Beaverland Author Event & Book Signing

Please join us at Summit High School’s Auditorium for a presentation and book signing with Leila Philip, author of Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America.  Books will be available for purchase at the event, but we encourage guests to purchase books beforehand at Roundabout Books either in-store or online HERE.

This is a ticketed event. Please register all adults and children attending via Eventbrite HERE. Children 8 and under are FREE. Guests 9 and over are $15.

From award-winning writer Leila Philip, Beaverland is a masterful work of narrative science writing, a book that highlights, through history and contemporary storytelling, how this weird rodent plays an oversized role in American history and its future. She follows fur trappers who lead her through waist high water, fur traders and fur auctioneers, as well as wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers, and the colorful group of activists known as beaver believers.

Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver’s profound influence on our nation’s early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. In her pursuit of this weird and wonderful animal, she introduces us to people whose lives are devoted to the beaver, including a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, who uses drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams; and an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the “beaver whisperer”. 

What emerges is a poignant personal narrative, a startling portrait of the secretive world of the contemporary fur trade, and an engrossing ecological and historical investigation of these heroic animals who, once trapped to the point of extinction, have returned to the landscape as one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, Beaverland reveals the profound ways in which one odd creature and the trade surrounding it has shaped history, culture, and our environment.

We are currently in conversation with community partnerships that can join us for this event addressing environment, history, and the impact of this weird and wonderful rodent.