Author Programs Schedule for Fall 2014 at Atlanta History Center
The Atlanta History Center offers lectures on a wide variety of topics, from presidential history and gardens to social history and non-fiction adventures. Each lecture program is designed to join authors and audiences in an intimate setting complete with author presentation, audience discussions, and book signings.
Past lecturers have included such world-renowned authors as Walter Isaacson, James McPherson, Garrison Keilor, Kelly Corrigan, and Alice Hoffman. The Atlanta History Center’s fall lecture line-up continues to offer audiences a wide variety of subject matter with current and award-winning authors.
The series kicks off with bestselling author David Laskin, discussing his new book The Family, and continues on through December featuring authors such as award-winning and best-selling Mexican America author Luis Alberto Urrea, international bestselling author Paolo Giordano, acclaimed author Donald McCaig, and New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult.
Lectures are held at either the Atlanta History Center in Buckhead or at the 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 2014
Elson Lecture: David Laskin, The Family: A Journey Into the Heart of the Twentieth Century
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
8:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
In The Family bestselling author David Laskin unfolds a sweeping epic that spans the three great upheavals that affected Jews in the twentieth century: immigration, two world wars, and the founding of Israel. Starting from Torah scribe Shimon Dov HaKohen, Laskin traces over 150 years of Jewish and world history as one family (named HaKohen, Kaganovich and Cohen on three different continents) is made and broken by the crises of our time. At the center of this stirring book are three archetypal women: The Pioneer, The Tycoon, and The Mother.
David Laskin is the bestselling author of The Children’s Blizzard, which won the Washington State Book Award and Midwest Booksellers’ Choice Award for nonfiction. He is the author of several other books of nonfiction and also writes for The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Family was chosen as an Amazon Best Book of the Month Pick.
This program is presented in partnership with The Temple.
Support: The Elson Lectures are made possible with generous funding from Ambassador and Mrs. Edward Elson.
Susan Vreeland, Lisette’s List
Sunday, September 7, 2014
2:00 pm
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
Lisette’s List tells the story of a woman’s yearning for art at a time when her family’s collection of paintings had to be hidden from Nazi art thieves. Lisette moves with her husband from the bustling city of Paris to the picturesque village of Roussillon in Provence. There, they care for his grandfather, who connected deeply with the artwork of the impoverished Impressionist painter Pissarro.
As World War II rumbles, Lisette’s husband hides his grandfather’s paintings and enlists in the military. When Southern France is occupied, a German officer forces Lisette to reveal where they hid Pissarro’s paintings. But once they reach the hiding place, Lisette discovers the artwork had been mysteriously stolen, and a three-year search begins.
This program is presented in partnership with Alliance Française d'Atlanta.
The Big Read Keynote Lecture: An Evening with Luis Alberto Urrea, Into the Beautiful North
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
Join the Atlanta History Center as we present an unforgettable evening with author Luis Alberto Urrea, and celebrate The Big Read.
The U.S.–Mexico border is not just a line on a map; it is a dream-like destination and departure point, surrounded by desperation and expectations. "No one writes more tragically or intimately about border culture than this son of a Mexican father and Anglo mother," journalist Bill Moyers said of Luis Alberto Urrea, author of numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. In his third novel, Into the Beautiful North, Urrea transcends the "us against them" discourse of immigration and writes with compassion, complexity, and humor about the people and places caught up in the border wars. Urrea invites us to think of the border as more than a stark divide between nations: he reminds us that it is a place of convergence where meaningful conversations, and even love, between cultures begins.
This Keynote Lecture is FREE to the public. For a complete list of FREE The Big Read programs, or to register to be part of The Big Read, please visit AtlantaHistoryCenter.com/BigRead.
Support:The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest designed to revitalize the role of literature in American culture and to encourage citizens to read for pleasure and enlightenment.
Civil War 150 Lecture: Anne Sarah Rubin, Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman’s March and American Memory
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
8:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
Sherman's March, cutting a path through Georgia and the Carolinas, is among the most symbolically potent events of the Civil War. Rubin uncovers and unpacks stories and myths about the March from a wide variety of sources, including African Americans, women, Union soldiers, Confederates, and even Sherman himself. Drawing her
evidence from an array of media, including travel accounts, memoirs, literature, films, and newspapers, Rubin uses the competing and contradictory stories as a lens into the ways that American thinking about the Civil War has changed over time.
