This program is co-sponsored with New Pond Farm
Connecticut Yankee Goes to Washington: Senator George P. McLean, Birdman of the Senate by Will McLean Greeley
In this well-researched and lively account, Greeley focuses on the crowning achievement of one of his distant relatives — Senator George P. McLean, who represented the state in the early 1900s and whose conservation efforts led to groundbreaking legislation that saved billions of birds from senseless killing and likely prevented the extinction of entire bird species.
In A Connecticut Yankee Goes to Washington, Greeley puts the senator’s 45-year career into an historical context and points out that many of McLean’s acts of reform came at a time of widespread corruption and political instability. McLean (Greeley’s great-great uncle) rose from obscurity as a Connecticut farm boy to national prominence, as he advised presidents and helped lead change and shape events as a US senator from 1911 to 1929.
One reviewer writes: “And there’s a bonus: This book is also a love song to a distant relative. We need more historians who truly care about the people they’re writing about, and Greeley does just that.”
This is a virtual event. Books will be available to purchase at Books on the Common in Ridgefield and Byrd’s Books in Bethel.