Atlanta History Center Announces Winter/Spring 2014 Lecture Series
ATLANTA, Georgia– 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, Richard Russo, and Alice Hoffman. The Atlanta History Center’s winter/spring lecture line-up continues to offer audiences a wide variety of subject matter with current and award-winning authors.
The series kicks off with James Carville and Mary Matalin, discussing their new book Love and War: Twenty Years, Three Presidents and One Louisiana Home and continues on through June featuring authors such as, James McPherson, Erskine Clarke, Karen Russell, Amy Greene and star of “The Office” B.J. Novak who will be preforming short stories from his debut work of fiction One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories.
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.
January 2014
James Carville and Mary Matalin, Love and War: Twenty Years, Three Presidents, Two Daughters and One Louisiana Home
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
8:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
Love and War traces the Carville and Matalin story from the end of the 1992 presidential campaign—where James managed Bill Clinton’s electoral triumph while Mary suffered defeat as George H. W. Bush’s key strategist—until now.
The new book is written in two alternating and distinct voices and describes the personal and public histories of the last twenty years. Matalin’s focus is on the interwoven personal and political events of a transformational age; issues and insights from her kitchen table to the White House Cabinet room on family, faith, friends, and foreign enemies. Carville’s concentration is politics—the triumphant and troubled Clinton-era, George Bush’s complicated presidency, the election of Barack Obama, and the rise of the corrosive partisanship that dominates political life in Washington today. Both of them reflect on raising young girls in the pressure cooker of the nation’s capital and the family’s move to New Orleans, post-Katrina, where their efforts to rebuild and promote the city has become a central part of their lives—and a poignant metaphor for moving America forward.
James Carville is an American political consultant, commentator, educator, actor, attorney, media personality, and prominent liberal pundit. Carville currently teaches political science at Tulane University. Mary Matalin is an American political consultant well-known for her work with the Republican Party, and can be heard weekly co-hosting the nationally-syndicated “Both Sides Now” radio program with Arianna Huffington. Matalin and Carville have two daughthers.
Support:This program is sponsored by McKenna Long and Aldridge LLP
Aiken Lecture: Erskine Clarke, By the Rivers of Water: A Nineteenth Century Atlantic Odyssey
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
8:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
In his new book, By the Rivers of Water: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey, award-winning historian and religious scholar Erskine Clarke traces the path of John Leighton Wilson and his wife Jane, a passionate, hopeful missionary couple who left all the privileges and comforts of their Southern home to spread the gospel in West Africa. Educated Protestants who came from well-established, slaveholding families, Leighton and Jane’s story embodies the tensions of pre-Civil War America that eventually led to one of the bloodiest conflicts in our nation’s history. Their journey from Northern and Southern high society to the shores of Cape Palmas is one of deep contradiction, good intentions and bitter consequences.
Erskine Clarke is Professor Emeritus of American Religious History at Columbia Theological Seminary and author of Dwelling Place, Wrestlin’ Jacob, and Our Southern Zion. The recipient of Columbia University’s Bancroft Prize for Dwelling Place, as well as many other awards, he has served as a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall College and University of Cambridge. He lives in Montreat, North Carolina.
Support:The Aiken Lecture Series is supported by Lucy Rucker Aiken Foundation. With additional funding provided by the Georgia Genealogical Society and the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, Metro Atlanta Chapter.
Deborah Johnson, The Secret of Magic
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
Like millions of returning World War II veterans, Lt. Joe Howard Wilson wants just one thing: to get back to his hometown as quickly as possible. But as a black man, he is a second-class citizen in the country he nearly died defending. In the South, that means he can be pulled off a bus for refusing to give up his seat and beaten to death by white men, with no consequences for the killers. Until, that is, a young, female, African-American lawyer takes on his case, determined to win justice for Joe Howard and those who love him. In The Secret of Magic prize-winning author Deborah Johnson tells an enthralling, inspiring, and important story of the postwar American South.