Anne Sarah Rubin is associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the author of A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868.
Support:Civil War 150 lectures are presented through the generous support of Vicki and Howard Palefsky.
Livingston Lecture: S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
8:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
Next to Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson was the greatest southern hero of the Civil War. Prior to the war he was a physics professor at a military college, a full-blown eccentric with bad eyesight and a host of physical problems who was one of his school's least popular professors. Fourteen months after the start of the Civil War he
had revolutionized the art of war and become the most famous military man in the world. In Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson, S.C. Gwynne recounts and examines that transformation.
S.C. Gwynne took the publishing world by storm when his first historical work, Empire of the Summer Moon, about Quanah Parker and the legendary Comanche tribe, was published in 2010. A front-page New York Times Book Review that called the book "transcendent" and "nothing short of a revelation," propelled the book onto the bestseller list, where it sat through 19 printings-and then, as a paperback, for over a year. A finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critic's Circle Award, and won both the prestigious Texas and Oklahoma Book Awards.
Support:The Livingston Lectures are made possible with generous funding from the Livingston Foundation of Atlanta.
October 2014
Elson Lecture: John Darman, Landslide
October 2, 2014
8:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan were polar opposites in political philosophy and personal style. But over the course of a thousand crucial days—from Johnson’s ascent to the presidency in November 1963 to Reagan’s election as governor of California in November 1966—their lives intersected, and the stories they told the country became intertwined. In Landslide, Jonathan Darman examines this critical period in the lives of these two towering figures, locating in their stories the roots of America’s current political divide.
With fluid storytelling and vivid, fly-on-the-wall character portraits, Darman re-creates the anxious mood of America in the turbulent years between the Johnson and Reagan landslides. He shows how, in the span of a thousand days, two men who shared little else besides an almost pathological need to play the hero in the dramatic enactment of a
national myth managed to unravel the consensus that had governed the country since the New Deal. And Darman explains why their dreams of a new world have proven so inadequate in addressing the real problems of the complex, imperfect one in which we live.
Jonathan Darman is a former political reporter for Newsweek, where he covered numerous campaigns, including John Edwards’s 2008 run. He lives in New York City. This is his first book.
Support:The Elson Lectures are made possible with generous funding from Ambassador and Mrs. Edward Elson.
Paolo Giordano, The Human Body
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
The Human Body is the long awaited second novel by Italian author Paolo Giordano, and is an inspired story of modern war that follows a motley cast of Italian soldiers stationed in one of the deadliest places on earth—Forward Operating Base (FOB) Ice in the Gulistan district of Afghanistan. It’s here, under the scorching, inescapable sun, a group of inexperienced soldiers are forced to navigate the irreversible journey from youth into manhood. Any false step along this treacherous terrain could cost them their lives.
Paolo Giordano is the author of the critically acclaimed international bestseller The Solitude of Prime Numbers, which has been translated into more than forty languages. He has a PhD in particle physics and is now a full-time writer. He lives in Italy.
Cherokee Garden Library Lecture: Lynden B. Miller, Parks, Plants, and People: Beautifying the Urban Landscape
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
Miller’s debut appearance in Atlanta will be based on her 2009 book, Parks, Plants, and People: Beautifying the Urban Landscape, winner of the 2010 American Horticultural Society Book Award. It chronicles over 25 years of experience and gives practical guidance on designing and maintaining public gardens as well as how to raise public and private funds to support them.
Her message resonates with park lovers, city planners, architects, landscape architects, civic leaders, and elected officials. She makes the case that “good parks make good cities” and argues that beautiful parks and gardens transform lives, encourage economic development, reduce crime, and change the ways people feel about their city. “It’s about quality of life,” she says. “In bad economic times it’s even more important that you keep your parks in good shape because people need them so much.”
Admission for this lecture is $25. Reservations are required for all lectures; call 404.814.4150 or purchase online at AtlantaHistoryCenter.com. All lecture ticket purchases are nonrefundable.
