free things to do in New York City
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Free Events, Free Things to Do in New York City! Read More
Are you looking for literary events like book readings, book signings, poetry readings? Then you came to the right place. Start using these unique New York City opportunities today!
Are you looking for literary events like book readings, book signings, poetry readings? Then you came to the right place. Start using these unique New York City opportunities today!
Join the Club!
The quality and quantity of
free events,
free things to do
that happen in New York City
every day of the year
is truly amazing.
So don't miss the opportunities
that only New York provides:
stop wondering what to do;
start taking advantage of
free events to go to,
free things to do in NYC
today!
The quality and quantity of
free events,
free things to do
that happen in New York City
every day of the year
is truly amazing.
So don't miss the opportunities
that only New York provides:
stop wondering what to do;
start taking advantage of
free events to go to,
free things to do in NYC
today!
free poetry readings, book signings, author readings in New York City (NYC) Sun, 09/26/2021 - and on...
Not a day goes by in New York City (NYC) without a free poetry reading or a book signing or a book reading by a famous or not yet famous author. Don't miss the opportunities that only New York provides!
ONLINE EVENTS ARE MARKED AS SUCH.
Sun, Sep 26
4:00 pm
Free
4:00 pm
Free
Poetry Reading | 7 Poets Read in the Garden
Get inspired in the beauty of the outdoor setting.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Sun, Sep 26
4:30 pm
Free
4:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | 2 New Books
Ayanna Thompson (Blackface) and Pardis Mahdavi (Hyphen) each examine identity and race. Thompson confronts the ugly tradition of blackface, exploring its history and its legacies in the 21st century, while Mahdavi tells the story of the hyphen from antiquity to the present, following the journey of this humble piece of connective punctuation but also uncovering the politics of the hyphen and the role it plays in creating identities.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Sep 27
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Open Mike | Poetry Open Mic (livestream)
A poetry-specific open mic.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Sep 27
8:00 pm
Free
8:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Ellis Island: A People's History (online)
Author Malgorzata Szejnert spotlights personal immigrant experiences in this new history of one of New York's most hallowed landmarks.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Sep 28
12:00 pm
Free
12:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Still Mad: American Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination (livestream)
Feminist scholars Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert return with a brilliant new work of literary criticism that trace the history of the contemporary women’s movement as told through the lives of the literary women who helped shape it.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Sep 28
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Poetry Reading | Local Poets Read About the SWANA Experience in America (online)
A reading of local poets drawing on the experience of being South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) heritage in America, from daily resistance to categorization to partaking in protest movements in support of a homeland half a world away
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Sep 28
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Poetry Reading | South Asian Poets (online)
Five poets make an evening of readings and conversation tracing breadths of South Asian diasporic experience. Across a range of inquiries, five poets consider the textual scaffoldings of empire, the human entanglements of production and consumption, and the tenuous, beautiful work of relations to thrive and endure.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Sep 29
8:00 pm
Free
8:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | George Rickey: A Life in Balance: Biography of the Artist
Belinda Rathbone's 480-page volume includes a 16-page color insert and presents the artist in the context of his life and times, from his earliest creative encounters as a child, to his varied career from Army Air Corps computer technician to pioneering college art educator, to his ultimate rise to renown as a sculptor alongside Alexander Calder, David Smith, and Christo.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Sep 30
6:30 pm
Free
6:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | 2 New Books
The paperback launch of Caoilinn Hughes’s The Wild Laughter and Diane Cook’s The New Wilderness.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Sep 30
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Thu, Sep 30
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Open Mike | Thursday Night Open Mic (livestream)
A weekly online open mic. All art forms are welcome.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Sep 30
9:00 pm
Free
9:00 pm
Free
Poetry Reading | Excerpts from Spoon River Anthology (online)
Spoon River Anthology (1915) by Edgar Lee Masters is a collection of short free verse poems that collectively narrate the epitaphs of the residents of Spoon River, a fictional small town named after the Spoon River, which ran near Masters' home town of Lewistown, Illinois. The aim of the poems is to demystify rural and small town American life. The collection includes 212 separate characters, in all providing 244 accounts of their lives, losses, and manner of death. Many of the poems contain cross-references that create an unabashed tapestry of the community.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Oct 4
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | 2 New Essay Collections (online)
