Atlanta History Center's Fall Season of Author Programs Delivers Another Roster of Notable Authors

Tue, Aug 18, 2015 16:39 CET

Ongoing Program Series Brings Authors and Audiences Together in an Intimate Setting for Enlightening Insights, Discussions, and Book Signings

Join Atlanta History Center for an ongoing series of literary programs designed to deliver the most varied and distinguished lineup of current, award-winning, and bestselling authors of fiction and nonfiction.

Each Author Program joins authors and audiences in an intimate setting complete with enlightening insights, audience discussions, on-site book discounts, and book signings with the author. Past guest lecturers have included such acclaimed authors as James McPherson, Garrison Keilor, Sara Gruen, Edwidge Danticat, Sally Mann, Jodi Picoult, and David Baldacci.

The Atlanta History Center’s fall 2015 lineup continues to offer audiences a wide variety of subject matter from current bestselling fiction, to thought provoking social and political topics, and delectable insights from local and nationally celebrated culinary experts.

The series kicks off in September with Award-Winning Southern Chef Steven Satterfield sharing seasonal recipes from his cookbook, Root to Leaf, and bestselling author Garth Stein celebrating the paperback release of his captivating page-turner, A Sudden Light. The schedule continues with Presidential biographies by Todd Brewster, Jay Winik, and Betty Caroli that explore pivotal moments in the careers of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, and Lyndon Johnson, respectively. Other nonfiction releases explore the contentious Senate hearing to confirm Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court, the lives of women during the Civil War, and the fascinating career of Sun Records founder Sam Phillips. Fiction lovers will delight in new works from Lynn Cullen, Barbara Shapiro, and Joseph Skibell.

Lectures are held at either Atlanta History Center in Buckhead or at Margaret Mitchell House in Midtown. At each lecture, guests receive a 25% discount on the featured author’s book. Admission to all lectures is $5 for members, $10 for nonmembers, and free to AHC Insiders, unless noted otherwise. Reservations are required; please call 404.814.4150 or purchase advance tickets online at AtlantaHistoryCenter.com/Lectures.

September 2015

Steven Satterfield, Root to Leaf

Thursday, September 3, 2015

6:00 pm Reception; 7:00 pm Program

Location: Atlanta History Center

Chef of the award-winning Atlanta restaurant Miller Union, Steven Satterfield – dubbed the “Vegetable Shaman” by the New York Times’s Sam Sifton – has enchanted diners with his vegetable dishes, capturing the essence of fresh produce through a simple, elegant cooking style. Like his contemporaries April Bloomfield and Fergus Henderson, who use the whole animal from nose to tail in their dishes, Satterfield believes in making the most out of the edible parts of the plant, from root to leaf. Satterfield embodies an authentic approach to farmstead-inspired cooking, incorporating seasonal fresh produce into everyday cuisine. His trademark is simple food, and in his creative hands he continually updates the region’s legendary dishes – easy yet sublime fare that can be made in the home kitchen. Root to Leaf is not a vegetarian cookbook, it’s a cookbook that celebrates the world of fresh produce. Everyone will find something here from the omnivore to the vegan. Organized by seasons, and with a decidedly Southern flair,

Root to Leaf is not a vegetarian cookbook, it’s a cookbook that celebrates the world of fresh produce. Everyone will find something here from the omnivore to the vegan. Organized by seasons, and with a decidedly Southern flair, Satterfield's mouthwatering recipes make the most of available produce from local markets, foraging, and the home garden.

This is an outdoor event held at Smith Family Farm at Atlanta History Center. Admission is $10 members, $15 nonmembers, and includes small seasonal bites and libations. Reservations are required, please call 404.814.4150 or reserve tickets online at AtlantaHistoryCenter.com/Lectures.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Lacey Outten, Account Supervisor at The Reynolds Group. Phone: 843.722.5908. , Email:lacey@thereynoldsgroupinc.com

Aiken Lecture: Todd Brewster, Lincoln’s Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months that Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War

Thursday, September 10, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

Lincoln’s Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months That Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War is a riveting account of the 180 days leading up to the signing of one of America’s most historic documents, as seen through the eyes of our most popular and enigmatic president: the ever-fascinating Abraham Lincoln.

