Boston Flora

Tag: Stephanie Schorow

  • Wednesday, November 9, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – The Great Boston Fire: The Inferno That Nearly Incinerated the City

    Join The Boston Public Library at the main branch on Boylston Street on the 150th anniversary of the Great Boston Fire with local author Stephanie Schorow as she recounts the event’s history, from the foolish decisions that precipitated it, to the heroics of firefighters who fought it. The lecture will be held on November 9 beginning at 6 pm.

    For two days in November 1872, a massive fire swept through Boston, leaving the downtown in ruins and the population traumatized. Coming barely a year after the infamous Chicago fire, Boston’s inferno turned out to be one of the most expensive fires per acre in U.S. history. Yet today few are aware of how close Boston came to destruction. Both the book and presentation are lavishly illustrated with period artwork and photographs. Published just before the fire’s 150th anniversary, The Great Boston Fire captures the drama of a life-and-death battle in the heart of the city.

    Stephanie Schorow is a journalist, writing instructor, and the author of eight nonfiction books on a variety of topics in Boston history. They include: The Great Boston Fire: The Inferno that Nearly Incinerated the City (Globe Pequot); Inside the Combat Zone: The Stripped Down Story of Boston’s Most Notorious Neighborhood (Union Park Press); and Drinking Boston: A History of the City and its Spirits (Union Park Press), and, with Beverly Ford, The Boston Mob Guide: Hitmen, Hoodlum and Hideouts. She will publish an updated version of her 2005 book The Cocoanut Grove Fire: A Boston Tragedy in November. Her novel Cat Dreaming will be published in 2023 by Small Town Girl Press. She shares her home in Medford with two cats that like to walk over her keyboard when she is typing.

    Seating limited to 228. Registration required HERE or email research@bpl.org

  • Wednesday, December 3, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Repeal Day Anniversary Celebration

    Join friends and members of the Gibson House Museum for a benefit cocktail reception to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition (December 5, 1933). Etiquetteer Robert B. Dimmick will offer a few deft words about the manners during Prohibition. Special guest Stephanie Schorow, author of Drinking Boston: A History of the City and its Spirits, will also attend.

    Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails (LUPEC) will be serving Charlie’s Beacon, a cocktail specially designed in honor of the Gibson House and its founder, Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr.  Ryan and Wood Distillery of Gloucester is graciously sponsoring Repeal Day with its world-class Knockabout Gin. Period attire is encouraged.
    Sponsors will receive a personally autographed copy of Ms. Schorow’s book.  Please respond by November 28. Gibson House Museum is located at 137 Beacon Street, Boston.  Ticket price $125 for Patrons, $200 for Sponsors, and reservations are required; rsvp info@thegibsonhouse.org or 617.267.6338. Gibson martini image from www.magnoliadays.com.

  • Wednesday, November 12, 5:30 tour, 6:00 pm lecture – Prohibition: Boston Dry/Boston Wet

    The Jamaica Plain Historical Society presents Stephanie Schorow, author of Drinking Boston: A History of the City and its Spirits, who will discuss the history of Boston during the era when the 18th Amendment was in effect. Prohibition in Boston was a period rife with class politics, social reform, and opportunism. Our hosts will be the Boston Beer Company, housed in the historic Brewery Complex where Haffenreffer survived Prohibition by brewing ‘near beer’ and sodas.

    In Drinking Boston, Stephanie Schorow serves up a remarkable cocktail representative of Boston’s intoxicating story: its spirit of invention, its hardscrabble politics, its mythology, and the city’s never-ending battle between personal freedom and civic reform-all told through the lens of the bottom of a cocktail glass.

    Come early (at 5:30) to the Sam Adams Brewery at 30 Germania Street in Boston on Wednesday, November 12 to go on a tour of the Samuel Adams Brewery before the talk. Books will be for sale.

  • Thursday, March 14, 6:00 pm – Drinking Boston: A History of the City and its Spirits

    From the revolutionary camaraderie of the Colonial taverns to the saloons of the turn of the century; from Prohibition—a period rife with class politics, social reform, and opportunism—to a trail of nightclub neon so bright, it was called the “Conga Belt,” Drinking Boston pays tribute to the fascinating role alcohol has played throughout the city’s history. Includes book sale at the event, which will take place Thursday, March 14 beginning at 6 pm in the Rabb Lecture Hall of the Main Branch of the Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street in Boston.

    Stephanie Schorow serves up a remarkable cocktail representative of Boston’s intoxicating story: its spirit of invention, its hardscrabble politics, its mythology, and the city’s never-ending battle between personal freedom and civic reform—all told through the lens of the bottom of a cocktail glass.

    Stephanie Schorow wasn’t born in Boston, but the day she moved here in 1989, she knew she had come home. Ms. Schorow is the author of six books on Boston, including, with co-author Beverly Ford, The Boston Mob Guide: Hit Men, Hoodlums & Hideouts, published in December 2011, by the History Press and Drinking Boston: A History of the City and Its Spirits, published by Union Park Press on November 1, 2012.

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  • Thursday, November 19, 12:15 pm – Girls’ Night Out in the 1890s

    On a hot July day in 1891, four wealthy women set off for ten days of “roughing it” on Great Brewster Island and kept a diary of their summer adventure on their “enchanted isle.”  Now in the collection of the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University, the diary is a snapshot of a time when the Harbor Islands played a prominent role in the lives of Boston-area residents.  Author Stephanie Schorow introduces us to the “Scribe, Autocrat, Aristocrat and Acrobat” and their delightful get away.

    Stephanie Schorow is a long-time Boston-area reporter and writer. If she’s not working on a book project, she’s hammering away at articles for a host of publications and institutions, including the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, Lifescript.com, MIT, Harvard and many others. She writes on health issues, history topics and cultural trends. She reviews restaurants for Globe North and music reviews for the Chicago Blues Guide. She also writes and takes photographs for travel features.

    Ms. Schorow is the author of the nonfiction book, The Crime of the Century: How the Brink’s Robbers Stole Millions and the Hearts of Boston, published in February 2008 by Commonwealth Editions. Her book on the Boston Harbor Islands, East of Boston: Notes from the Harbor Islands, was published in July 2008 by The History Press.

    $5 admission. The talk will take place at the Old South Meeting House, 310 Washington Street, on Thursday, November 19 beginning at 12:15 pm.  For more information, call 617-482-6439, or log on to www.oldsouthmeetinghouse.org.

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