This Land is Your Land

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Beverly Gage joins former Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan to discuss her new book, This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip through U.S. History, ahead of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Limited copies of This Land is Your Land will be available for free.       This program is presented in partnership with the Watkins Museum of History and the Lawrence Public Library     Dr. Colleen Shogan served as the 11th Archivist of the United States – the first woman to be appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to lead the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). She currently serves as a senior fellow at More Perfect where she leads In Pursuit, an ambitious history-based nonpartisan civics initiative that is identifying the most insightful and timeless lessons from the past 250 years of American history. Shogan last visited the Dole Institute in January 2026, where she was recognized at the 2026 Elizabeth Dole Women in Leadership Lecture. Beverly Gage teaches American history at Yale. Her book G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century received the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the Bancroft Prize in American History, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography. She is also the author of The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror, and writes for numerous journals and magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.     About This Land is Your Land Ride along with Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Beverly Gage as she travels the country to see the museums, historic sites, roadside attractions, reenactments, and souvenir shops where Americans learn—and fight—about our history. From the birth of the nation in Philadelphia to Disneyland and the California dream, This Land Is Your Land offers a guided tour of thirteen places and thirteen key moments that define America’s greatest successes and challenges. The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a document that proclaimed the liberty and equality of all human beings, but produced a country that often failed to agree upon—or live up to—those ideals. This Land Is Your Land is for everyone who wants to find that history—to experience it and confront it, to celebrate it and condemn it—in the places where it happened. Gage shows that Americans can face their past and still love their country. Toss the book in the back seat—or listen on audio with the windows down—and join the journey.