On July 12, 1862, while on a bumpy, mud-spattered carriage ride to the funeral of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton’s infant son, Abraham Lincoln spoke for the first time of his intention to free the slaves. On January 1, 1863, he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, doing precisely that. In between, as America’s bloodiest war roared through Manassas, Antietam, and Fredericksburg, the sixteenth president quarreled with his recalcitrant generals over battle strategy, clashed loudly with abolitionists in the Radical Republican Congress, managed the jealousies and bloated egos of his cabinet members, and entered into a deep spiritual and intellectual crisis.

Todd Brewster has served as Don E. Ackerman Director of Oral History at the United States Military Academy, West Point, and is a longtime journalist who has worked as an editor for Time and Life and as senior producer for ABC News. He has written for Vanity Fair, Time, Life, the Huffington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Times, and is the coauthor with the late Peter Jennings of the bestselling books The Century, The Century for Young People, and In Search of America. He lives with his wife and two sons in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Admission for all lectures is $5 members, $10 nonmembers, and free to AHC Insiders unless otherwise noted. Reservations are required, please call 404.814.4150 or reserve tickets online at AtlantaHistoryCenter.com/Lectures.

Support: The Aiken Lecture Series is supported by the Lucy Ruckner Aiken Foundation.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Kyle Radler at

Scribner Publicity / Simon & Schuster, Inc. Phone: 212.698.2358, Email:Kyle.Radler@simonandschuster.com

Garth Stein, A Sudden Light

Monday, September 14, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

Twenty-three years after the fateful summer of 1990, Trevor Riddell recalls the events surrounding his fourteenth birthday, when he gets his first glimpse of the infamous Riddell House. Built from the spoils of a massive timber fortune, the legendary family mansion is constructed of giant whole trees and is set on a huge estate overlooking Seattle’s Puget Sound. Trevor’s bankrupt parents have separated, and his father, Jones Riddell, has brought Trevor to Riddell House with a goal: to join forces with Aunt Serena, dispatch the ailing and elderly Grandpa

Samuel to a nursing home, sell off the house and property for development, and divide up the profits. But as young Trevor explores the house’s hidden stairways and forgotten rooms, he discovers secrets that convince him that the family plan may be at odds with the land’s true destiny. Only Trevor’s willingness to face the dark past of his forefathers will reveal the key to his family’s future.

Garth Stein is the author of four novels: the New York Times bestselling gothic/historical/coming-of-age/ghost story A Sudden Light; the internationally bestselling The Art of Racing in the Rain; the PNBA Book Award winner How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets; and the magically realistic Raven Stole the Moon. He lives in Seattle with his family and is co-founder of Seattle7Writers.org, a nonprofit collective of seventy-four Northwest authors working together to energize the reading and writing public.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Sarah Reidy, Senior Publicity Manager at Simon & Schuster. Phone: 212.698.7008, Email:sarah.reidy@simonandschuster.com

Karen Abbott, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy

Thursday, September 17, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

Karen Abbott illuminates one of the most fascinating yet little known aspects of the Civil War: the stories of four courageous women – a socialite, a farmgirl, an abolitionist, and a widow – who were spies.

After shooting a Union soldier in her front hall with a pocket pistol, Belle Boyd became a courier and spy for the Confederate army, using her charms to seduce men on both sides. Emma Edmonds cut off her hair and assumed the identity of a man to enlist as a Union private, witnessing the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. The beautiful widow, Rose O’Neale Greenhow, engaged in affairs with powerful Northern politicians to gather intelligence for the Confederacy, and used her young daughter to send information to Southern generals. Elizabeth Van Lew, a wealthy Richmond abolitionist, hid behind her proper Southern manners as she orchestrated a far-reaching espionage ring, right under the noses of suspicious rebel detectives.

Using a wealth of primary source material and interviews with the spies’ descendants, Abbott seamlessly weaves the adventures of these four heroines throughout the tumultuous years of the war. With a cast of real-life characters, including Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, General Stonewall Jackson, detective Allan Pinkerton, Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, and Emperor Napoleon III, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy draws you into the war as these daring women lived it.

