Atlanta History Center's Spring Author Program Series Brings Distinguished Authors to Town to Discuss and Sign their Newest Books

Fri, Feb 27, 2015 06:53 CET

Each Program Joins Authors and Audiences in an Intimate Setting for Enlightening Insights, Discussions, and Book Signings

ATLANTA, Georgia– Join the Atlanta History Center this spring for a 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 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, Kelly Corrigan, Erik Larson, Jodi Picoult, and Edwidge Danticat.

The Atlanta History Center’s spring lineup continues to offer audiences a wide variety of subject matter from bestselling memoirs by Abigail Thomas and internationally known artist Sally Mann, to thought provoking Civil War and World War II books, and some of the biggest names in fiction.

The series kicks off with bestselling author John Berendt celebrating the 20th anniversary of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a new heart-pounding thriller by record-breaking author David Baldacci, and continues throughout the spring featuring popular NPR correspondents Cokie Roberts and David Brooks; hard-hitting nonfiction authors Robert Putnam, James Bradley, and Hampton Sides; and New York Times bestselling authors Lisa See, Sara Gruen, Bethenny Frankel, and Elizabeth Berg.

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.

March 2015

An Evening with John Berendt in Conversation with Atlanta Magazine’s Rich Eldredge, Midnight Revisited: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Twenty Years Later

Thursday, March 5, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

More than two decades after the runaway success of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil – which remains the New York Times's longest-running hardcover fiction or nonfiction bestseller – the author John Berendt reveals the bold new way to experience this modern classic.

This event is free and open to the public, and is presented in partnership with the Decatur Book Festival. Reservations are recommended. Please call 404.814.4150 or reserve seats online at MargaretMitchellHouse.com/Lectures.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Ken Siman, Co-founder/Publisher METABOOK.

Phone: 212.677.5031 Email: ken@metabook.com

Atlanta Author Book Launch: Fran Stewart, A Wee Murder in My Shop

Sunday, March 15, 2015

2:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

While on a transatlantic hunt for some authentic wares to sell at her shop, Peggy is looking to forget her troubles by digging through the hidden treasures of the Scottish Highlands. With so many enchanting items on sale, Peggy can’t resist buying a beautiful old tartan shawl. But once she wraps it around her shoulders, she discovers that her purchase comes with a hidden fee: the specter of a fourteenth-century Scotsman.

Unsure if her Highland fling was real or a product of an overactive imagination, Peggy returns home to Vermont – only to find the dead body of her ex-boyfriend on the floor of her shop. When the police chief arrests Peggy’s cousin based on some incriminating evidence, Peggy decides to ask her haunting Scottish companion to help figure out who really committed the crime – before anyone else gets kilt…

Fran Stewart, author of the Biscuit McKee Mysteries and the new ScotShop Mystery Series from Berkley Press, is a member of Sisters in Crime, the Atlanta Writers Club, and Mystery Writers of America. She lives quietly in a house by a creek on the other side of Hog Mountain, Georgia.

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: Leigh Massey, Director of Marketing Communications at Atlanta History Center. Phone: 404.814.4033 Email: Lmassey@AtlantaHistoryCenter.com

New Voices Series: Jamie Kornegay with special guest Susan Rebecca White, Soil

Monday, March 16, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

Join the Margaret Mitchell House for the first in a series of free events designed to showcase new voices in fiction. Jamie Kornegay is an independent bookseller and debut novelist, his first book, Soil, is a darkly comic novel about an idealistic young farmer who moves his family to a Mississippi flood basin, suffers financial ruin, and becomes increasingly paranoid he’s being framed for murder. Drawing on elements of classic Southern noir, dark comedy, and modern dysfunction, Soil is about the gravitational pull of one man’s apocalypse and the hope that maybe, just maybe, he can be reeled in from the brink.