Jen Winston, Brooklyn-based author and bisexual, joins author and artist Adam J. Kurtz for a conversation about queer identity, self-discovery, and the power of making mistakes. This conversation celebrates the launch of two essay collections: Winston’s Greedy: Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much, a hilarious and whip-smart memoir about bisexuality and gender, as well as Kurtz’s forthcoming You Are Here (For Now), a candid collection of artwork and essays about navigating life’s ups and downs.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Oct 4
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | Search History: A Novel of Grieving America (online)
Eugene Lim's uniquely inventive novel explores American culture, technology, artmaking, and storytelling through the eyes of a grieving narrator.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Oct 5
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | The Book of Mother: A Daughter's Story (online)
Violaine Huisman's debut novel is a gorgeous, ferocious, exquisitely wrought story of a daughter’s inextinguishable love for her magnetic, mercurial mother. Huisman is joined by Nadja Spiegelman, author of the memoir I’m Supposed to Protect You from All This, for a conversation on mothers, fiction versus memoir, international literature, and more.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Oct 5
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Poetry Reading | Gut: Damn New Poetry (online)
Brooklyn-based poet Amanda Larson launches her probing, daring debut collection of poetry. Gut examines how a young woman maintains agency in the wake of trauma, violence, and desire.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Oct 6
6:00 pm
Free
6:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR (online)
In the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women in the workplace still found themselves relegated to secretarial positions or locked out of jobs entirely. This was especially true in the news business, a backwater of male chauvinism where a woman might be lucky to get a foothold on the “women’s pages.” But when National Public Radio came along in the 1970s, and the door to serious journalism opened a crack, four remarkable women came along and blew it off the hinges. Journalist Lisa Napoli gives a captivating account of these four women, their deep and enduring friendships, and the trails they blazed while becoming icons. Napoli utilized her deep connections in news and public radio for the extensive interviews featured throughout the pages.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Oct 6
6:00 pm
Free
6:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | What Storm, What Thunder: A Haunting New Novel (livestream)
Myriam J. A. Chancy discusses her new novel, a haunting story charting the inner lives of regular people affected by devastation of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Her work charts the tenacity of the human spirit in the face of trauma wrought by nature and man.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Oct 6
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told (online)
Comics writer, critic, and author Douglas Wolk has read all 27,000+ Marvel superhero comics and lived to tell the tale in his formidable new book. In this first-ever full reckoning with Marvel Comics' interconnected, half-million-page-and-counting story, Wolk travels from Alpha Flight to Omega the Unknown and shapes the mammoth Marvel narrative into a prism through which to view the landscape of American culture--a fun-house-mirror history of the past sixty years.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Oct 6
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | The Archer: A Novel of Discovering Dance (online)
Shruti Swamy’s debut novel is the coming-of-age story of Vidya, who grows up in 1960s and 1970s Bombay, among the backdrop of a carefully delineated society. In her childhood, she discovers Kathak, a dance form requiring intense focus and discipline, and explores the transformative power of art.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Oct 7
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City by Pulitzer Prize Winner (online)
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times Andrea Elliott's first book follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Oct 7
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | 2 Writers Read (in-person and online)
Lyric Hunter is the author of two chapbooks, Motherwort and Swallower. Adrian Shirk is the author of And Your Daughters Shall Prophesy, a hybrid-memoir exploring American women prophets and mystics.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Sat, Oct 9
5:00 pm
$5
5:00 pm
$5
Author Reading | Letters to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us (online)
When journalist, essayist, and world traveler Colleen Kinder founded Off Assignment, a renowned online travel magazine, she began with a prompt that challenged her peers to “write a letter to a stranger who haunts you." This book collects those poignant missives to the nameless by some of the most influential and innovative writers of our time.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Oct 11
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | Concepcion: An Immigrant Family’s Fortune (online)
This book is investigative journalist Albert Samaha's powerful and incisive account of the forces steering the fate of his sprawling Filipino American family.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Oct 12
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Savage Tongues: Named Most Anticipated Book by Harper's Bazaar, A Novel of Desire and Power (online)
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi presents her newest novel, a personal and political exploration of desire, power, domination, and human connection that's equal parts Marguerite Duras and Shirley Jackson, Rachel Cusk and Clarice Lispector. Savage Tongues has been named a Most Anticipated Book by Lit Hub, Lambda Literary, Refinery29, Harper's Bazaar, and Vulture described the book as "a love story of the most fevered, brutal order... propulsive, erotic, and darkly dreamlike".
