Ford Evening Book Talk: Carolyn Eastman

The Strange Genius of Mr. O is at once the biography of a remarkable performer--a gaunt Scottish orator who appeared in a toga--and a story of the United States during the founding era. When James Ogilvie arrived in America in 1793, he was a deeply ambitious but impoverished teacher. By the time he returned to Britain in 1817, he had become a bona fide celebrity known simply as Mr. O, counting the nation’s leading politicians and intellectuals among his admirers. And then, like so many meteoric American luminaries afterward, he fell from grace. Mount Vernon welcomes author Carolyn Eastman to discuss her new book The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States' First Forgotten Celebrity.