Jamie Kornegay lives in the Mississippi Delta, where he moved in 2006 to establish an independent bookstore, Turnrow Book Co. Before that he was a bookseller, events coordinator, and radio show producer at the famous Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi. He studied creative fiction under Barry Hannah at the University of Mississippi.

This program is free and open to the public, though reservations are recommended. Please call 404.814.4150 or reserve seats online at MargaretMitchellHouse.com/Lectures.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Amanda Lang at Simon & Schuster. Phone: 212.698.7538 Email: amanda.lang@simonandschuster.com

Frye Gaillard, Journey to the Wilderness: War, Memory and a Southern Family’s Civil War Letters

Thursday, March 19, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

In Journey Into the Wilderness award-winning author Frye Gaillard reflects on the Civil War and the way we remember it, through the lens of letters written by his family members, including great-great grandfather, Thomas Gaillard, and Thomas’s sons, Franklin and Richebourg, both of whom were Confederate officers. As Gaillard explains in his deeply felt introductory essay to the book, he came of age in a Southern generation that viewed the war as a glorious lost cause. But as he read through family letters collected and handed down, he confronted a far more sobering truth.

Frye Gaillard is writer in residence at the University of South Alabama and the award-winning author of more than twenty books, including Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America, winner of the Lillian Smith Award, Watermelon Wine, and The Books That Mattered: A Reader's Memoir.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Suzanne La Rosa at New South Books. Email: suzanne@newsouthbooks.com

Lisa See, China Dolls

Sunday, March 22, 2015

4:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

Lisa See has garnered international acclaim for her great skill at rendering the intricate relationships of women and the complex meeting of history and fate. In her new novel, China Dolls See turns her attention to San Francisco.

The year is 1938 and a world’s fair is preparing to open on Treasure Island, a war is brewing overseas, and the city is alive with possibilities. Three young women from very different backgrounds meet by chance at the exclusive and glamorous Forbidden City nightclub. The girls become fast friends, relying on one another through unexpected challenges and shifting fortunes. When their dark secrets are exposed and the invisible thread of fate binds them even tighter, they find the strength and resilience to reach for their dreams. But after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, paranoia and suspicion threaten to destroy their lives, and a shocking act of betrayal changes everything.

Lisa See is the New York Times bestselling author of Dreams of Joy, Shanghai Girls, Peony in Love, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Flower Net (an Edgar Award nominee), The Interior, and Dragon Bones, as well as the critically acclaimed memoir On Gold Mountain. The Organization of Chinese American Women named her the 2001 National Woman of the Year. She lives in Los Angeles.

Ticket includes program admission and a paperback copy of China Dolls. Tickets are $20 members; $25 nonmembers. 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: Barbara Fillon, Deputy Publicity Director at Random House Publishing Group.Phone: 212.572.4995 Email: Bfillon@randomhouse.com

Mary Louise Kelly, The Bullet

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

From the author of the critically acclaimed Anonymous Sources, former NPR correspondent Mary Louise Kelly’s latest novel The Bullet is a heart-pounding story about fear, family secrets, and one woman’s hunt for answers.

Caroline Cashion is beautiful, intelligent, and a professor of French literature at Georgetown University. But in a split second, everything she’s known is proved to be a lie. A single bullet, gracefully tapered at one end, is found lodged at the base of her skull. Caroline is stunned. It makes no sense: she has never been shot. She has no entry wound. No scar. Then, over the course of one awful evening, she learns the truth: that she was adopted when she was three years old, after her real parents were murdered. Caroline was there the day they were attacked and she was wounded too, and now must search for the truth about what happened that day.

