Wilson Center event photos

Renée Jones-Bos, Ambassador of the Netherlands to the United States

Following up our post from last week about the recent panel discussion at the Wilson Center on U.S.-Dutch relations, we have some photos of panel participants to share. Thanks go out to Timothy McDonnell at the Wilson Center for sending along these photos.

For more info on the event, check out our earlier blog post. For more on the SUNY Press book Four-Centuries of Dutch-American Relations, which was featured at the event, click here.

L. Paul Bremer III, former U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands

Hans Krabbendam, Assistant Director of the Roosevelt Study Center

Giles Scott-Smith, Senior Researcher at the Roosevelt Study Center

Hudson 400 Dinner in Downtown Albany

Albany Institute of History & Art curator Doug McCombs and Marché's Executive Chef Brian Molino

(photo from the Table Hopping article on the event)

This Saturday, September 26th, Marché at 74 State will be offering a Hudson Quadricentennial dinner. The menu for the event was developed by the Albany, NY restaurant’s head chef, Brian Molino, in consultation with curators Tammis Groft and Doug McCombs, from the Albany Institute of History & Art. Molino also found inspiration in our new cookbook Summer Pleasures, Winter Pleasures: A Hudson Valley Cookbook. Albany Times Union senior writer Steve Barnes wrote about the upcoming event:

The meal, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Saturday at the restaurant in the downtown hotel, features five courses modeled after food found on menus and in records at the Albany Institute, for which the meal is a fundraiser.

Besides sturgeon—served lightly smoked and roasted, with butter-braised cabbage—dinner will feature oysters, turkey, lamb, rabbit, pork, local vegetables and, for dessert, warm bread pudding with black currants and candied quince; the courses will be paired with beverages from Brewery Ommegang, which makes Belgian-style ales in Cooperstown.

Molino describes the fare as refined, fine-dining interpretations of dishes he found in records at the museum and books by food historian Peter G. Rose, whose works include Food, Drink and Celebrations of
the Hudson Valley Dutch and the recently released Summer Pleasures, Winter Pleasures: A Hudson Valley Cookbook.

Sounds delicious. Click here for the rest the article. Do you need reservations, you ask? Yes, you do. It may be too late at this point, but it's worth giving them a call at 518-434-7410. This promises to be a fantastic culinary experience.

Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations

Last Friday, the Wilson Center, in cooperation with the Netherland-America Foundation, Roosevelt Study Center, and the Embassy of the Netherlands, hosted a discussion of U.S.-Dutch relations in the post-1945 era in connection with the publication of Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations.

The panel consisted of L. Paul Bremer III, former U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands; Renée Jones-Bos, Ambassador of the Netherlands to the United States; Cornelis A. van Minnen, Director of the Roosevelt Study Center and Professor of American History at Ghent University, Belgium; Hans Krabbendam, Assistant Director of the Roosevelt Study Center and the author of The Model Man: A Life of Edward William Bok, 1863-1930; and Giles Scott-Smith, Senior Researcher at the Roosevelt Study Center and Ernst H. van der Beugel Professor of Diplomatic History of Atlantic Cooperation at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands.

Our very own James Peltz was on hand and sent along a link to video of the event, which you can watch at the Wilson Center's website.

The new book, which is based on the most up-to-date research, will be a valuable and much-used reference work for anyone interested in the history and culture of the United States and the Netherlands and the larger transatlantic framework in which they are embedded.

Go, Tell Michelle coeditors profiled

Barbara Seals Nevergold and Peggy Brooks-Bertram, coeditors of Go, Tell Michelle, were recently profiled in UB Today, a publication of the University at Buffalo. The book is still going strong, as are Barbara and Peggy. We found a good deal of interest in the copies of the book we brought to the Brooklyn Book Festival, in fact.

Read the full profile here.

Robert Moss interviewed about The Firekeeper

Glens Falls, NY paper The Post Star recently interviewed author Robert Moss about his book, The Firekeeper. Moss talks about his inspiration to write the book:

Before beginning the book, Moss, a native of Australia who moved to Chatham (NY) in 1986, said he knew little about the colonial history of New York. He happened upon a volume of "Sir William Johnson Papers" in the local history section at a used bookstore in Albany.

"I didn’t know anything about William Johnson until I laid my hands on that fat, blue volume. My hand fell on the book, and I opened it at random," Moss said.

Read the entire interview for more on this epic piece of historical fiction, based on the extraordinary story of Sir William Johnson and the author's dreams of a Mohawk “woman of power” who lived three centuries ago.

Visit us at the Brooklyn Book Festival

We're really excited to be participating in the annual Brooklyn Book Festival this coming Sunday, September 13th at the Brooklyn Borough Hall. As their website says, the festival is a "huge, free public event presenting an array of literary stars and emerging authors who represent the exciting world of literature today."

This year's festival promises to be fantastic. Check out the Village Voice's preview:

Already a geek’s delight, the Brooklyn Book Festival will be even more so this year with the brand-new addition of the New York Comic Con Pavilion. With guest presentations and autograph sessions, the comic-book marketplace has panels including “Sci Fi and Fantasy in NYC” at noon and a conversation with the writers of Marvel at 1 p.m. The most exciting (and free!) literary event in the city, this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival also features events with Colson Whitehead, Mary Gaitskill, Heidi Julavits, Edwidge Danticat, David Cross, Thurston Moore, and Tom Tomorrow—to name just a few. Other panels to look for include one with Pete Hamill and Norris Church Mailer on the legacy of Norman Mailer at 1 p.m., and “Writers on Unforgettable Friendships” with New York Review of Books contributors Oliver Sacks (discussing Francis Crick), Darryl Pinckney (discussing Djuna Barnes), and Anita Desai (discussing Ruth Jhabvala) at 4 p.m.

We'll be at table # 87, so stop by and check out a variety of SUNY and Excelsior Editions titles that celebrate New York. For location and direction information, as well as a full list of authors and moderators who'll be in attendance, visit the festival's website.

Hope to see you there!

Two More Woodstock Reviews

Woodstock: The Oral History, 40th Anniversary Edition was recently reviewed in both the Miami Herald and at the Nippertown blog. Here's the Herald review:

This is ... an excellent, often spellbinding account in the words of those involved, from doctors and cops to shopkeepers and neighbors to festival organizers and musicians. Makower, a veteran writer, spent a year interviewing 75 participants, and since the year was 1988, the recollections are fresher than those collected four decades after the fact.

And here's part of Greg Haymes' review at Nippertown:

...Makower criss-crossed the country to conduct face-to-face interviews with more than 70 festival participants—musicians, the producers, local residents, tech and backstage personnel and, of course, the fans. When the original edition was published, Rolling Stone magazine called it “the definitive story of the mega-concert.”

The new edition includes new forewords by co-producers Michael Lang and Joel Rosenman, but it’s Makower’s original interviews that are the real reason to celebrate the fact that this book is back in print again.