Deborah Johnson’s first novel, The Air Between Us, received the Mississippi Library Association Award for fiction. She lived for nearly two decades in Rome, Italy, where she worked as a translator and an editor, as well as at Vatican Radio. After returning to the United States, she became executive director of a small charitable foundation in the South. She now lives and writes in Columbus, Mississippi.
February 2014
Aiken Lecture: William Link, Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War's Aftermath
Thursday, February 6, 2014
8:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
After conquering Atlanta in the summer of 1864 and occupying it for two months, Union forces laid waste to the city in November. William T. Sherman's invasion was a pivotal moment in the history of the South, and Atlanta's rebuilding over the following fifty years came to represent the contested meaning of the Civil War itself. The war's aftermath brought a contentious transition from Old South to New for whites and African Americans alike. Historian William Link argues that this struggle defined the broader meaning of the Civil War in the modern South, with no place embodying the region's past and future more clearly than Atlanta.
Link frames the city as both exceptional—because of the incredible impact of the war there and the city's phoenix-like postwar rise—and as a model for other southern cities. He shows how, in spite of the violent reimposition of white supremacy, freedpeople in Atlanta built a cultural, economic, and political center that helped to define black America.
William A. Link is Richard J. Milbauer Professor of History at the University of Florida. He is author or editor of thirteen books, including Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism.
Support:The Aiken Lecture Series is supported by Lucy Rucker Aiken Foundation. With additional funding provided by the Georgia Genealogical Society and the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, Metro Atlanta Chapter.
Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue: A Memoir
Thursday, February 13, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
When Kelly Corrigan was in high school, her mother neatly summarized the family dynamic as “Your father’s the glitter but I’m the glue.” This meant nothing to Kelly, who left childhood sure that her mom—with her inviolable commandments and proud stoicism—would be nothing more than background chatter for the rest of Kelly’s life.
After college, armed with a backpack, her personal mission statement, and a wad of traveler’s checks, she took off for Australia to see things and do things and Become Interesting.
But it didn’t turn out the way she pictured it. In a matter of months, her fanny pack full of savings had dwindled and she realized she needed a job. That’s how Kelly met John Tanner, a newly widowed father of two looking for a live-in nanny. They chatted for an hour, discussed timing and pay, and a week later, Kelly moved in. And there, in that house in a suburb north of Sydney, her mother’s voice was suddenly everywhere, nudging and advising, cautioning and directing, escorting her through a terrain as foreign as any she had ever trekked.
Kelly Corrigan is the author of The Middle Place and Lift, both New York Times bestsellers. She is also a contributor to O: The Oprah Magazine, Good Housekeeping, and Medium. Her YouTube channel, which includes video essays like “Transcending” and interviews with writers like Michael Lewis and Anna Quindlen, has been viewed by millions. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, Edward Lichty, their two daughters, and a poorly behaved chocolate lab, Hershey.
Nancy Horan, Under the Wide and Starry Sky
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
Offering a fresh twist on the historical fiction genre and forever changing our view of the author of such classics as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Horan evocatively re-creates the passionate and powerful love story of Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson and his intrepid American wife Fanny Van de Grift Osborne, a divorcee ten years his senior and an artist in her own right who played a key role in his career.
This is Nancy Horan’s second novel. Her debut novel, Loving Frank was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and became a New York Times bestseller with over a million copies in print. Horan has two sons and lives with her husband on an island in Puget Sound.
Civil War 150 Program: An Evening with James McPherson
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
8:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
Civil War historians disagree on many issues: Gettysburg or Atlanta? Grant or Sherman? Slavery or States Rights? Lost Cause or Cause Lost? But they do agree on one thing: James McPherson is the dean of Civil War studies and his Battle Cry of Freedom is the best single-volume history of the war.
On February 19, McPherson takes himself as his subject, reflecting on a long, immensely successful career as America’s chief interpreter of the nation’s defining event. The past and memory are the substance of the historian’s profession, but with a history as long and deep – and controversial – as the Civil War, battling interpretations over meaning and outcomes are influenced by politics, popular culture, and other sources.
Moderated by Stephen Berry, Gregory Professor of the Civil War Era at the University of Georgia, the evening features a free-ranging interview in which McPherson ruminates on the war, its legacy, and its changing place in American memory.