Mary Louise Kelly spent two decades traveling the world as a reporter for NPR and the BBC. As an NPR correspondent covering the intelligence beat and the Pentagon, she reported on wars, terrorism, and rising nuclear powers. A Georgia native, her first job was working as a staff writer at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Kelly was educated at Harvard and at Cambridge University in England. She lives in Washington, D.C., and Florence, Italy, with her husband and their two children.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Jean Anne Rose, Director of Publicity at Simon & Schuster|Gallery/Threshold/Pocket. Phone: 212.698.7579

April 2015

An Evening with Sara Gruen, At the Water’s Edge

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

In this new novel from the author of Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen again demonstrates her talent for creating spellbinding period pieces. At the Water’s Edge is a gripping and poignant love story about a privileged young woman’s personal awakening as she experiences the devastations of World War II in a Scottish Highlands village. Madeline Hyde, a young socialite from Philadelphia, reluctantly follows her husband and their best friend to the tiny village of Drumnadrochit in search of a mythical monster—at the same time that a very real monster, Hitler, wages war against the Allied Forces. What Maddie discovers—about the larger world and about herself—through the unlikely friendships she develops with the villagers, opens her eyes not only to the dark forces that exist around her but to the beauty and surprising possibilities.

Sara Gruen is the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Water for Elephants, Ape House, Riding Lessons, and Flying Changes. Her works have been translated into forty-three languages and have sold more than ten million copies worldwide. She lives in western North Carolina with her husband and three sons, along with their dogs, cats, horses, birds, and the world’s fussiest goat.

Tickets are $30 members; $35 nonmembers. Ticket includes program admission, light refreshments, and a copy of At the Water’s Edge. Reservations are required, please call 404.814.4150 or reserve tickets online at MargaretMitchellHouse.com/Lectures.

A Cappella Books is the official bookseller for this program, and will have additional Sara Gruen books available for purchase at the event.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Nicole Morano, Associate Publicist at Random House. Phone: 212.782.9626 Email: nmorano@penguinrandomhouse.com

Elson Lecture: Louis Masur, Lincoln’s Last Speech: Wartime Reconstruction and the Crisis of Reunion

Thursday, April 9, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

What did Abraham Lincoln envision when he talked about "reconstruction?" Assassinated in 1865, the president did not have a chance to begin the work of reconciling the North and South, nor to oversee Reconstruction as an official postwar strategy. Yet his final speech, given to thousands gathered in the rain outside the White House on April 11, 1865, gives a clear indication of what Lincoln's postwar policy might have looked like – one that differed starkly from what would emerge in the tumultuous decade that followed.

Louis P. Masur is Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, The Civil War: A Concise History and Lincoln's Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union.

Support: The Elson Lectures feature scholarly addresses by our nation’s prominent historians and are made possible with generous funding from Ambassador and Mrs. Edward Elson.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Lauren Hill at Publicity | Oxford University Press. Phone: 212.726.6113 Email: lauren.hill@oup.com

Livingston Lecture: Jonathan Schneer, Ministers at War: Winston Churchill and his War Cabinet

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

In May 1940, with France on the verge of defeat, Britain alone stood in the path of the Nazi military juggernaut. Survival seemed to hinge on the leadership of Winston Churchill, whom the King reluctantly appointed Prime Minister as Germany invaded France. Churchill's reputation as one of the great twentieth-century leaders would be forged during the coming months and years, as he worked tirelessly first to rally his country and then to defeat Hitler. But Churchill, regarded as the savior of his nation, and of the entire continent, could not have done it alone.

As prize-winning historian Jonathan Schneer reveals in Ministers at War, Churchill depended on a team of powerful ministers to manage the war effort as he rallied a beleaguered nation. Selecting men from across the political spectrum – from fellow Conservative Anthony Eden to leader of the opposing socialist Labor Party Clement Attlee – Churchill assembled a War Cabinet that balanced competing interests and bolstered support for his national coalition government. The group possessed a potent blend of talent, ambition, and egotism.

Jonathan Schneer is a professor of history at Georgia Tech. The author of The Balfour Declaration, which won the 2010 National Jewish Book Award, Schneer lives in Decatur, Georgia.

