Edward Renehan to lecture on John Burroughs

NEW PALTZ — Edward J. Renehan, Jr., author of several books including the highly acclaimed book, John Burroughs: An American Naturalist, will deliver a free lecture on the topic of Burroughs, at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, August 14 at the Mountain Top Arboretum (Route 23C), Tannersville. Renehan is a 1980 graduate of the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Renehan’s Burroughs, when first released in 1998 (Black Dome Press), immediately captured the attention of critics. Writing in The Sunday New York Times Book Review, Robert McCracken Peck said, Renehan reveals “a far more complex and interesting man than other biographers have described.” CHOICE Magazine said, “Renehan’s principal strength is selectivity guided by imagination and narrative skill…The tone is sympathetic but tempered by a lightly ironic detachment a refreshing contrast to the worshipfully reverent tone of earlier biographies by Burroughs’s disciples and relatives.”

In addition to his book on Burroughs, Renehan is also the author of The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown (Crown, 1995; paperback, U. of South Carolina Press, 1997), and The Lion’s Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in Peace and War (Oxford University Press, 1998). The latter was a featured selection of both the Book of the Month Club and the History Book Club, and will be published in paperback and audio editions this fall.

Much in demand as a speaker, Renehan has lectured at the Boston Athenaeum, the Philadelphia Athenaeum, the Harvard Clubs of New York and Boston, and the Union- League Club (Manhattan) as part of the Gilder-Lehrman lecture series. He has also appeared nationally on C-SPAN and on various television and radio broadcasts in New York, Boston and Washington.

Renehan is currently involved in the development of a documentary film about the renegade abolitionist John Brown that will air on public television’s “The American Experience” in the spring of 2000.

For additional information about the lecture, contact the Mountain Top Arboretum at (518) 589-3903.