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Oct 12
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | How High? — That High: New Short Stories (livestream)
Diane Williams's new collection delivers a lifetime of insecurities, lusts, rejections, and revelations into ordinary moments, delivering visionary insights into what it means to be human. Williams’ devotees and new readers alike will be enthralled by the elegantly strange, bewitching stories.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Oct 13
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | The Redemption of Bobby Love: A Story of Faith, Family, and Justice (online)
Bobby and Cheryl Love were living in Brooklyn, happily married for decades, when the FBI and NYPD appeared at their door and demanded to know from Bobby, in front of his shocked wife and children: “What is your name? No, what’s your real name?” Bobby’s thirty-eight-year secret was out. With the drama of a jailbreak story and the incredible tension of a life lived in hiding, the book is their account of building a life from scratch, the pain of festering secrets in marriage, and the unbreakable bonds of faith and love that keep a family together.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Oct 13
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Poetry Reading | 2 Poets Read (online)
The mutual constitutions of speech, document, memory, and image conspire and unravel in the work of Rosmarie Waldrop and Wendy Xu. Xu’s newest work, The Past, forges lyric from and against historiographies of family and displacement. In The Nick of Time, Waldrop casts light and attention into flickering permutations of thought, remembering, ardor, study. Elemental curiosity, scrutiny, and devotion ring through the work of these two poets, into terrains of vanishing and expanse.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Oct 13
8:00 pm
Free
8:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Feminist AF: A Guide to Crushing Girlhood (online)
Brittney Cooper, Susana Morris, and Chanel Craft Tanner—activists, educators, scholars, and members of the Crunk Feminist Collective, a group of feminists of color who came of age in the hip-hop generation—present their new intersectional resource for young feminists.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Oct 14
6:00 pm
Free
6:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | One Friday in April: A Story of Suicide and Survival (livestream)
America has begun to grapple with new ideas of mental health and wellness in the public discourse. Donald Antrim continues the conversation by offering a new understanding of suicide as a distinct mental illness in his brave new memoir. He'll join Deborah Treisman, the fiction editor of The New Yorker, to discuss the launch of this important and insightful new work.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Oct 14
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Crazy Sorrow: A Novel About a Couple Torn Apart (online)
Spanning four decades in New York City, Vince Passaro's new novel tells the story of a couple torn apart and the lengths to which they will go to be reunited.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Oct 14
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Thu, Oct 14
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Poetry Reading | New Gay Poetry (in-person and online)
Joon Oluchi Lee is the author of Neotenica, which won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction and was finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction. Stacy Szymaszek's books include Emptied of All Ships, Hyperglossia, hart island, Journal of Ugly Sites and Other Journals (Ottoline Prize winner and Lambda nominee), and A Year From Today.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Sat, Oct 16
5:00 pm
$5
5:00 pm
$5
Author Reading | Names of New York: Discovering the City’s Past, Present and Future Through Its Place-Names (online)
A talk on New York place names by author Joshua Jelly-Schapiro. Focusing on the Upper West Side, he will recount the fascinating history behind the naming of our streets, neighborhoods, parks and water bodies.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Oct 18
6:30 pm
Free
6:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism (online)
In 1987, somebody shoved a flyer into the hand of Peter Staley: massive AIDS demonstration, it announced. That protest redirected the course of his life, and a week later, Staley found his way into a packed meeting of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power—ACT UP—in the West Village. His new memoir is the untold story of his journey from closeted Wall Street bond trader to one of the leading AIDS and LGBTQ rights activists of his generation.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Oct 18
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | North: A Novel of Intertwining Lives (livestream)
Critically acclaimed author Brad Kessler returns with a powerful new novel about the lives of a Vermont monk, a Somali refugee, and an Afghan war veteran.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Oct 20
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | A Time Outside This Time: A Novel About the Lies We Tell Ourselves (online)
Amitava Kumar's novel channels Orwell in a metafictional narrative that follows professor and author Satya in writing a new novel about the lies we tell ourselves and one another.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Oct 20