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

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Carrie Majer, Senior Publicist at Basic Books. Phone: 212.340.8140 Email: Carrie.Majer@perseusbooks.com

Lifestyle Lecture Series: Bethenny Frankel, I Suck at Relationships So You Don’t Have To

Monday, April 13, 2015

6:30 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

Bethenny Frankel is good at many things – being an entrepreneur, mom, and TV star – but when it comes to relationships, she is the first to admit that she has had many failures. The good news is, in working through themistakes, she has already learned many things about what she doesn’t want, that she won’t accept, and that she

shouldn’t settle for. And most importantly, she still believes in love and that her perfect relationship is still to come. Filled with a mix of candid personal stories and the no-nonsense advice she’s known for, I Suck at Relationships So You Don’t Have To is the next step on Bethenny’s A Place of Yes journey. This is a book by someone who has made many relationship mistakes and knows a thing or two because of it. Bethenny takes a deep look at her own dating and relationship history and gets to the heart of the mistakes women make and what it takes to find and sustain a meaningful connection.

Bethenny Frankel is the four-time bestselling author of Skinnydipping, A Place of Yes, Naturally Thin, and The Skinnygirl Dish. She is the creator of the Skinnygirl brand, which extends to cocktails, health, and fitness, and focuses on practical solutions for women.

Tickets are $35 members: $40 nonmembers. Ticket includes program admission and a copy of I Suck at Relationships So You Don’t Have To. 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: Shida A. Carr, Assistant Director at Touchstone Publicity/Touchstone Simon & Schuster, Inc. Phone: 212.698.4384 Email: Shida.Carr@Simonandschuster.com

Sidney Isenberg Lecture: Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It

Monday, April 20, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

In What Comes Next and How to Like It Abigail Thomas wrestles with some of life’s big questions, like whether or not it’s possible to repair a decades old friendship after a major betrayal, how to care for an ailing grown child, how much drinking is too much drinking, and what to do about a beloved dog who eats or hides everything, including TV remotes, shoes (all of them), and a friend’s first edition of Wolf Hall.

This is a book about a friendship that had a hole blown through it, and how to recover trust and affection. It is also a book about dogs, mortality, dating in one’s seventies, memory, acceptance, how to live when calamity strikes, and the necessity of laughing one’s head off.

Abigail Thomas, the daughter of renowned science writer Lewis Thomas (The Lives of a Cell), is the mother of four children and the grandmother of twelve. She is the author of six previous books, including the memoir A Three Dog Life, which was named one of the best books of 2006 by the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. When Thomas can’t write, she paints. She teaches writing and lives in Woodstock, New York, with her four dogs.

Support: This is the nineteenth annual Sidney Isenberg Lecture. The Sidney Isenberg Lectures have been established by his friends, colleagues, and family as an expression of love and appreciation for his values and commitment to the healing process and to the advancement of learning and growth – affirming his conviction that the human relationship is the agency through which change comes about.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Katherine Monaghan at Simon & Schuster. Email: Katherine.Monaghan@simonandschuster.com

Civil War 150 Lecture: Cokie Roberts, Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington 1848-1868

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

As the culmination of the Civil War’s sesquicentennial in April 2015 approaches, Cokie Roberts provides a revelatory look at the lives of women during a tumultuous and perennially fascinating era of American history. Concentrating on Washington, D.C., then a small Southern town that sat as a bull’s eye between battling armies, Roberts explores newspaper articles, government records, and private letters and diaries – many never before published – to reconstruct a remarkable period of conflict and change for its self-described belles, for whom life would never be the same.

Cokie Roberts is a political commentator for ABC News and NPR. She has won countless awards, and in 2008 she was named a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress. She is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters. Her other books, Founding Mothers, Ladies of Liberty, and From This Day Forward (written with her husband, journalist Steven V. Roberts), also spent weeks on the bestseller list. She and her husband have also collaborated on Our Haggadah. Roberts is the mother of two and grandmother of six.

