This Land is Your Land
A Road Trip Through U.S. History with Beverly Gage
As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, join Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Beverly Gage for a thought-provoking exploration of the people, places, and stories that have shaped the nation.
Drawing from her new book, This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip through U.S. History, Gage retraces the American story through 13 unforgettable journeys to historic sites across the country—from Independence Hall and the Alamo to lesser-known landmarks like the Eugene Debs House in Indiana and the historic Black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi.
Part history, part travelogue, and part personal memoir, Gage's travels took her to nearly 300 museums, battlefields, monuments, parks, and roadside attractions. Along the way, she spent the night in a decommissioned nuclear missile silo, visited a 19th-century utopian commune, attended Confederate Memorial Day observances, and even found history in Disneyland.
Through these experiences, Gage offers a fresh perspective on the American story—one that embraces the nation's triumphs and contradictions while arguing that Americans can confront their past honestly and still love their country.
Join us for an engaging conversation about history, memory, and the places that continue to shape our understanding of the United States.
Details on Attending
Ford Presidential Museum
303 Pearl St NW, Grand Rapids, MI 49504
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Private Friends of Ford Reception: 5:30 p.m. (For those with Lieutenant Commander membership level and above.)
Program: 6:30 p.m.
Book signing to follow the event.
Program Supporters
In partnership with the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation is proud to bring Beverly Gage to Grand Rapids.
Watch the Livestream
BEVERLY GAGE is the John Lewis Gaddis Professor of History at Yale University. She is the author of
This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History, an on-the-road journey into the American
past to mark the nation’s 250th birthday. Her book G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the
American Century received the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the Bancroft Prize in American
History and Diplomacy, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, the Los Angeles
Times Book Prize in Biography, the Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History,
and the Ellis W. Hawley Prize of the Organization of American Historians. Professor Gage is also
the author of The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror. In addition to
her teaching and research, she writes for numerous journals and magazines, including The New
Yorker, New York Times, and Washington Post.
Ride along with Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Beverly Gage as she travels the country to see the museums, historic sites, roadside attractions, reenactments, and souvenir shops where Americans learn—and fight—about our history. From the birth of the nation in Philadelphia to Disneyland and the California dream, This Land Is Your Land offers a guided tour of thirteen places and thirteen key moments that define America’s greatest successes and challenges.
The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a document that proclaimed the liberty and equality of all human beings, but produced a country that often failed to agree upon—or live up to—those ideals. This Land Is Your Land is for everyone who wants to find that history—to experience it and confront it, to celebrate it and condemn it—in the places where it happened.
Gage shows that Americans can face their past and still love their country. Toss the book in the back seat—or listen on audio with the windows down—and join the journey.