Karen Abbott is the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and American Rose. She is a regular contributor to Smithsonian.com, and also writes for Disunion, the New York Times series about the Civil War. A native of Philadelphia, where she worked as a journalist, she now lives with her husband and two African Grey parrots in New York City.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Jane Beirn, Senior Director of Publicity at HarperCollins Publishers. Phone: 212.207.7256

Livingston Lecture: Wil Haygood, Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America

Friday, September 18, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

Thurgood Marshall brought down the separate-but-equal doctrine, integrated schools, and not only fought for human rights and human dignity, but also made them impossible to deny in the courts and in the streets. In this stunning new biography, award-winning author Wil Haygood details the life and career of one of the most transformative legal minds of the past one hundred years.Using the framework of the dramatic, contentious five-day Senate hearing to confirm Marshall as the first African American Supreme Court justice, Haygood creates a provocative and moving look at Marshall’s life as well as the politicians, lawyers, activists, and others who shaped – or desperately tried to stop – the Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth century.

Wil Haygood is currently the Wiepking Visiting Distinguished Professor in the Department of Media, Journalism, and Film at Miami University, Ohio. For nearly three decades he was a journalist, serving as a national and foreign correspondent at The Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and then at The Washington Post, where he wrote the story “A Butler Well Served by this Election,” which became the basis for the award-winning motion picture The Butler, directed by Lee Daniels. Haygood’s book The Butler: A Witness to History has been translated into a dozen foreign languages.

Support: The Livingston Lectures are made possible with generous funding from the Livingston Foundation.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Kathryn Zuckerman, Deputy Director of Publicity and Promotion at Alfred A. Knopf. Phone: 212.572.2105, Email:kzuckerman@randomhouse.com

Sandra D. Deal, Jennifer Dickey, and Catherine Lewis, Memories of the Mansion: The Story of Georgia’s Governor’s Mansion

Monday, September 28, 2015

7:30 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

Join First Lady Sandra Deal, her co-authors, Dr. Jennifer Dickey and Dr. Catherine Lewis, and members of Georgia's first families for a lively evening of storytelling about life in Georgia's most public house. The event will be followed by a book signing of their newest book, Memories of the Mansion: The Story of Georgia's Governor’s Mansion.

Designed by Atlanta architect A. Thomas Bradbury, the Georgia Governor's Mansion has been home to eight first families and houses a distinguished collection of American art and antiques. Often called “the people’s house,” the mansion is always on display, always serving the public. The authors conducted more than one hundred oral histories with the former first families, staff members, and current employees to capture rare anecdotes of what life was like inside the state’s most public residence. This richly illustrated book not only documents this extraordinary place and the people who have lived and worked here, but it also helps ensure the preservation of this historic resource so that it may continue to serve the state and its people.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Amanda E. Sharp, Assistant Marketing Manager of Publicity and Sales Manager at University of Georgia Press. Phone: 706.542.4145, Email:asharp@uga.edu

October 2015

Eric Lichtblau, The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men

Thursday, October 1, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

Thousands of Nazis – from concentration camp guards to high-level officers in the Third Reich – came to the United States after World War II and quietly settled into new lives. They had little trouble getting in. With scant scrutiny, many gained entry on their own as self-styled war "refugees," their pasts easily disguised and their war crimes soon forgotten. But some had help and protection from the U.S. government. The CIA, the FBI, and the military all put Hitler's minions to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers, whitewashing their histories.For the first time, once-secret government records and interviews tell the full story not only of the Nazi scientists brought to America, but also of the German spies and con men who followed them and lived for decades as ordinary citizens. Only years after their arrival did private sleuths and government prosecutors begin trying to identify the hidden Nazis. But even then, American intelligence agencies secretly worked to protect a number of their prized spies from exposure. Today, a few Nazis still remain on our soil.

Eric Lichtblau is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter in the Washington bureau of the New York Times and has written about legal, political, and national security issues in the capital since 1999. He was the co-recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for his stories in the New York Times disclosing the existence of a secret wiretapping program approved by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. He was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times for fifteen years before joining the New York Times in 2002. A graduate of Cornell University, he is the author of Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice, which one reviewer called “All the President’s Men for an Age of Terror.” In the course of research for The Nazis Next Door, he was a visiting fellow at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. He lives outside Washington with his wife and children.

