André Michaux was one of the most accomplished scientific explorers of North America before Lewis and Clark. His explorations took him from the Bahamas to Hudson Bay, and it is likely that no contemporary of his had seen as much of the continent. However, there is more to his story.
About the Speaker
Patrick Spero, Ph.D., is the incoming chief executive officer of the American Philosophical Society and a scholar of early American history. Dr. Spero is the author of four books on the era of the American Revolution. They are Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania (2016), which was named a staff pick by the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2017, Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776 (2018), winner of the Philadelphia Athenaeum’s Literary Award and a finalist for the Journal of the American Revolution’s best book of the year, and the forthcoming The Scientist Turned Spy: Andre Michaux, Thomas Jefferson, and the Kentucky Conspiracy of 1793 (2024) and The Other Presidency: Thomas Jefferson and the American Philosophical Society (2024). He is also co-editor of The American Revolution Reborn: New Perspectives for the 21st Century (2016), a book that one reviewer said “will surely secure a place in the historiographical pantheon.”
Location Mertz Library Reading Room