On Tuesday, October 6 Nathaniel Philbrick will launch and present his new book, The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World to his hometown audience here on Nantucket and in collaboration with Nantucket Book Partners. This is a free event, but registering at Nantucketbookpartners. com will ensure a seat.
The beloved author of In the Heart of the Sea, Mayflower, and more than a dozen other books will join Tim Ehrenberg, President of the Nantucket Book Foundation and creator of Tim Talks Books, for a conversation at the United Unitarian Meeting House at 11 Orange Street. The talk will start at 5:30 pm and a book signing will follow.
The reviews are in and readers are rushing to recommend Philbrick’s new book. Ken Burns says, “Nathaniel Philbrick, our maestro storyteller, sees in the Gold Rush a Rosetta stone for pre-Civil War America. It is a confounding and encouraging chronicle told from a myriad of perspectives, a bottom-up, epic tale of an inevitable rush toward profit and near-national suicide.”
Pulitzer Prize winning author Ilyon Woo writes: “The true gold here is in the pathos beneath the glittering surface: the stories of real people; their brutal contests and conquests, and the breaching and the breaking of the natural terrain. A thrilling and valuable story of the making of America from the maestro of narrative nonfiction.” “I think Nat Philbrick is one of the best historians we have writing in the world today,” said Ehrenberg. “He makes history accessible, entertaining and thrilling, and helps us to connect the dots through time to see how our past got us where we are today. A new book by Nat Philbrick is cause for celebration, and I am thrilled it’s launching here on Nantucket.”
The description on the jacket reveals this is another riveting book by Philbrick, stating the author: follows the gold as it moves from riverbed to countinghouse to the halls of power, revealing how vigilantism hardened into law and how debates over slavery in the West tipped the balance in Washington. The result is a clear, human story of how a scramble for wealth reshaped ideas of freedom, labor, and belonging—and how California’s rise helped push a fractured nation toward war. The Rush is alive with characters whose choices still reverberate: a searing, panoramic epic that captures both the fury and the promise of America.
The Rush will be in bookstores everywhere on Tuesday, October 6. Signed copies may be pre-ordered at Nantucketbookpartners.com.
