Tuesday, November 17, 2026 · 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Powers Hall - Needham Town Hall — Powers Hall - Needham Town Hall, Needham, MA
The Needham Free Public Library and Friends of the Needham Public Library invite you to a special Meet the Author event with award-winning and bestselling historian Nathaniel Philbrick as he discusses and reads from his new book The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World. Philbrick will appear in conversation with Randall MacLowry, an award-winning filmmaker whose work includes "The Gold Rush" for PBS's American Experience. About The Rush: In January 1848, a carpenter spotted flecks of gold in a shallow stream at Sutter’s Mill in California, triggering the greatest voluntary migration in U.S. history, as hundreds of thousands raced west in pursuit of sudden wealth, reinvention, and power. From the feverish gold-mining camps of the Sierra Nevada mountains to the wharves and vigilance committees of San Francisco, Nathaniel Philbrick renders a combustible, all-world society: Chilean brothers reinventing themselves to outrun prejudice; Native communities navigating dispossession and violence; the merchant-showman Samuel Brannan, drawn into the center of early vigilantism; and the politicians vying for control of California’s future—the ambitious…