This program is held in conjunction with the Filming the Camps – John Ford, Samuel Fuller, George Stevens: From Hollywood to Nuremberg exhibition.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Hillary Hardwick, Marketing Communications at Atlanta History Center. Phone: 404.814.4083, Email:HHardwick@AtlantaHistoryCenter.com

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Dr. Mutter’s Marvels

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

Imagine undergoing an operation without anesthesia performed by a surgeon who refuses to sterilize his tools – or even wash his hands. This was the world of medicine when Thomas Dent Mütter began his trailblazing career as a plastic surgeon in Philadelphia during the middle of the nineteenth century. Brilliant, outspoken, and brazenly handsome, Mütter was flamboyant in every aspect of his life and amassed an immense collection of medical oddities that would later form the basis of Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum.

Dr. Mütter’s Marvels vividly chronicles how Mütter’s efforts helped establish Philadelphia as a global mecca for medical innovation – despite intense resistance from his numerous rivals – and interweaves an eye-opening portrait of nineteenth-century medicine with the riveting biography of a man once described as the "P. T. Barnum of the surgery room."

Cristin Aptowicz O’Keefe is a New York Times bestselling nonfiction writer and poet, and is something of a legend in New York City’s slam poetry scene.

A Cappella Books is the official bookseller for this event.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Stephen Lee. Phone: 646.765.0791, Email:stephenwlee@gmail.com

Donald L. Miller, From Page to Screen: Bringing Masters of the Air to Life

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

6:00 pm Reception; 7:00 pm Program

Location: Atlanta History Center

Donald Miller discusses his book Masters of the Air and the process of bringing its contents to the television screen for a ten-part series on HBO, produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, that depicts the heroism and courage of young Americans in the Eighth Air Force in their struggle to defeat Hitler’s Germany.

Masters of the Air is the deeply personal story of the American bomber boys in World War II who brought the war to Hitler’s doorstep. With the narrative power of fiction, Donald Miller takes you on a harrowing ride through the fire-filled skies over Berlin, Hanover, and Dresden and describes the terrible cost of bombing for the German people. Fighting at 25,000 feet in thin, freezing air that no warriors had ever encountered before, bomber crews battled new kinds of assaults on body and mind. Air combat was deadly, but intermittent – periods of inactivity and anxiety were followed by short bursts of fire and fear. Unlike infantrymen, bomber boys slept on clean sheets, drank beer in local pubs, and danced to the swing music of Glenn Miller’s Air Force band, which toured U.S. air bases in England. But they had a much greater chance of dying than ground soldiers.

Drawn from recent interviews, oral histories, and American, British, German, and other archives, Masters of the Air is an authoritative, deeply moving account of the world’s first and only bomber war.

This program is presented in partnership with The National Museum of the Might Eighth Air Force.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Hillary Hardwick, Marketing Communications at Atlanta History Center. Phone: 404.814.4083, Email:HHardwick@AtlantaHistoryCenter.com

Paul Theroux in conversation with Chuck Reece of The Bitter Southerner, Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads

Thursday, October 8, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

Paul Theroux has spent fifty years crossing the globe, adventuring in the exotic, seeking the rich history and folklore of the far away. Now, for the first time, in his tenth travel book, Theroux explores a piece of America –

the Deep South. He finds there a paradoxical place, full of incomparable music, unparalleled cuisine, and yet also some of the nation’s worst schools, housing, and unemployment rates. It’s these parts of the South, so often ignored, that have caught Theroux’s keen traveler’s eye.

On road trips spanning four seasons, wending along rural highways, Theroux visits gun shows and small-town churches, laborers in Arkansas, and parts of Mississippi where they still call the farm up the road “the plantation.”

He talks to mayors and social workers, writers and reverends, the working poor and farming families – the unsung heroes of the South, the people who, despite it all, never left, and also those who returned home to rebuild a place they could never live without.

Paul Theroux is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include The Lower River and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star Safari. He lives in Hawaii and Cape Cod.

This program is presented in partnership with The Bitter Southerner.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Giuliana Fritz, Publicity Department

at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Phone: 212.420.5846, Email:hmhco.com

Lynn Cullen, Twain’s End

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

Based on historical facts, personal journals, and published writings and letters, Twain’s End is the reimagining of the complicated relationship between Mark Twain and his private secretary Isabel V. Lyon, and an intimate look into the personal life of one of literary history’s most fascinating figures.

Taking the reader on a journey from New York’s Hudson Valley, to Florence, Italy, to Bermuda, to Twain’s final home in Connecticut, and envisioning how Isabel went from being a beloved confident and lover of Twain to a woman he ended up slandering in the press, determined to destroy, Twain’s End tells the story of a forgotten woman behind a great literary figure, giving her a voice that has been silenced throughout history.

