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Meet the Author

March 29, 2022
7:00 pm

Justin Martin | Genius of Place, The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted

 @ Waveland Golf Course Lodge

Des Moines Founders Garden Club presents  OLMSTED 200 WEEK: Celebrating Parks for All People

The Genius of Place, The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted

The full and definitive biography of Frederick Law Olmsted, influential abolitionist, ardent social reformer and conservationist, and the visionary designer of Central Park

Frederick Law Olmsted is arguably the most important historical figure that the average American knows the least about. Best remembered for his landscape architecture, from New York’s Central Park to Boston’s Emerald Necklace to Stanford University’s campus, Olmsted was also an influential journalist, early voice for the environment, and abolitionist credited with helping dissuade England from joining the South in the Civil War. This momentous career was shadowed by a tragic personal life, also fully portrayed here.Most of all, he was a social reformer. He didn’t simply create places that were beautiful in the abstract. An awesome and timeless intent stands behind Olmsted’s designs, allowing his work to survive to the present day. With our urgent need to revitalize cities and a widespread yearning for green space, his work is more relevant now than it was during his lifetime. Justin Martin restores Olmsted to his rightful place in the pantheon of great Americans.

 

All Olmsted Week activities are free and open to the public. Limited seating at some sites.

Please register in advance at www.dmfoundersgc.org.

About the Author…..Justin Martin’s latest book is A Fierce Glory. This is a group biography treatment of Antietam, the Civil War’s pivotal battle, still America’s single bloodiest day. The rich cast includes: Robert E. Lee, pioneering war photographer Alexander Gardner, and Jonathan Letterman, the father of battlefield medicine. Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation are woven into this account far more than in a typical military history of Antietam.

Martin’s specialty is American history, meticulously researched, but delivered in a narrative style that’s akin to fiction. His previous book is Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians about a decadent and incredibly influential artists’ circle that hung out at Pfaff’s saloon in NYC during the 1850s. Among its members: a young Walt Whitman; Artemus Ward, America’s first standup comic; psychedelic drug pioneer Fitz Hugh Ludlow; and Adah Isaacs Menken, an actress notorious for her “Naked Lady” act.

Earlier efforts includes biographies of pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, and Ralph Nader, the noted consumer advocate. Martin’s articles have appeared in a variety of publications including the New York Times, Newsweek, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Martin is a 1987 graduate of Rice University in Houston, Texas. He lives with his wife and twin sons in Forest Hills Gardens, New York, a landmark neighborhood designed by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. In his spare time, Martin runs marathons (he’s completed seven) and gardens (he’s grown some great tomatoes, but his experiments in urban corn-growing have so far failed).

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