Support:Civil War 150 lectures are presented through the generous support of Vicki and Howard Palefsky.
B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories
Friday, February 21, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
B.J. Novak’s literary debut is an endlessly entertaining, surprisingly sensitive, and startlingly original collection that signals the arrival of a welcome new voice in American fiction.
In One More Thing, a boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes – only to discover that claiming the
winnings may unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins – turning for help to the famed motivator himself. A school principal unveils a bold plan to permanently abolish arithmetic. An acclaimed ambulance driver seeks the courage to follow his heart and throw it all away to be a singer-songwriter.
Author John Grisham contemplates a monumental typo. A new arrival in heaven, overwhelmed by infinite options, procrastinates over his long-ago promise to visit his grandmother. We meet a vengeance-minded hare, obsessed with scoring a rematch against the tortoise who ruined his life; and post-college friends who debate how to stage an intervention in the era of Facebook. We learn why wearing a red t-shirt every day is the key to finding love; how February got its name; and why the stock market is sometimes just…down.
B.J. Novak is a writer and actor best known for his work on NBC’s Emmy-Award winning comedy series “The Office” as an actor, writer, director, and executive producer. He is also recognized for his standup comedy performances and his roles in motion pictures such as Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Disney’s upcoming Saving Mr. Banks. He is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in English and Spanish literature.
Tickets are $30 members; $40 nonmembers. Each ticket includes a copy of One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories.
Karen Russell, Vampires in the Lemon Groves and Other Stories
Thursday, February 27, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
Fresh from the success of her instant New York Times bestseller Swamplandia!, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Karen Russell brings us a new collection of stories that showcase her unique imagination and inimitable gifts. A community of girls held captive in a silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms, spinning delicate threads from their own bellies. A dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left behind in a seagull's nest. A family's hunger for land to call their own in the American West creates a monster. And in the collection's marvelous title story--an unforgettable parable of addiction and appetite, mortal terror and mortal love--two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try helplessly to slake their thirst for blood.
Karen Russell, a native of Miami, won the 2012 National Magazine Award for fiction. She is a graduate of the Columbia MFA program, a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2012 Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. She lives in Philadelphia.
March 2014
Amy Greene, Long Man
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
From the critically acclaimed author of Bloodroot, a gripping, wondrously evocative novel drawn from real-life historical events: the story of three days in the summer of 1936, as a government-built dam is about to flood an Appalachian town--and a little girl goes missing.
A river called Long Man has coursed through East Tennessee from time immemorial, bringing sustenance to the people who farm along its banks and who trade between its small towns. But as Long Man opens, the Tennessee Valley Authority's plans to dam the river and flood the town of Yuneetah for the sake of progress--to
bring electricity and jobs to the hardscrabble region--are about to take effect. Just one day remains before the river will rise, and most of the town has been evacuated. Among the holdouts is a young mother whose daughter has gone missing. Has she simply wandered off into the rain? Or has she been taken by Amos, the mysterious drifter who has come back to town, perhaps to save it in a last, desperate act of violence?
Amy Greene is the author of the national best seller Bloodroot. She was born and raised in the foothills of East Tennessee's Smoky Mountains, where she lives with her husband and two children.
Livingston Lecture: Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, HRC
Thursday, March 13, 2014
8:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
Tracing one of the greatest political comebacks in history, HRC chronicles the resurrection of Hillary Clinton, from the political ashes of her primary defeat to the most important diplomatic position in the world, and perhaps, to another run for the presidency.
HRC is a revealing examination of the strategy behind Hillary’s political revitalization at home and abroad and takes readers inside Hillary's decision to join the Obama Cabinet, her four years in his inner circle as Secretary of State and the mysterious workings of Bill and Hillary's political machine as she makes her decision about the 2016 election
Jonathan Allen is the White House Bureau Chief for POLITICO. An award-winning reporter, he has also written extensively about Congress and national politics, and he appears frequently as a political analyst on national television news programs. Amie Parnes is the White House correspondent for The Hill newspaper in Washington, where she covers the Obama Administration. A ten-year veteran of political journalism, she traveled with the Clinton, Obama and McCain campaigns while covering the 2008 presidential race for POLITICO. She appears frequently on MSNBC and has also been featured on CNN, Fox News and other networks.
