Teaching Award.

Light refreshments will be served. Books will be available for purchase and the author will sign copies.

George Washington's Westchester Gamble

Westchester's role at a critical moment in the American Revolution will be explored by Dr. Richard Borkow, author of "George Washington's Westchester Gamble: the Encampment on the Hudson and the Trapping of Cornwallis," at the Scarsdale Public Library on Sunday, March 6, at 2 p.m.

Borkow focuses on the summer of 1781 with Washington's army encamped at Dobbs Ferry, Ardsley, Hartsdale, Edgemont and White Plains. The war seemed deadlocked with grim prospects facing the allied American and French troops. Washington recognized that a decisive victory was needed and in August he led the army to Virginia to face the British under General Cornwallis. This risky maneuver required secrecy and deception to convince the British that Manhattan, not Virginia, was the target of the allied armies.

Dr. Borkow is a physician at Blythedale Children's Hospital and the village historian of Dobbs Ferry. Light refreshments will be served.