Public History Book Club

2026 Season

For the sixth summer running, the NCPH Professional Development Committee is excited to bring back the Public History Book Club! Participating in the book club is free, open to everyone, and while both 2026 reads use the same registration link, you don’t have to join us for both reads.

JULY 21, 7 pm ET: We Were Illegal: Uncovering a Texas Family’s Mythmaking and Migrationby Jessica Goudeau
AUGUST 18, 7 pm ET: Fleshing the Archive: An Intimate Genealogy of Chicana Knowledge Praxis by Maria Eugenia Cotera

Sign up to receive the Zoom links for the discussions at https://community.ncph.org/event/PHBookClub2026 

Previous Reads

July 8, 2021 – Mary Rizzo’s Come and Be Shocked: Baltimore Beyond John Waters and the Wire (John Hopkins University Press, 2020)
August 12, 2021 – Clint Smith’s How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown and Company, 2021)
September 9, 2021 – Tiya Miles’ All That She Carried (Penguin Random House, 2021)
June 8, 2022 – ed. Denise Meringolo’s Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism (Amherst College Press, 2021)
August 4, 2022 – Dennis B. Downey’s and James W. Conroy’s Pennhurst and the Struggle for Disability Rights (Penn State University Press, 2020)
March 7, 2024 – David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon
September 19, 2024 – Liz Ševcenko’s Public History for a Post-Truth Era, and Francesca Morgan’s A Nation of Descendants: Politics and the Practice of Genealogy in US History
July 24, 2025 – Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires: The American Dream of Laura Ingalls Wilder
August 14, 2025  – Rose Miron’s Indigenous Archival Activism: Mohican Interventions in Public History and Memory