Donald McCaig, Ruth’s Journey
Friday, October 17, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
For more than seventy-five years, Mammy from Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind has endured as one of the most memorable and intriguing characters in literature. Now the Margaret Mitchell Estate has authorized the first novel to tell Mammy’s own remarkable story. Before Tara, before Scarlett and Rhett, before she was called Mammy, she was simply Ruth.
Born on a Caribbean island in the throes of revolution, Ruth comes of age in Savannah as the property of Solange Fournier, a formidable French émigré who instructs her in the manners and deportment of Southern society. Ruth’s early marriage to a free black man in Charleston ends in violence and tragedy, resulting in her return to Savannah and Solange, who is now married to wealthy Pierre Robillard. Solange’s daughter Ellen will become the center of Mammy Ruth’s life. Following Ellen’s unexpected marriage to rough Irishman Gerald O’Hara, she and Mammy move to Tara, transforming the ramshackle plantation into a gracious and elegant home. There, Mammy will raise a new generation of O’Hara girls, including the strong-willed Katie Scarlett. Arriving at Tara, Mammy narrates the rest of the story in her own unmistakable voice—drawing her tale to a close in the days following the Twelve Oaks barbecue, as Georgia secedes from the Union, the march to war becomes unstoppable, and the story of Gone With the Wind begins.
Donald McCaig is the acclaimed author of the novels Canaan and Jacob’s Ladder, which won the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Library of Virginia Award for Fiction. He lives on a sheep farm in the mountains near Williamsville, Virginia.
An Evening with Jodi Picoult, Leaving Time
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
Alice Metcalf was a devoted mother, loving wife, and accomplished scientist who studied grief among elephants. Yet it's been a decade since she disappeared under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind her small daughter, husband, and the animals to which she devoted her life. All signs point to abandonment . . . or worse. Still Jenna--now thirteen years old and truly orphaned by a father maddened by grief--steadfastly refuses to believe in her mother's desertion. So she decides to approach the two people who might still be able to help her find Alice: a disgraced psychic named Serenity Jones, and Virgil Stanhope, the cynical detective who first investigated her mother's disappearance and the strange, possibly linked death of one of her mother's co-workers. Together these three lonely souls will discover truths destined to forever change their lives. Deeply moving and suspenseful, Leaving Time is a radiant exploration of the enduring love between mothers and daughters.
Jodi Picoult is one of the most successful authors at work today. She has written 22 novels, with the past seven being consecutive #1 New York Times bestsellers. There are over 22 million copies of her books in print worldwide, in 37 languages.
Tickets are $35 members; $40 nonmembers. Each ticket includes program admission and a copy of Leaving Time. Reservations are required. Call 404.814.4150 or reserve tickets online at AtlantaHistoryCenter.com/Lectures.
Edward J. Larson, The Return of George Washington
Thursday, October 30, 2014
8:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
After leading the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War, George Washington shocked the world: he retired.
In December 1783, General Washington the most powerful man in the country , stepped down as Commander in Chief and returned to private life at Mount Vernon. Yet as Washington contentedly grew his estate, the fledgling American experiment floundered. Under the Articles of Confederation, the weak central government was unable to raise revenue to pay its debts or reach a consensus on national policy. The states bickered and grew apart. When a Constitutional Convention was established to address these problems, its chances of success looked slim. Jefferson, Madison, and the other Founding Fathers realized that only one man could unite the fractious states: George Washington. Reluctant, yet duty-bound, Washington rode to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to preside over the Convention.
Edward J. Larson is University Professor of History and holds the Hugh & Hazel Darling Chair in Law at Pepperdine University. His numerous books include Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize in History. Larson splits his time between Georgia and California.
Support:This lecture is sponsored by the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati and the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Georgia.
November 2014
Ann Short Chirhart and Kathleen Clark, Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times- Volume 2
Wednesday, November 12
7:00 pm
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times-Volume 2 is the second of two volumes that together explore the diverse and changing patterns of Georgia women’s lives. Women were vital actors in the history of Georgia, as well as key figures in national and global developments over the course of the twentieth century. However, their leadership and participation in social, cultural, and political arenas have tended to be overlooked.
