Join the Strathmore Speakers Series and Onondaga Free Library for an evening with New York Times bestselling author Adam Goodheart, who will discuss his latest book, The Last Island: Death, Discovery, and the Most Elusive Tribe on Earth. The book tells the story of North Sentinel Island, home to a tribe believed to be the most isolated human community on earth. The Sentinelese people want to be left alone and will shoot deadly arrows at anyone who tries to come ashore. As the web of modernity draws ever closer, the island represents the last chapter in the Age of Discovery–the final holdout in a completely connected world. A brief Q&A will follow their presentation.

This event will be held on Thursday, November 2nd at 7 pm on Zoom. Like all Strathmore Speaker Series and Onondaga Free Library events, this presentation is free and open to the public.

You can register for this event here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcld-CgrT8uG91Yti_mbLqERep5wqstDefE#/registration

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

About Adam Goodheart

 Adam Goodheart is a historian, essayist, and journalist and the author of the New York Times bestselling book 1861: The Civil War Awakening, which was published by Knopf in hardcover and in paperback by Vintage Books. The book received wide critical acclaim; a cover review in the New York Times called it “exhilarating” “inspiring,” and “irresistible,” adding, “1861 creates the uncanny illusion that the reader has stepped into a time machine.” Goodheart’s book was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in history and was named Book of the Year by the History Book Club; the audiobook edition won the Audie Award for best history title of the year. Among its other honors, 1861 was cited among the best books of the year by the New York Times, The Atlantic, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. President Obama invited Goodheart to the Oval Office to recognize 1861’s role in having Fort Monroe, Va. – in which part of the book is set – declared a national park. 

The recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award, Goodheart is also an elected member of the Society of American Historians and the American Antiquarian Society. His articles have appeared in National Geographic, Outside, Smithsonian, The Atlantic, Politico, and The New York Times Magazine, among others, and he was the recipient of a Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers. He has made many broadcast media appearances, including on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” “Morning Edition,” and “All Things Considered,” as well as on the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, C-SPAN, and the History Channel. 

Goodheart lives in Washington, D.C., and on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where he is director of Washington College’s Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, an institute for fostering innovative approaches to American history and culture. 

Goodheart’s next book, The Last Island: Death, Discovery, and the Most Elusive Tribe on Earth, will be published by Godine in September 2023. He is currently at work on 1865: A Nation Reborn, under contract with Knopf and Vintage. 

About The Last Island: Discovery, Defiance, and the Most Elusive Tribe on Earth

In November 2018, a zealous American missionary was killed while attempting to visit an island he called “Satan’s last stronghold,” a small patch of land known as North Sentinel in the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago in the Indian Ocean. News of the tragedy fascinated people around the world. Most were unaware such a place still existed in our time: an island unmolested by the advances of modern technology.Twenty years before the American missionary’s ill-fated visit, a young American historian and journalist named Adam Goodheart also traveled to the waters off North Sentinel. During his time in the Andaman Islands he witnessed another isolated tribe emerge into modernity for the first time.

Now, Goodheart–a bestselling historian–has returned to the Andamans. The Last Island is a work of history as well as travel, a journey in time as well as place. It tells the stories of others drawn to North Sentinel’s mystery through the centuries, from imperial adventurers to an eccentric Victorian photographer to modern-day anthropologists. It narrates the tragic stories of other Andaman tribes’ encounters with the outside world. And it shows how the web of modernity is drawing ever closer to the island’s shores. The Last Island is a beautifully written meditation on the end of the Age of Discovery at the start of a new millennium. It is a book that will fascinate any reader interested in the limits–and dangers–of our modern, global society and its emphasis on ceaseless, unbroken connection.

Preorder the book here.