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Victoria Johnson

Goodreads Author

Born

in Ithaca, The United States

Website

http://www.americaneden.org/

Twitter

VSJohnsonNYC

Genre

History, Biography, Science

Influences

Andrea Wulf, Candice Millard, Ron Chernow, and Erik Larson

Member Since

January 2015

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Victoria Johnson loves history, gardens, and opera. She earned her undergraduate degree in philosophy at Yale and her doctorate in sociology at Columbia. She teaches on the history of philanthropy, the arts, the natural environment, and New York City at Hunter College of the City University of New York. Her latest book, AMERICAN EDEN, is a biography of the doctor at the Hamilton-Burr duel, David Hosack, a pioneering physician and botanist. Hosack's botanical garden, the first in the new Republic, is now buried under Rockefeller Center.
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Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Victoria Johnson I grew up in a house filled with maps of New York City from every century, because my father is a retired professor of urban planning who specializes …moreI grew up in a house filled with maps of New York City from every century, because my father is a retired professor of urban planning who specializes in the history of the city. On family trips, both my parents loved to walk us kids around cities and show us the layers of the past that were still visible in the present--and how to detect traces of what had vanished. I was thunderstruck the first time I heard that one of the most iconic urban spaces in the world today was once the leafy, rural site of the nation's first botanical garden. In American Eden, I try to whisk readers back to that world completely. (less)

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What’s the best thing about being a writer?

Victoria Johnson Following my characters through one archive after another like an obsessed detective and then conjuring up a whole lost world from their surviving wri…moreFollowing my characters through one archive after another like an obsessed detective and then conjuring up a whole lost world from their surviving written words. It's an intense, joyful feat requiring both historical fidelity and emotional imagination.(less)

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Victoria Johnson’s books

Average rating: 4.03 · 1,209 ratings · 221 reviews · 3 distinct works • Similar authors

	American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic 4.03 avg rating — 1,202 ratings — published 2018 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Backstage at the Revolution: How the Royal Paris Opera Survived the End of the Old Regime 3.83 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 2009 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Opera and Society in Italy and France from Monteverdi to Bourdieu by Victoria Johnson (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Jane F. Fulcher (Editor), Thomas Ertman (Editor) liked it 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2007 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Victoria is Currently Reading

Victoria Johnson is currently reading

2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything

by Mauro F. Guillén

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Victoria Johnson said: " Mauro Guillen is one of the few scholars I know of who is equally at home writing about the past and the future, and 2030 is a fascinating read--scary at times, encouraging at others, witty, lively and impressively researched. I have bought extra cop ...more "

Sep 19, 2020 04:41PM · see review

Quotes by Victoria Johnson (?)

“Hosack was the original urban gardener, experimenting with fruits and vegetables by day and mingling with his cosmopolitan friends at night.”
― Victoria Johnson, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic

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“When Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr needed an attending physician for their 1804 duel, they both chose David Hosack.”
― Victoria Johnson, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic

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“For Hosack, the garden did become a new home. What he couldn’t find in the soil, he found in books, spending hours in the little library in the back corner of the garden. Curtis had installed an aviary just next door, and with the birds singing and the leaves rustling on the shrubbery outside, a reader curled up in a library chair felt, as one visitor put it, “a thousand miles from London”
― Victoria Johnson, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic

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