Waterworks Wednesday Book Group

Join the monthly Waterworks Wednesday Book Group for discussion of A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth by Witold Rybczynski. The book covers the incredible life and achievements of America’s greatest landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. Even if you have not read the selected book you are invited to join the group for lively conversation about Boston history. All you need to bring is your curiosity – and maybe your coffee!

The Waterworks Wednesday Book Group will meet Wednesday, January 8th, at 10:00 a.m. in the museum’s upstairs Overlook Gallery. There is no admission fee. Book group meetings occur on the first Wednesday of each month* (delayed one week this month due to New Years Day).

After the book group, you are welcome to explore the museum. View massive steam engines constructed and operating during Olmsted’s lifetime, and join a guided tour to learn more about Boston’s “Gilded Age”.

About the book:

We know Olmsted through the physical legacy of his stunning landscapes—among them New York’s Central Park, California’s Stanford University campus, and Boston’s Back Bay Fens. But Olmsted’s contemporaries knew a man of even more extraordinarily diverse talents. Born in 1822, he traveled to China on a merchant ship at the age of twenty-one. He co-founded The Nation magazine and was an early voice against slavery. He managed California’s largest gold mine and, during the Civil War, served as the executive secretary to the United States Sanitary Commission, the precursor of the Red Cross.

Rybczynski’s passion for his subject and his understanding of Olmsted’s immense complexity and accomplishments make his book a triumphant work. In A Clearing in the Distance, the story of a great nineteenth-century American becomes an intellectual adventure.