Support:The Livingston Lectures are made possible with generous funding from the Livingston Foundation of Atlanta.
Paulette Livers, Cementville
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
In 1969, a small Kentucky town, known only for its excellent bourbon and passable cement, is forever changed when the favored local sons of the most prominent families all joined the National Guard hoping to avoid the draft
and the killing fields of Vietnam. They were sent to combat anyway, and seven boys were killed in a single, horrific ambush.The novel opens as the coffins are making their way home, along with one remaining survivor, the now-maimed town quarterback recently rescued from a Vietnamese prison camp. Yet the return of the bodies sets off something inside of the town itself —a sense of violence, a political reality, a gnawing unease with the future — and soon, new bodies start turning up around town, pushing the families of Cementville into further alienation and grief.
Paulette Livers is a Kentucky transplant to Chicago, via Atlanta and Boulder, where she recently completed her MFA at the University of Colorado. Her work has appeared in The Southwest Review, The Dos Passos Review, and Spring Gun Press. Livers received the 2012 Meyerson Prize for fiction (for material from Cementville.) This is her first novel.
Ashley Wright McIntyre Lecture: Joel Fry, Following in the Bartrams’ Footsteps
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
Joel Fry, Curator of Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia, will present a survey of William Bartram’s illustrations and examine the scope and influences of his career as a seminal American natural history illustrator. Fry, who is widely published, is a leading scholar on both John and William Bartram and their botanic and collecting careers in the eighteenth century. Fry’s lecture will be followed by a reception and an opportunity to explore the exhibition.
Individual tickets are $25.00. Reservations are required please call 404.814.4150 or purchase online at AtlantaHistoryCenter.com/Bartram. All lecture ticket purchases are nonrefundable.
Support: Ashley Wright McIntyre Lecture Series: In 2008, Franklin Raymond McIntyre III and his children, Constance Ashford McIntyre and F. Raymond McIntyre IV, created an endowment at the Cherokee Garden Library to support occasional lectures and programs in memory of Ashley Wright McIntyre (1957-2008). An avid gardener and floral designer, native Atlantan Ashley McIntyre was an active member of the Cherokee Garden Club of Atlanta, the Junior League of Atlanta, and the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta.
April 2014
Cherokee Garden Library Lecture and Exploration of the Garden: Kathryn Holland Braund, William Bartram’s Surprising Travels
Sunday, April 27, 2014
3:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
Kathryn Braund, Hollifield Professor of Southern History, Auburn University, is an expert in the ethnohistory of Creek and Seminole Indians in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Among her many publications, she is the co-author with Gregory A. Waselkov of William Bartram on the Southeastern Indians (1995) and co-editor with Charlotte M. Porter of Fields of Vision: Essays on the Travels of William Bartram (2010).
Lecture followed by a special exploration of Bartrams’ flora in the Mary Howard Gilbert Memorial Quarry Garden led by Sarah Roberts, Atlanta History Center Director of Historic Gardens and Living Collections. Lecture and garden tour followed by a light reception.
June 2014
Cherokee Garden Library Lecture: Philip Juras, Searching for the Southern Frontier: Landscapes Inspired by Bartram’s Travels
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
7:00 pm
Location: Atlanta History Center
Juras is an artist and author focused on natural landscapes that offer a glimpse of the Southeast before European settlement. In conjunction with an exhibition of his paintings, the book Philip Juras: The Southern Frontier: Landscapes Inspired by Bartram’s Travels was published by Telfair Museums and is distributed by the University of Georgia Press. In 2012 The Southern Frontier earned Juras the Georgia Author of the Year Award in the Specialty Book category from the Georgia Writers Association. His lecture is followed by a book signing, an exploration of Following in the Bartrams’ Footsteps, and refreshments.
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