Support: Civil War 150 lectures are presented through the generous support of Vicki and Howard Palefsky.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Dee Dee De Bartlo, Book Publicity & Marketing at DEBARTLO & CO. Phone: 212.390.8270

David Baldacci, Memory Man

Thursday, April 23, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

Amos Decker's life changed forever – twice. The first time was on the gridiron. On his very first play, a violent helmet-to-helmet collision knocked him off the field for good, and left him with an improbable side effect – he can never forget anything.

The second time was at home nearly two decades later. Now a police detective, Decker returned from a stakeout one evening and entered a nightmare – his wife, young daughter, and brother-in-law had been murdered.

His family destroyed, their killer's identity as mysterious as the motive behind the crime, and unable to forget a single detail from that horrible night, Decker finds his world collapsing around him. But over a year later, a man turns himself in to the police and confesses to the murders. At the same time a horrific event nearly brings Burlington to its knees, and Decker is called back in to help with this investigation. Decker also seizes his chance to learn what really happened to his family that night. To uncover the stunning truth, he must use his remarkable gifts and confront the burdens that go along with them. He must endure the memories he would much rather forget. And he may have to make the ultimate sacrifice.

David Baldacci made a big splash on the literary scene with the publication of his first novel, Absolute Power. A major motion picture adaptation followed, with Clint Eastwood as its director and star. In total, David has published

27 novels, all of which have been national and international bestsellers; several have been adapted for film and television. His novels have been translated into more than 45 languages and sold in more than 80 countries; over 110 million copies are in print worldwide.

Tickets are $35 members: $40 nonmembers. Ticket includes program admission and a copy of the book Memory Man. 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: Sonya Cheuse, Deputy Director of Publicity at Grand Central Publishing. Phone: 212.364.1496 Email: Sonya.Cheuse@hbgusa.com

Robert Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis

Thursday, April 30, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

It’s the American dream: get a good education, work hard, buy a house, and achieve prosperity and success. This is the America we believe in – a nation of opportunity, constrained only by ability and effort. But during the last twenty-five years we have seen a disturbing “opportunity gap” emerge. Americans have always believed in equality of opportunity, the idea that all kids, regardless of their family background, should have a decent chance to improve their lot in life. Now, this central tenet of the American dream seems no longer true or at the least, much less true than it was.

Our Kids is a rare combination of individual testimony and rigorous evidence and offers a personal but authoritative look at this new American crisis. Putnam begins with his high school class of 1959 in Port Clinton, Ohio. By and large the vast majority of those students – “our kids – went on to lives better than those of their parents. But their children and grandchildren have had harder lives amid diminishing prospects. Putnam tells the tale of lessening opportunity through poignant life stories of rich and poor kids from cities and suburbs across the country, drawing on a formidable body of research done especially for this book.

Robert D. Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University. Nationally honored as a leading humanist and a renowned scientist, he has written fourteen books and has consulted for the last four U.S. Presidents. His research program, the Saguaro Seminar, is dedicated to fostering civic engagement in America.

Support: This program is presented in partnership with The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Louise Kennedy at Converse. Phone: 941.735.738 Email: LouiseConverse@gmail.com

May 2015

Elson Lecture: John Ferling, Whirlwind: A History of the American Revolution

Monday, May 4, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

Whirlwind is a fast-paced and scrupulously told one-volume history of the American Revolution. Balancing social and political concerns of the period and perspectives of the average American revolutionary with a careful examination of the war itself, Ferling has crafted the ideal book for armchair military history buffs, a book about the

causes of the American Revolution, the war that won it, and the meaning of the Revolution overall. Combining

careful scholarship, arresting detail, and illustrative storytelling, Whirlwind is a unique and compelling addition to any collection of books on the American Revolution.

John Ferling is professor emeritus of history at the University of West Georgia. He is the author of many books on American Revolutionary history, including The Ascent of George Washington; Almost a Miracle, an acclaimed military history of the War of Independence; and the award-winning A Leap in the Dark. His most recent book on American history is Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry That Forged a Nation.