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | Between the Lines: Stories from the Underground (online)
For the better part of a decade, Uli Beutter Cohen rode the subway through New York City’s underground to observe society through the lens of our most creative thinkers: the readers of books. Her new book is a timely collection of beloved and never-before-published stories that reflect who we are and where we are going in the form of over 170 interviews.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Mon, Oct 25
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | Made In Hollywood: All Access with The Go-Go's, Groundbreaking Band (online)
Gina Schock launches of her new book--an all-access account of Schock's time as drummer in The Go-Go's, the first American all-female rock group in history to write their own songs, play their own instruments, and reach the top of the Billboard charts with their album, Beauty and the Beat.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Oct 26
6:00 pm
Free
6:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Monster in the Middle: A Novel of Meant-to-Be Love (online)
Fly and Stela meet in New York City, and it's fate. As they discover more about each other through their budding romance, the two must decide whether they're meant to be. The answer, they find, lays decades earlier, as early as their parents' earliest loves. Author Tiphanie Yanique explores how family lore and intergenerational emotional inheritance shape one couple's emotional and riveting love story.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Oct 26
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Cascade: Stories Set in a Niagra Falls of the Imagination (online)
Craig Davidson celebrates the launch of his first collection of short stories. Set in the Niagara Falls of Davidson’s imagination—known as "Cataract City"—the six brilliant, cinematic stories shine a shimmering light on this slightly seedy, slightly magical, slightly haunted place, rendering the complexity of familial relationships through unforgettable characters and in steel-tipped prose, psychological perspicacity, and endearing humor.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Tue, Oct 26
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Poetry Reading | Little Pharma: Poems Written in Med School (online)
A book of poetry by Brooklyn-based physician, medical ethicist, and poet Laura Kolbe. Written during Kolbe’s years in medical school, residency, and time as a hospital physician during the COVID-19 surge in New York City, the poems navigate the murky channels of the hospital and clinic, the borderlands of the living and the dead, and the journey from novice to healer.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Oct 27
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | Soul of the Hurricane: The Perfect Storm and an Accidental Sailor (online)
Nelson Simon's book is an unlikely and harrowing true account of his experience sailing into Hurricane Grace. It was October 1991, and Simon didn’t want to sign up as a last-minute crew member to transport a Norwegian schooner from Brooklyn to Bermuda. But one thing led to another, and there he was. What did it matter that he had practically no sailing experience? The eight other crew members had plenty—they just needed an extra pair of hands. What could possibly go wrong?
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Oct 28
7:30 pm
Free
7:30 pm
Free
Author Reading | The Art of Revision: The Last Word (online)
Peter Ho Davies returns for another deep dive into the art of revision, this time for the launch of the fifteenth volume of the Art of series. Davies contributes his insights on the often discussed yet frequently misunderstood subject of revision in the writing process.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Nov 4
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Vivienne Westwood: The Complete Collections (online)
Fashion journalist, author, and critic Alexander Fury discuses his latest book, including an overview of highlights from Fury’s personal collection of fashion, which includes designs by Westwood, John Galliano, Christian Lacroix, among others.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Nov 11
6:00 pm
Free
6:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America (online)
Mayukh Sen's new book brings forward the stories of seven immigrant women whose legacies are complicated and often erased, despite their deep global influence in food. Their histories unwrap, layer by layer, revealing experiences of food, labor, immigration and gender.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Thu, Nov 11
7:00 pm
Free
7:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Win Me Something: A Novel of Changeable Relationships (online)
Kyle Lucia Wu's new book is a self-aware bildungsroman with a deep yearning for belonging, revealing chasms and the malleability of deep-seated relationships.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Sat, Nov 13
1:00 pm
Free
1:00 pm
Free
Author Reading | Grant’s Tomb: The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of An American Pantheon (online)
Author Louis L. Picone on the General’s final years and the fascinating story of the creation of Grant’s Tomb.
New York City, NY; NYC
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Wed, Dec 1
6:30 pm
Free
6:30 pm
Free
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