We have a variety of book discussion groups here at Topsham Public Library, and one of them is Mens’ Book Club. This month they are reading Remarkable Americans: the Washburn Family by Kerck Kelsey, and they invite you to join them when the author visits on Thursday, November 16, 2017 at 6pm and learn about one of Maine’s oldest and most political families.
Mr. Kelsey graduated from Princeton in 1955, where he majored in English. Following his military service, he was an educational salesman for Houghton Mifflin Company. Over the next twenty-one years, he sold books and tests throughout the United States and Canada. He then returned to Boston as a trust officer with the Bank of Boston. While there, he started extension classes at Harvard. He earned a Master’s Degree in History in 2002.
He wrote his thesis on Israel Washburn, Jr. and after moving to Maine in 1992, Mr. Kelsey rewrote his Harvard thesis for public consumption and published it in 2004 as Israel Washburn, Jr, Maine’s Little-Known Giant of the Civil War. He took on the whole story of the Livermore Washburns in Remarkable Americans: The Washburn Family published in 2008. He also authored a biography of the most spectacular Washburn brother titled Prairie Lightning: The Rise and Fall of William Drew Washburn, in 2010.
Books will be available for purchase and signing.