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Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026 at 7 PM ET

Join us to discuss Alec Zuercher Reichardt’s new book, Roads to Power, Roads to Crisis: The War for the American Interior and the Infrastructural Routes of Revolution (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025).

The construction of imperial communications infrastructure led to British victory in the Seven Years’ War, yet it was also the empire’s undoing, laying the roads to Revolution.

Centering on the eighteenth-century struggle for the greater Ohio Valley, this book uncovers a much larger imperial competition, one for control over Atlantic and North American information and transportation networks. By the height of the Seven Years’ War, this contest had propelled Britain to construct imperial infrastructure that outpaced the efforts of France, its primary European rival, and that successfully co-opted Indigenous ally channels. However, the rise of the British North American infrastructure state was also the empire’s downfall. The same roads, printing presses, and postal networks constructed and funded by the War Office and imperial treasury quickly also became the primary routes for those revolutionaries who sought to oppose the British state.

Alec Reichardt is Associate Professor of History and Kinder Institute Associate Professor of Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri. He received his BA from Duke and his PhD from Yale University. A historian of early North America and the Atlantic World, he’s published essays and articles on the global eighteenth-century British Empire, French military infrastructure, Indigenous textual translation, as well as a co-edited collection, Inlands: Empires, Contested Interiors, and the Connection of the World (Columbia University Press, 2024).

Hosted by the Program in Early American Economy and Society

Library Company History & Exhibitions Tour

Friday, May 1st at 11:00 AM

In-Person Event

Join us for a guided tour of the Library Company’s first-floor exhibition galleries. Learn more about the history of the de facto first Library of Congress and oldest colonial cultural institution in the United States. Guests will also learn more about art and artifacts on display in the Logan Room, and as well as hear about the collection materials showcased in our rotating exhibition space.

Space is limited, so please sign up for only one tour time per person. Tickets are available for all First Fridays from May 1st through October 2nd, 2026.

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Tuesday, May 19th | 5:15 pm | Hybrid
Shareholders Only

Meet and mingle with other shareholders, trustees, and staff as we elect our Board of Trustees and share updates about the institution’s work over the last year. Shareholder proxy information will be available by April 17, 2026. Stay tuned for an email and mailed packet.

Following the business meeting, join us for a closer look at the Library Company’s new exhibition, Philadelphia’s Radical Revolution, which explores the dramatic shifts that Philadelphians endured during the era of the American Revolution.

Director Designate Jessica Choppin Roney and Rider University Professor of History Aaron Sullivan will discuss how the era’s political transformations, from disaffection to radicalism to moderation, impacted city residents.

Reception to follow.

Library Company History & Exhibitions Tour

Friday, June 5th at 11:00 AM

In-Person Event

Join us for a guided tour of the Library Company’s first-floor exhibition galleries. Learn more about the history of the de facto first Library of Congress and oldest colonial cultural institution in the United States. Guests will also learn more about art and artifacts on display in the Logan Room, and as well as hear about the collection materials showcased in our rotating exhibition space.

Space is limited, so please sign up for only one tour time per person. Tickets are available for all First Fridays from May 1st through October 2nd, 2026.

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Library Company History & Exhibitions Tour

Friday, July 10th at 11:00 AM

In-Person Event

Join us for a guided tour of the Library Company’s first-floor exhibition galleries. Learn more about the history of the de facto first Library of Congress and oldest colonial cultural institution in the United States. Guests will also learn more about art and artifacts on display in the Logan Room, and as well as hear about the collection materials showcased in our rotating exhibition space.

Space is limited, so please sign up for only one tour time per person. Tickets are available for all First Fridays from May 1st through October 2nd, 2026.

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Library Company History & Exhibitions Tour

Friday, August 7th at 11:00 AM

In-Person Event

Join us for a guided tour of the Library Company’s first-floor exhibition galleries. Learn more about the history of the de facto first Library of Congress and oldest colonial cultural institution in the United States. Guests will also learn more about art and artifacts on display in the Logan Room, and as well as hear about the collection materials showcased in our rotating exhibition space.

Space is limited, so please sign up for only one tour time per person. Tickets are available for all First Fridays from May 1st through October 2nd, 2026.

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Library Company History & Exhibitions Tour

Friday, September 4th at 11:00 AM

In-Person Event

Join us for a guided tour of the Library Company’s first-floor exhibition galleries. Learn more about the history of the de facto first Library of Congress and oldest colonial cultural institution in the United States. Guests will also learn more about art and artifacts on display in the Logan Room, and as well as hear about the collection materials showcased in our rotating exhibition space.

Space is limited, so please sign up for only one tour time per person. Tickets are available for all First Fridays from May 1st through October 2nd, 2026.

REGISTER

Library Company History & Exhibitions Tour

Friday, October 2nd at 11:00 AM

In-Person Event

Join us for a guided tour of the Library Company’s first-floor exhibition galleries. Learn more about the history of the de facto first Library of Congress and oldest colonial cultural institution in the United States. Guests will also learn more about art and artifacts on display in the Logan Room, and as well as hear about the collection materials showcased in our rotating exhibition space.

Space is limited, so please sign up for only one tour time per person. Tickets are available for all First Fridays from May 1st through October 2nd, 2026.

REGISTER