Lynn Cullen grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her recent novel, Mrs. Poe, a national bestseller, has been named a Target Book Club Pick, an NPR 2013 Great Read, and an Indie Next List selection. She lives in Atlanta surrounded by her own large family, and, like Mark Twain, enjoys being bossed around by cats.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Stephanie DeLuca, Publicity Manager at Gallery Books. Phone: 212.698.2807, Email:Stephanie.deluca@simonandschuster.com

Cherokee Garden Library 40th Anniversary: Ken Druse, Natural Companions: The Garden Lover’s Guide to Plant Combinations

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

To celebrate the Cherokee Garden Library's 40th anniversary, the Garden Library hosts gardening superstar, Ken Druse. Called “the guru of natural gardening” by The New York Times, Ken Druse is a celebrated lecturer, photographer, and author. He has a dynamic weekly radio show and podcast called “Ken Druse – The Real Dirt” and he writes frequently for the The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, House Beautiful, and many others publications.

Ken Druse’s newest hit is Natural Companions: The Garden Lover’s Guide to Plant Combinations. In Natural Companions, Druse presents recipes for perfect plant pairings using diverse species that look great together and bloom at the same time. Natural Companions features more than one hundred special botanical images of amazing depth and color. This is a book all garden lovers must have.

Communicating the pleasures and importance of the natural world is always Druse’s main emphasis. Through his books, lectures, and weekly radio show and podcasts, Druse calls attention to the world of plants that surround us, sustain us, and lift our spirits. In The Roots of My Obsession: Thirty Great Gardeners Reveal Why They Garden, he shares a sentiment of all true dirt gardeners, “The only way to avoid the pangs of withdrawal from an addiction like gardening is to garden more. This is one habit I have no intention of breaking.”

Admission for this lecture is $25. Reservations are required, please call 404.814.4150 or reserve tickets online at AtlantaHistoryCenter.com/Lectures. All lecture ticket purchases are nonrefundable.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Staci Catron, Cherokee Garden Library Director at Atlanta History Center. Phone: 404.814.4046, Email:SCatron@AtlantaHistoryCenter.com

Women of the Civil War with Carolyn Curry and Heath Lee

Thursday, October 22, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

Join Margaret Mitchell House for an engaging evening exploring the lives of two women of the Civil War era.

Carolyn Curry’s Suffer and Grow Strong chronicles the life of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, an intelligent, spirited woman born in 1834 to one of the wealthiest families in Georgia. At the age of fourteen she began and kept a diary for forty-one years. These diaries of her life before, during, and after the Civil War filled thirteen hand-written volumes with 450,000 words. Educated at the first college for women Wesleyan Female College in Macon, Georgia, she is described as a “gay young girl of fashion” who met and married her Princeton educated husband in 1852. However, with the coming of the Civil War and its aftermath, her life changed forever. Thomas experienced loss of wealth, bankruptcy, the death of loved ones, serious illness, and devastating family strife.

Heath Lee’s Winnie Davis: Daughter of the Lost Cause is about Varina Anne "Winnie" Davis, the daughter of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his second wife Varina. Winnie had an epic and tragic life. While she was known across the U.S. as "The Daughter of the Confederacy" she preferred a literary life in New York City writing novels and working for Joseph Pulitzer at The World newspaper. Only here in New York City would Winnie find the personal and artistic freedom she sought. But despite her blooming literary career, the young woman would find herself unable to escape the looming legacy of the Lost Cause.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Hillary Hardwick, Marketing Communications at Atlanta History Center. Phone: 404.814.4083, Email:HHardwick@AtlantaHistoryCenter.com

Livingston Lecture: Jay Winik, 1944: FDR and the Year that Changed History

Monday, October 26, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

New York Times bestselling author Jay Winik brings to life in gripping detail the year 1944, which determined the outcome of World War II and put more pressure than any other on an ailing yet determined President Roosevelt.

It was not inevitable that World War II would end as it did, or that it would even end well. 1944 was a year that could have stymied the Allies and cemented Hitler’s waning power. Instead, it saved those democracies – but with a fateful cost. Now, in a superbly told story, Jay Winik captures the epic images and extraordinary history as never before.