Volume 2 focuses on eighteen Georgia women from the turn of the century to the 1980s, and illuminates how women during the twentieth century expanded their opportunities, pushed for equality, promoted various organizations and political interests, pioneered women’s roles in some professions, and became leading writers and artists in the nation. They grappled with the ongoing oppressions of Jim Crow, the legacy of two world wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War Era, the Civil Rights Movement, the growth of conservatism, and the memory of the Civil War.
Ann Short Chirhart is associate professor of history at Indiana State University and the author of Torches of Light: Georgia Teachers and the Coming of the Modern South. Kathleen Ann Clark is associate professor of history at the University of Georgia and the author of Defining Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture in the South, 1863–1913.
Aiken Lecture: Douglas R. Egerton, The Wars of Reconstruction; The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era
Thursday, November 13, 2014
8:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
By 1870, just five years after Confederate surrender and thirteen years after the Dred Scott decision ruled blacks ineligible for citizenship, Congressional action had ended slavery and given the vote to black men. That same year, Hiram Revels and Joseph Hayne Rainey became the first African-American U.S. senator and congressman respectively. In South Carolina, only twenty years after the death of arch-secessionist John C. Calhoun, a black man, Jasper J. Wright, took a seat on the state's Supreme Court. Not even the most optimistic abolitionists had thought such milestones would occur in their lifetimes. The brief years of Reconstruction marked the United States' most progressive moment prior to the Civil Rights Movement.
Previous histories of Reconstruction have focused on Washington politics. But in this sweeping, prodigiously researched narrative, Douglas Egerton brings a much bigger, even more dramatic story into view, exploring state and local politics and tracing the struggles of some fifteen hundred African-American officeholders, in both the North and South, who fought entrenched white resistance. Tragically, their movement was met by ruthless violence-not just riotous mobs, but also targeted assassination. With stark evidence, Egerton shows that Reconstruction, often cast as a "failure" or a doomed experiment, was rolled back by murderous force.
The descendant of North Carolina slaveholders, Douglas R. Egerton writes about the intersections of race and politics in early America. Egerton received his Ph.D. from Georgetown University and has taught at Le Moyne College, Colgate University, Cornell University, and the University College Dublin. The author of seven books, including Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War, and He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey.
Support: The Aiken Lecture Series is supported by the Lucy Rucker Aiken Foundation.
Been in the Storm So Long: Remembering 1864 and 1964 in 2014
Saturday, November 15, 2014
8:00 pm
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
Georgia Public Broadcasting's own Rickey Bevington hosts a stellar line-up of local scholars, poets, artists, and musicians in a far-reaching discussion of the coincident anniversaries of the 1864 Battles of Atlanta and 1964 Civil Rights Act. Panelists include Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey; artist Robert Morris; singer-songwriter Caroline Herring; and historians Robert Pratt, Brett Gadsden, and Joseph Crespino. Come join this important public forum on how our divisive past can be transformed into collective meaning.
Sponsors: Atlanta History Center, The University of Georgia History Department, The University of Georgia's Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, and The Woodruff Library at Emory University.
December 2014
John Wiley, Jr., The Scarlett Letters: The Making of the Film Gone With the Wind
Monday, December 15, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
One month after her novel Gone With the Wind was published, Margaret Mitchell sold the movie rights for fifty thousand dollars. Fearful of what the studio might do to her story the author washed her hands of involvement with the film. However, driven by a maternal interest in her literary firstborn and compelled by her Southern manners to answer every fan letter she received, Mitchell was unable to stay aloof for long.
In this collection of her letters about the 1939 motion picture classic, readers have a front-row seat as the author watches the Dream Factory at work, learning the ins and outs of filmmaking and discovering the peculiarities of a movie-crazed public. Her ability to weave a story, so evident in Gone With the Wind, makes for delightful reading in her correspondence with a who’s who of Hollywood, from producer David O. Selznick, director George Cukor, and screenwriter Sidney Howard, to cast members Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel.
John Wiley, Jr, has been a Gone With the Wind fan since first seeing the movie and reading the novel at age 10, and has assembled one of the world’s largest collections of Margaret Mitchell and GWTW memorabilia. Co-author of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller’s Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood, he was featured in the 2011 PBS documentary Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel. Wiley also publishes The Scarlett Letter, a quarterly newsletter for GWTW fans and collectors.
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