Dr. Adam Rome to Speak About Earth Day at Hagley Museum and Library Lecture, Today

Hagley Museum and Library welcomes Dr. Adam Rome, University of Delaware, on April 25, to speak about the origins and ramifications of the first Earth Day. His lecture is based on his just-released book, The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation. The lecture begins at 7 p.m. Admission is free. Reservations requested, call (302) 658-2400, ext. 243. The lecture will be held in the Hagley Soda House. Use Hagley's Buck Road East entrance off Route 100 in Wilmington, Delaware.

"To mark the annual Earth Day anniversary, Hagley is very proud to bring the man who has quite literally 'written the book' about the event to tell us about Earth Day's history and impact on this country," says Dr. Roger Horowitz, director at the Hagley's Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society.

The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation is the first complete story of how April 22, 1970, the date of the "National Teach-In on the Crisis of the Environment"-better known as Earth Day-caught on and resulted in hundreds of teach-ins and other educational events around the country. In its aftermath, thousands of Earth Day organizers and participants decided to devote their lives to the environmental cause. Dr. Rome shows how much of the environmental movement's infrastructure-lobbying organizations, environmental-studies programs, community ecology centers-and legislation protecting the environment can be traced to the first Earth Day.

Adam Rome is an environmental historian of the United States. His first book, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism, won the Organization of American Historians' Frederick Jackson Turner award and the Society for American City and Regional Planning History's Lewis Mumford award. Rome worked as a journalist for the Wichita Eagle-Beacon for five years before deciding to pursue an academic career. An engaging teacher, speaker, and writer, he often is approached by the media for his views on environmental issues.

About the Library
Hagley Library is the nation's leading business history library, archives, and research center. Current holdings comprise 37,000 linear feet in the Manuscripts and Archives Department, 290,000 printed volumes in the Imprints Department, 2 million visual items in the Pictorial Department, and more than 300,000 digital images and pages in the Digital Archives Department. Hagley's Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society organizes conferences, research seminars, and a public lecture series; it also operates a research grants-in-aid program.

Hagley Museum and Library
Hagley Museum and Library collects, preserves, and interprets the unfolding history of American enterprise. For more information, call 302-658-2400 weekdays or visit http://www.hagley.org.