Jay Winik is the author of the #1 and New York Times bestselling April 1865 and the New York Times bestseller The Great Upheaval, and is renowned for his creative approaches to history. He is a popular public speaker and a frequent television and radio guest. He has been a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal book review section, as well as to The New York Times. He is a former board member of the National Endowment for the Humanities and was a historical advisor to National Geographic Networks.

Support: The Livingston Lectures are made possible with generous funding from the Livingston Foundation.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Anne Tate Pearce, Associate Director of Publicity | Simon & Schuster. Phone: 212.698.7535, Email:anne.pearce@simonandschuster.com

Joseph Skibell, My Father's Guitar and Other Imaginary Things

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

Did Joseph Skibell’s father trick him when he offered his beautiful guitar and then delivered a not-so-beautiful one? Can it be that the telemarketer calling at dinnertime is a thoughtful, sensitive person also looking for a Utopian world? Can a father have any control over his teenage daughter’s sex life? Can a son have control over his father’s expectations? The award-winning writer ponders these and other bewildering questions in his first nonfiction book.Joseph Skibell is a dreamer, an innocent. As a professor, he may spend time on Big Thoughts, but it’s the small moments in life that he addresses in these essays. With disarming honesty, he gives us an intimate glimpse into his life. True, some of these incidents might make him look like a fool, but that only serves to make him more human. The pleasure in these pieces is accepting, with Skibell, that life is made up of little annoyances, fantasies, imaginings, and delusions – and these are what make us who we are.

Joseph Skibell is the author of three novels, A Blessing on the Moon, The English Disease, and A Curable Romantic. He has received numerous awards, including the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Sami Rohr Award in Jewish Literature, Story magazine’s Short Short-Story Prize, and the Turner Prize for First Fiction.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Brooke Csuka, Associate Publicist at Algonquin Books & Algonquin Young Readers. Phone: 919.967.0108 x24, Email:brooke@algonquin.com

November 2015

Charlie Lovett, The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge

Thursday, November 5, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

It’s been twenty years since Ebenezer Scrooge was visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve, and since that fateful day, his mission has been to spread Christmas cheer far and wide. Much to the annoyance of his acquaintances and London’s general population, Scrooge insists on greeting everyone with a hearty “Merry Christmas!” even on sweltering summer afternoons. Once a man obsessed with making money, Scrooge now gives everything he has to the poor – a habit that leaves his bank account in a sorry state. One night, Scrooge is again visited by his old business partner, Jacob Marley. Marley despairs of ever sloughing off his heavy chains, so Scrooge hatches a plan to rid Marley of his burdens once and for all.

Charlie Lovett is a former antiquarian bookseller, an avid book collector and a member of The Grolier Club, the oldest and largest club for bibliophiles in America. A teacher and playwright, his plays for children have been seen in more than 3,000 productions. He and his wife split their time between North Carolina and England.

This program is presented in partnership with the Alliance Theatre. Admission for all lectures is $5 members, $10 nonmembers, and free to AHC Insiders unless otherwise noted. Reservations are required, please call 404.814.4150 or reserve tickets online at MargaretMitchellHouse.com/Lectures.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Rebecca Lang, Senior Publicist at Viking and Penguin Books. Phone: 212.366.2338, Email:rlang@penguinrandomhouse.com

Barbara Shapiro, The Muralist

Monday, November 9, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

Entwining the lives of both historical and fictional characters, and moving between the past and the present, The Muralist plunges readers into the divisiveness of prewar politics and the largely forgotten plight of European refugees refused entrance to the United States. It captures both the inner workings of today’s New York art scene and the beginnings of the vibrant and quintessentially American school of Abstract Expressionism.

Alizée Benoit, an American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), vanishes in New York City in 1940 amid personal and political turmoil. No one knows what happened to her. Not her Jewish family living in German-occupied France. Not her artistic patron and political compatriot, Eleanor Roosevelt. Not her close-knit group of friends, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner. And, some seventy years later, not her great-niece, Danielle Abrams, who while working at an auction house uncovers enigmatic paintings hidden behind recently found works by those now famous Abstract Expressionist artists. Do they hold answers to the questions surrounding her missing aunt?