Support: The Elson Lectures feature scholarly addresses by our nation’s prominent historians and are made possible with generous funding from Ambassador and Mrs. Edward Elson.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Summer Smith, Associate Director of Publicity at Bloomsbury Publishing. Phone: 212.419.5310 Email: Summer.smith@bloomsbury.com

Elizabeth Berg, The Dream Lover

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

In The Dream Lover we meet Aurore Dupin as she is leaving her estranged husband, a loveless marriage, and her family’s estate in the French countryside, to start a new life in Paris. There, she renames herself George Sand and pursues her dream of becoming a writer, embracing an unconventional and even scandalous lifestyle.

Illuminated by the story of the loves, passions, and fierce struggles of a woman who defied the confines of society, The Dream Lover, features many of Sand’s famous lovers and friends, including Frederic Chopin, Gustave Flaubert, Franz Liszt, Eugene Delacroix, Victor Hugo, Marie Dorval, Alfred de Musset, and more. Considered one of the most gifted geniuses of her time, Sand welcomes fame as she fights to overcome heartbreak and prejudice, the pain of her childhood, and the disturbing relationships with her mother and daughter.

Elizabeth Berg is the author of many bestselling novels, including Open House, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, Talk Before Sleep, The Pull of the Moon, Tapestry of Fortunes, The Last Time I Saw You, Home Safe, The Year of Pleasures, and Dream When You’re Feeling Blue. Her novels Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year. She divides her time between Chicago and San Francisco.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Henley Cox, Associate Publicist at Random House / Spiegel & Grau / Dial Press. Phone: 212.572.2225 Email: hcox@randomhouse.com

James Bradley, The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia

Saturday, May 9, 2015

2:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

In each of his books, James Bradley has exposed the hidden truths behind America's engagement in Asia. Now comes his most engrossing work yet. Beginning in the 1850s, Bradley introduces us to the prominent Americans who made their fortunes in the China opium trade. As they – good Christians all – profitably addicted millions, American missionaries arrived, promising salvation for those who adopted Western ways.And that was just the beginning. From drug dealer Warren Delano to his grandson Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from the port of Hong Kong to the towers of Princeton University, from the era of Appomattox to the age of the A-Bomb, The China Mirage explores a difficult century that defines U.S.-Chinese relations to this day.

James Bradley is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Imperial Cruise, Flyboys, and Flags of Our Fathers and the son of one of the men who raised the American flag on Iwo Jima. He lives in New York.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Catherine Cullen, Senior Publicist at Little, Brown. Phone: 212.364.1588 Email: catherine.cullen@hbgusa.com

Livingston Lecture Series: David Brooks, The Road to Character

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

In today’s culture of achievement, the drive for external success and attention is so fierce there's little time to cultivate inner depth. We're taught to be assertive, to master skills, to broadcast our brand, to get likes, to get followers. We’ve become a self-preoccupied society, and the noise, the fast and shallow communications, makes it hard to hear the quiet voices that steer us beyond our immediate needs. In this elegant interweaving of politics, spirituality, psychology, and confessional, New York Times bestselling author David Brooks’ The Road to Character urges us to confront the meaning of true fulfillment.

David Brooks writes an op-ed column for The New York Times, teaches at Yale University, and appears regularly on PBS NewsHour, NPR’s All Things Considered, and NBC’s Meet the Press. He is the author of Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense, and The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement.

Tickets are $35 members: $40 nonmembers. Ticket includes program admission and a copy of The Road to Character. Reservations are required, please call 404.814.4150 or reserve tickets online at AtlantaHistoryCenter.com/Lectures.

