Book Beat, Wake Up With Westfair’s new occasional feature, returns with two books – one “ripped from the headlines,” to quote “Law and Order,” the other ripped from the pages of history.
First, Person to Person (P2P) – a nonprofit that assists those in need in lower Fairfield County with three food pantries and a mobile pantry; grocery home delivery; a casework team and caseworker assistance; a clothing center; emergency financial aid; scholarships; mentorships; camperships; and seasonal enrichment programs – holds its “Transforming Lives” luncheon 11:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 20, at the Hyatt Regency Greenwich with double Pulitzer Prize-winning author Andrea Elliott.
An investigative reporter for The New York Times and a professor of creative nonfiction at Princeton University, Elliott has documented the lives of poor Americans, Muslim immigrants and other people on the margins of power. Her book “Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City,” won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and was named by former President Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year.
Elliott has received several other notable awards during her career, including the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, a George Polk Award and an Overseas Press Club award. She is the first woman to win individual Pulitzer Prizes in both journalism and arts and letters.
The Transforming Lives Luncheon will include an 11 a.m. meet and greet where a limited number of guests will have the opportunity to engage in conversation with the author and receive a personalized, signed copy of “Invisible Child.”
Individual tickets are $250 for the meet and greet and $250 for the luncheon. For reservations, click here.
Then from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Oct. 24 at the Greenwich Historical Society, journey back in time to meet a heroic contemporary of Alexander Hamilton, who got an unmarked grave instead of a Broadway musical.
Nathan Hale was handsome, Yale University-educated and, like Hamilton, a trusted captain in Gen. George Washington’s Continental Army. Unlike Hamilton, whose legacy vaulted him onto Broadway in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton,” Hale’s heroics ended in the aforementioned unmarked grave, following his execution as a spy. Yet his legendary last words before the noose was tightened – “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” which Hale may never have actually uttered – remain immortalized in the history of America’s bitter war for independence.
Scott M. Smith, a Greenwich Wall Streeter turned author of contemporary thrillers, gives Hale his fictional due in “The Spy and the Seamstress,” set in the crunch year of 1776 when despite the colonists’ declaration of independence, the Continental Army was at low ebb in British-held New York.
Autographed copies of the book will be available for purchase the day of the lecture. Tickets are $20. For reservations and more, click here.
