Book Launch: Museum Tour, Refreshments, Music, Illustrated Lecture, Q&A, Signing: Tuesday, September 25
$10 Friends of Morven; $15 Public
Book Purchase: Pre-Sept 25: $25; Sept 25: $30
Dr. Benjamin Rush was the most well known physician in 18th-century America, as well as a patriot, philosopher, author, lecturer, fervent evangelist, politician, and dedicated social reformer. Married to one of Richard & Annis Stockton’s daughters, Julia, Dr. Rush frequently visited Morven. Both Richard Stockton and Rush signed the Declaration of Independence and were key figures in America’s birth.
Hosting best-selling author and local resident Stephen Fried’s latest book’s launch during Morven’s grand reopening month is an exciting event. Fried shares Dr. Rush’s life and activities in and around Morven throughout Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father
The evening’s events begin at 5:00 p.m. with docent-led tours of our newly reopened Morven museum. Docents will share anecdotes on both Dr. Rush and his family’s relationship to Morven’s residents.
Light refreshments, including pastries and punch, as well as 18th-century live music, will begin at 5:45 p.m. inside Morven’s newly completed Stockton Education Center, adjacent to the Museum, following the tour.
At 6:30, the illustrated lecture, Q&A, and book signing begin.
Recent review of Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father:
“The best books are full of surprises. Rush has more of them than any historical biography I have read in ages. It is vast and sumptuous and brings to life Founding Father Benjamin Rush in full technicolor. Too long ignored, Rush’s varied and mercurial brilliance puts him smack in the company of such figures as Adams and Jefferson and Washington and Hamilton with one exception: he is more interesting than any of them. He revolutionized medicine. He revolutionized healthcare. He revolutionized life. Fried draws it all out with his usual perfect pitch of reportage and writing. What a grand feast and feat.” —Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights and A Prayer for the City
About Dr. Benjamin Rush
According to an article in the US National Library of Medicine: NIH, Rush was “unquestionably brilliant, he graduated from what later became Princeton University at age 14. He translated Hippocrates’ Aphorisms from the Greek at age 17. He wrote the first textbook of chemistry to be published in America. He was by all accounts a devoted, if highly paternalistic, medical practitioner, who cared deeply for his patients’ welfare.”
About the Author: STEPHEN FRIED is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author who teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Pennsylvania. He is, most recently, the author of the historical biography Appetite for America and the coauthor, with Congressman Patrick Kennedy, of A Common Struggle. His earlier books include the biography Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia and the investigative books Bitter Pills and The New Rabbi. A two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, Fried has written frequently for Vanity Fair, GQ, The Washington Post Magazine, Glamour, Rolling Stone, and Philadelphia magazine.
He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, author Diane Ayres, not far from where Rush lived.