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

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Greg Kubie, Publicity Manager at Random House. Phone: 212.782.9038 Email: gkubie@penguinrandomhouse.com

Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Margaret Mitchell House

When fifteen-year-old Maribel Rivera sustains a terrible injury, the Riveras leave behind a comfortable life in Mexico and risk everything to come to the United States so that Maribel can have the care she needs. Once they arrive, it’s not long before Maribel attracts the attention of Mayor Toro, the son of one of their new neighbors, who sees a kindred spirit in this beautiful, damaged outsider. Their love story sets in motion events that will have profound repercussions for everyone involved. Here Henríquez seamlessly interweaves the story of these star-crossed lovers, and of the Rivera and Toro families, with the testimonials of men and women who have come to the United States from all over Latin America. The Book of Unknown Americans is a stunning novel of hopes and dreams, guilt and love – a book that offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be Americans.

Cristina Henríquez is the author of The Book of Unknown Americans, which was named a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book, a NPR Great Read, and a Mother Jones, Oprah.com, School Library Journal, and BookPage Best Book of the Year. Her previous books include The World In Half and Come Together, Fall Apart: A Novella and Stories. Cristina’s non-fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Oxford American, and Preservation. Cristina earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Chicago.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Kate Runde, Director of Publicity at Vintage Books/Anchor Books. Email: Krunde@penguinrandomhouse.com

An Evening with Sally Mann, Hold Still

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

7:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Sally Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her. In researching this book and sorting through boxes of family papers and yellowed photographs she finds more than she bargained for: "deceit and scandal, alcohol, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land … acial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder."

Sally Mann is one of America's most renowned photographers. She has received numerous awards, including NEA, NEH, and Guggenheim Foundation grants, and her work is held by major institutions internationally. Her many books include What Remains (2003), Deep South (2005), and the Aperture titles At Twelve (1988), Immediate Family (1992), Still Time (1994), Proud Flesh (2009), and The Flesh and the Spirit (2010). A feature film about her work, What Remains, debuted to critical acclaim in 2006.

Mann is represented by Gagosian Gallery in New York and by Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta. She lives in Virginia.

Support: This program is presented in partnership with Jackson Fine Art.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Nicole Dewey, VP, Executive Director of Publicity. Phone: 212.364.1204 Email: nicole.dewey@hbgusa.com

Nancy Sherman, Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of Our Soldiers Saturday, May 23, 2015

2:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

2.6 million soldiers are currently returning home from war, the greatest number since Vietnam. With an increase in suicides and post-traumatic stress, the military has embraced measures such as resilience training and positive psychology to heal mind as well as body. But the moral dimensions of psychological injuries – guilt, shame, feeling responsible for doing wrong or being wronged – still elude much treatment. In Afterwar, philosopher Nancy Sherman turns her focus to that challenge.

With twenty years of working with the military, Sherman draws on in-depth interviews with servicemen and women to paint a richly textured and compassionate picture of the moral and psychological aftermath of America's decade of war.

Nancy Sherman is a University Professor at Georgetown and Guggenheim Fellow (2013-2014) and has served as the Inaugural Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the United States Naval Academy. A philosopher with research training in psychoanalysis, she lectures worldwide on moral injury, resilience, and military ethics. She is also the author of The Untold War and Stoic Warriors.

This lecture is part of the Military Timeline family program. Admission is free for members and veterans or military personnel, and included in price of general admission for nonmembers. For more information, please call 404.814.4150 or reserve tickets online at AtlantaHistoryCenter.com/Family.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Lauren Hill, Publicity at Oxford University Press. Phone: 212.726.6113 Email: lauren.hill@oup.com

Livingston Lecture Series: Steve Inskeep, Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

A thrilling narrative history of two men – President Andrew Jackson and Cherokee Chief John Ross – who led their respective nations at a crossroads of American history. Five decades after the Revolutionary War, the United States faced a constitutional crisis. At its center stood two men, former military comrades locked in a struggle that tested the boundaries of our fledgling democracy. Jacksonland is their story.

