Enoch Pratt Free Library

Join us for an evening with author and historian David Silverman.

When the colonial era began, Europeans did not consider themselves as “Whites,” and Native Americans did not think of themselves as “Indians.” Yet as a genocidal struggle for America unfolded over the course of generations, all that changed. Euro-Americans developed a sense of racial identity, superiority, and national mission-of being chosen. They contended that Indians were damned to disappear so Whites could spread Christian civilization. Native people countered that the Great Spirit had created Indians and Whites separately and intended America to belong to Indians alone.

In The Chosen and the Damned, acclaimed historian David J. Silverman traces Indian-White racial arguments across four centuries, from the bloody colonial wars for territory to the national wars of extermination justified as “Manifest Destiny"; from the creation of reservations and boarding schools to the rise of the Red Power movement and beyond. In this transformative retelling, Silverman shows how White identity, defined against Indians, became central to American nationhood. He also reveals how Indian identity contributed to Native Americans' resistance and resilience as modern tribal people, even as it has sometimes pit them against one another on the basis of race.

The epochal story of race in America is typically understood as a Black and White issue. The Chosen and the Damned restores the defining role Native people have played, and continue to play, in our national history.

Join us for an evening with author and professor Charles Holden.

Charles Holden will discuss his book, Republican Populist, as part of the Pratt Maryland Department’s Let’s Talk About Maryland author series.

Typically a maligned figure in American political history, former vice president Spiro T. Agnew is often overlooked. Although he is largely remembered for his alliterative speeches, attacks on the media and East Coast intellectuals, and his resignation from office in 1973 in the wake of tax evasion charges, Agnew had a significant impact on the modern Republican Party that is underappreciated. It is impossible, in fact, to understand the current internal struggles of the Republican Party without understanding this populist "everyman" and prototypical middle-class striver who was one of the first proponents of what would become the ideology of Donald Trump’s GOP.

Republican Populist examines Agnew’s efforts to make the Republican Party representative of the "silent majority." Under the tutelage of a group of talented speechwriters assigned to Agnew by President Richard Nixon including Pat Buchanan and William Safire, Agnew crafted the populist-tinged, anti-establishment rhetoric that helped turn the Republican Party into a powerful national electoral force that has come to define American politics into the current era.

A fascinating political portrait of Agnew from his pre–vice presidential career through his scandal-driven fall from office and beyond, this book is a revelatory examination of Agnew’s role as one of the founding fathers of the modern Republican Party and of the link between Agnew’s "people’s party" and the fraught party of populists and businessmen today.

Summer Break Baltimore is HERE!

This year, we're playing Summer Break BINGO! Here's how to play:

Step 1: Head to your local Pratt branch

Step 2: Sign up and get a BINGO Board AND a FREE book!

Step 3: Complete 4 activities in a row and show your BINGO board with completed activities to your local branch.

Step 4: Get your official Summer Break Baltimore t-shirt!

Completing one BINGO row will automatically earn you one raffle entry for more summer fun, including admission to the Maryland Science Center and National Aquarium, a Maryland Zoo family membership, and a Nintendo Switch 2.

Summer Break Baltimore is for all ages! The more BINGO activities you complete, the more chances you have to win. Keep completing activities for full card BINGO and receive five raffle entries! While supplies last.