B. A. Shapiro is the author of the award-winning New York Times bestseller The Art Forger. She has taught sociology at Tufts University and creative writing at Northeastern University and lives in Boston with her husband, Dan, and their dog, Sagan.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Michael McKenzie, Executive Director of Publicity at Algonquin Books & Algonquin Young Readers. Phone: 212.614.5639, Email:michael@algonquin.com

Peter Guralnick, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock n' Roll: How One Man Discovered Howlin' Wolf, Ike Turner, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley

Thursday, November 12, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

Sam Phillips was a visionary genius who singlehandedly steered the revolutionary path of Sun Records.

The music that he shaped in his tiny Memphis studio with artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Ike Turner, Howlin' Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, introduced a sound that had never been heard before. He brought forth a singular mix of black and white voices passionately proclaiming the vitality of the American vernacular tradition while at the same time declaring, once and for all, a new, integrated musical day. With extensive interviews and firsthand personal observations extending over a twenty-five-year period with Phillips, along with wide-ranging interviews with nearly all the legendary Sun Records artists, Guralnick gives us an ardent, unrestrained portrait of an American original as compelling in his own right as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, or Thomas Edison.

Peter Guralnick has written extensively on American music and musicians. His books include the prize-winning Elvis Presley two-part biography Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love; an acclaimed trilogy on American roots music, Sweet Soul Music, Lost Highway, and Feel Like Going Home; the biographical inquiry Searching for Robert Johnson; the novel Nighthawk Blues; and Dream Boogie, a biography of Sam Cooke. He splits his time between Nashville and Massachusetts.

This program is presented in partnership with the AJC Decatur Book Festival.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Katharine Myers, Publicity Manager. Phone: 212.364.1588, Email:katharine.myers@hbgusa.com

Livingston Lecture: Betty Caroli, Lady Bird and Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage That Made a President

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

Lady Bird grew up the daughter of a domineering father and a cultured but fragile mother. When a tall, pushy Texan named Lyndon showed up in her life, she knew what she wanted: to leave the rural Texas of her childhood and experience the world like her mother dreamed, while climbing the mountain of ambition she inherited from her father. She married Lyndon within weeks, and the bargain they struck was tacitly agreed upon in the courtship letters they exchanged: this highly gifted politician would take her away, and she would save him from his weaknesses.The conventional story goes that Lyndon married Lady Bird for her money, demeaned her by flaunting his many affairs, and that her legacy was protecting the nation’s wildflowers. But she was actually a full political partner throughout his ascent – the one who swooped in to make the key call to a donor, to keep the team united, to campaign in hostile territory, and to jumpstart him out of his paralyzing darkness. And while others were shocked that she put up with his womanizing, she always knew she had the upper hand.

Betty Boyd Caroli is the author of Lady Bird and Lyndon, First Ladies: Martha Washington to Michelle Obama, Inside the White House, and The Roosevelt Women. She has been a guest on Today, The O’Reilly Factor, Lehrer NewsHour, Al Jazeera, Booknotes with Brian Lamb, and many others. She currently resides in New York City and Venice, Italy.

Support: The Livingston Lectures are made possible with generous funding from the Livingston Foundation.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Erin Reback, Publicist at Simon & Schuster. Phone: 212.698.7426, Email:rin.reback@simonandschuster.com

December 2015

Livingston Lecture: T. J. Stiles, Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of New America

Thursday, December 3, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

In this magisterial biography, T. J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer's legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer's historical caricature, revealing a capable yet insecure man, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (court-martialed twice in six years) and the new corporate economy, a wartime emancipator who rejected racial equality. Stiles argues that, although Custer was justly noted for his exploits on the western frontier, he also played a central role as both a wide-ranging participant and polarizing public figure in his extraordinary, transformational time – a time of civil war, emancipation, brutality toward Native Americans, and, finally, the industrial revolution – even as he became one of its casualties.

T. J. Stiles is the author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, winner of the 2009 National Book Award in Nonfiction and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, winner of the Ambassador Book Award and the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship. He received a 2011 Guggenheim fellowship and a 2004 Gilder Lehrman Fellowship in American History at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and was a member of the 2014 faculty for the World Economic Forum. An elected member of the Society of American Historians and a member of the board of the Authors Guild, he lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and two children.

Support: The Livingston Lectures are made possible with generous funding from the Livingston Foundation.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Gabrielle Brooks. Email:gbrooks@penguinrandomhouse.com

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Atlanta History Center's Fall Season of Author Programs Delivers Another Roster of Notable Authors

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