What will Kentucky Book Festival visitors find on your table?

Athens on the Frontier: Grecian-Style Architecture in the Splendid Valley of the West, 1820-1860

In this book, I examine the material culture of Grecian-style buildings in antebellum America to help recover nineteenth-century regional identities. I invite readers to question many of the assumptions Americans have made about divisions and cultural formation in antebellum society as communities worked to define their built landscape and develop a shared Western identity.

Whom do you invite to stop by? Who will benefit from reading your book?

Anyone interested in the history of Kentucky or the broader Ohio Valley in the nineteenth century would enjoy this book.

Could you please tell us something curious about you and/or your book?

The book tells us about the hopes of people who shaped their community through nicknaming and through constructing buildings inspired by those in Ancient Greece.

Is this your first time participating in Kentucky Book Festival? If yes – what are you looking forward to the most? If you’ve participated before – what was your favorite experience at the Festival?

Yes. I look forward to the opportunity to bring a significant time period in Kentucky/Ohio Valley history to life.