Steve Inskeep is a co-host of Morning Edition, the most widely heard radio news program in the United States. His investigative journalism has received the Edward R. Murrow Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the Alfred I. Dupont award. He is the author of Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi.

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

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Liz Calamari at The Penguin Press. Phone: 212.366.2857 Email: Ecalamari@penguinrandomhouse.com

Elson Lecture: Hampton Sides, In the Kingdom of Ice

Thursday, June 4, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

In the late nineteenth century, people were obsessed by one of the last unmapped areas of the globe: the North Pole. No one knew what existed beyond the fortress of ice rimming the northern oceans, although theories abounded. James Gordon Bennett, the eccentric and stupendously wealthy owner of The New York Herald, had recently captured the world's attention by dispatching Stanley to Africa to find Dr. Livingstone. Now he was keen to re-create that sensation on an even more epic scale. So he funded an official U.S. naval expedition to reach the Pole, choosing as its captain a young officer named George Washington De Long, who had gained fame for a rescue operation off the coast of Greenland. De Long led a team of 32 men deep into uncharted Arctic waters, carrying the aspirations of a young country burning to become a world power.

Hampton Sides is an award-winning editor of Outside and the author of the bestselling histories Hellhound on his Trail, Blood and Thunder, and Ghost Soldiers.

Support: The Elson Lectures are made possible with generous funding from Ambassador and Mrs. Edward Elson.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Alex Houstoun, Publicist at Vintage Books & Anchor Books | The Knopf Doubleday Group Random House, Inc. Phone: 212.572.2882 Email: Ahoustoun@penguinrandomhouse.com

Elson Lecture: Jeff Shaara, The Fateful Lightning

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

In the concluding novel of his epic Civil War tetralogy, Jeff Shaara tells the dramatic story of the final eight months of battle from multiple perspectives: the commanders in their tents making plans for total victory, as well as the ordinary foot soldiers and cavalrymen who carried out their orders until the last alarm sounded. Through Sherman’s eyes, we gain insight into the mind of the general who vowed to “make Georgia howl” until it surrendered. In Johnston, we see a man agonizing over the limits of his army’s power, and accepting the burden of leading the last desperate effort to ensure the survival of the Confederacy. The Civil War did not end quietly. It climaxed in a storm of fury that lay waste to everything in its path. The Fateful Lightning brings to life those final brutal, bloody months of fighting with you-are-there immediacy, grounded in the meticulous research that readers have come to expect from Jeff Shaara.

Support: The Elson Lectures are made possible with generous funding from Ambassador and Mrs. Edward Elson.

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Greg Kubie, Publicity Manager at Random House. Phone: 212.782.9038 Email: gkubie@penguinrandomhouse.com

Livingston Lecture Series: Elizabeth Varon, Appomattox: Victory, Defeat and Freedom at the End of the Civil War

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

8:00 pm

Location: Atlanta History Center

On April 9, 1865, after exchanging pleasantries about their service in the Mexican War, Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee negotiated the terms of Lee’s surrender at McLean House in Appomattox, Virginia, bringing the Civil War to an official end. Fictional and accurate accounts pervade the surrender, painting it as a well-known myth in American history.

In Appomattox: Victory, Defeat and Freedom at the End of the Civil War, historian Elizabeth R. Varon presents a new, more accurate interpretation of Appomattox’s meaning. She offers an alternative vision to the dominant view that Lee's surrender affected the reunion of the South and North, and thus “saved America.” Varon reexamines the narrative of the surrender at Appomattox, and finds that neither Northerners nor Southerners were united in their reactions to the surrender.

Elizabeth R. Varon is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia. A noted Civil War historian, she is the author of Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859, We Mean to be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia, and Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, A Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy, which was named one of the "Five Best" books on the "Civil War away from the battlefield" by the Wall Street Journal.

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

For book review or interview with the author, please contact: Lauren Hill, Publicity at Oxford University Press. Phone: 212.726.6113 Email: lauren.hill@oup.com

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