November Book Club

The Association of Philadelphia Tour Guides (APT) will hold its next Zoom book club meeting on Tuesday, November 18 at 7 pm. All are welcome to attend.

The November Book Club Selection will be Treacherous Beauty: Peggy Shippen, the Woman Behind Benedict Arnold's Plot to Betray America by Mark Jacob and Stephen H. Case. Treacherous Beauty tells the true story of Peggy Shippen, a driving force in a conspiracy that came within an eyelash of dooming the American democracy. This book is 288 pages long (not a tome) and provides a fascinating look at Philadelphia during and after the British occupation. This selection also dovetails nicely with Valiant Ambition for those of you who want to do some extra credit work on the side.

Histories of the Revolutionary War have long honored heroines such as Betsy Ross, Abigail Adams, and Molly Pitcher. Now, more than two centuries later, comes the first biography of one of the war’s most remarkable women, a beautiful Philadelphia society woman named Peggy Shippen. While war was raging between England and its rebellious colonists, Peggy befriended a suave British officer and then married a crippled revolutionary general twice her age. She brought the two men together in a treasonous plot that nearly turned George Washington into a prisoner and changed the course of the war. Peggy Shippen was Mrs. Benedict Arnold.

After the conspiracy was exposed, Peggy managed to convince powerful men like Washington and Alexander Hamilton of her innocence. The Founding Fathers were handicapped by the common view that women lacked the sophistication for politics or warfare, much less treason. And Peggy took full advantage.

Peggy was to the American Revolution what the fictional Scarlett O’Hara was to the Civil War: a woman whose survival skills trumped all other values. Had she been a man, she might have been arrested, tried, and executed. And she might have become famous. Instead, her role was minimized and she was allowed to recede into the background—with a generous British pension in hand.

APT members will find Zoom details in the Tour Talk newsletter the week of the meeting. Non-APT members who would like to participate in the November book club should email APT Secretary Pam Covey at [secretary@phillyguides.org](mailto:secretary@phillyguides.org) no later than 5 pm the day of the meeting to receive the Zoom link. Please join us!