Council Literary Series: Nathaniel Philbrick in conversation with Stephen Aron
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
6pm | Reception
6:30pm | Author Program
7:30pm | Dinner and Book Signing
Bel-Air Country Club (10768 Bellagio Road, Los Angeles, CA 90077)
Parking Information
Valet parking is included
Dress Code
Business Attire
The Bel-Air Country Club maintains a dress code. You may read more about it here. Please note that jeans or denims of any color are not permitted.
If you have any questions, please email The Council office at thecouncil@lfla.org or call 213.228.7506.
Our Guest Author:
Our Guest Interlocutor:
Nathaniel Philbrick
Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of In the Heart of the Sea, winner of the National Book Award; Mayflower, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Valiant Ambition, winner of the George Washington Prize; Bunker Hill, winner of the New England Book Award; Travels with George; Away Off Shore; Second Wind; Sea of Glory; and The Last Stand.
Stephen Aron
Stephen Aron has served as President and CEO of the Autry Museum of the American West since July 2021. A historian specializing in the American West, frontiers, and borderlands, he previously spent more than 30 years as a professor at Princeton University and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Aron holds degrees from Amherst College and the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author or co-author of several acclaimed books on American and world history. His scholarship has earned numerous honors, including election to the Society of American Historians and leadership roles in the field of Western history.
About the Book:
The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World
In The Rush, Nathaniel Philbrick transforms the Gold Rush from a tale of sudden riches into the origin story of America’s modern contradictions—capital consolidated at dizzying speed, democracy in thrall to private power, xenophobia weaponized in the name of liberty—and a stubborn belief in the American experiment that refuses to die. This is the story of a nation tearing at the seams and a republic tested by its own ideals. Not until a year after the outbreak of the Civil War, when President Lincoln signed legislation that would unite the nation east to west by building a transcontinental railroad, was California’s loyalty secured.
Praise
“With characteristic eloquence and insight, Nathaniel Philbrick has given us an illuminating and absorbing account of the California Gold Rush, bringing that tumultuous, thrilling, and complex moment to vivid life. Peopled with memorable figures and paced like a great novel, The Rush is a terrific work of history.”
—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of And There Was Light
“A rush of a narrative that will leave you giddy and full of wonder, turning pages with all the fever of a hopeful prospector. The true gold here is in the pathos beneath the glittering surface: the stories of real people; their brutal contests and conquests; and the breaching and the breaking of the natural terrain. A thrilling and valuable story of the making of America from the maestro of narrative nonfiction.”
—Ilyon Woo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Master Slave Husband Wife
