CHESTERTOWN — An author event next week sponsored by The Bookplate will feature former Washington College Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience scholar Wil Haygood in conversation with his friend and fellow author Paul Hendrickson.
The talk will be held Sunday, March 22 at 2 p.m. in the Sultana Education Foundation’s Holt Center at 200 S. Cross St. in downtown Chestertown.
The public is invited. There is no cost, but reservations are strongly encouraged.
For more information, call The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or email contact@thebookplate.net.
Wil Haygood will discuss his new book about the African American experience in and around the Vietnam War titled “The War Within a War.”
Drawing on the lives of soldiers and officers, doctors and nurses, journalists and activists, artists and politicians, Haygood illuminates a generation caught between two battles: one on the front lines in Vietnam and another for justice and dignity in America.
Among those at the heart of the story are Air Force pilot Fred Cherry, the first Black officer captured by the North Vietnamese and a hero to millions back home; Dr. Elbert Nelson, a doctor who came to Vietnam after watching TV footage of the Watts riots in Los Angeles and soon found himself amid rising Black soldier protests overseas; Wallace Terry, a groundbreaking Black reporter determined to expose the dynamics of race and war to the American public; and Philippa Schuyler, a biracial concert pianist who traveled to Vietnam to rescue mixed-race orphans, many fathered by Black soldiers, and died trying to bring them to safety.
Surrounding their experiences are the cultural and political forces of the era, including Martin Luther King Jr., Marvin Gaye, Berry Gordy and Lyndon Johnson, whose voices and actions shaped a decade of turbulence and transformation.
“’The War Within a War’ is both sweeping history and intimate revelation, capturing the tragedies and triumphs, the honor and hypocrisies, the courage and cowardice that shaped an era and whose repercussions resonate today,” a news release states.
Haygood’s biography of Thurgood Marshall, “Showdown,” and his biography of White House butler Eugene Allen, “The Butler,” were New York Times bestsellers. “The Butler” was adapted into a film directed by Lee Daniels.
Haygood’s longtime journalism career — which took him around the world and into several war zones — was spent largely at The Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and at The Washington Post, where he won numerous awards.
A John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellow, a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow and an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow, Haygood was the recipient of the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, an international prize bestowed by the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation.
Haygood was the Patrick Henry Fellow at Washington College for the 2017-18 academic year. While in residence at Washington College, he worked on “Tigerland: The Miracle on East Broad Street.” The book tells the story of America in 1968-1969 through the prism of a segregated all-Black high school in Columbus, Ohio, Haygood’s hometown.
As part of Kent County Public Schools’ One School/One Book initiative in the fall of 2018, the community raised nearly $10,000 to ensure that every student in grades 8 through 12 received a personal copy of Haygood’s “Tigerland.”
He is a visiting scholar at Miami University in Ohio.
Paul Hendrickson is a three-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a winner for his 2003 “Sons of Mississippi.”
His “The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War” was a 1996 finalist for the National Book Award.
His 2011 “Hemingway’s Boat” was a New York Times best seller and also a best seller in the United Kingdom.
He has been the recipient of writing fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lyndhurst Foundation and the Alicia Patterson Foundation.
From 1998 to 2024, Henrickson was on the faculty of the creative writing program at the University of Pennsylvania, and for two decades before that he was a staff writer at The Washington Post.
Hendrickson’s latest book, “Fighting the Night: Iwo Jima, World War II, and a Flyer’s Life,” is a tribute to his father Joe.
