The Atlanta History Center is extremely honored to host these individuals at our main campus in Buckhead, as well as the Margaret Mitchell House in Midtown.
For the full list of all lectures, along with their dates, times, locations, and ticket information click on Read More.
July 2013
Karin Slaughter, Unseen
Monday, July 8, 2013
7:00 PM
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
Karin Slaughter’s latest thriller, Unseen, pits detectives, lovers, and enemies against one another in an unforgettable standoff between courage and evil. Bill Black is a tall ex-con who rides to work on a Harley and trails an air of violence. In Macon, Georgia, Black catches the eye of a drug dealer and his cunning girlfriend. They think Black might be a useful ally – unaware that he is a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent. Black is fighting his own demons, cut off from the support of the woman he loves, who cannot be told of the risk he is taking.
Karin Slaughter is the No. 1 internationally best-selling author of several novels, including the Grant County series. A long-time resident of Atlanta, she splits her time between the kitchen and the living room.
Mary Louise Kelly, Anonymous Sources
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
7:00 PM
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
Thom Carlyle had it all: trophies, an Oxbridge education, and a glamorous girlfriend. But on a glorious summer evening in Harvard Square, he is murdered. The New England Chronicle sends a beautiful, feisty, but troubled reporter named Alexandra James to investigate the story of a lifetime. But it is not what it seems – James’ reporting takes her abroad, to the cobbled courtyards of Cambridge, England, the inside of a network of nuclear terrorists, the corridors of the CIA, and, finally, to the terrorists’ target itself. Mary Louise Kelly spent two decades traveling the world as a reporter for NPR and the BBC. A Georgia native, she worked at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She currently serves as a host for NPR programs, including Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
Livingston Lecture: Joseph J. Ellis, Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
8:00 PM
Location: Atlanta History Center
In Revolutionary Summer, Joseph Ellis sets his focus on the summer of 1776, the most dramatic few months in the story of our nation's founding. The thirteen colonies came together and agreed to secede from the British Empire. At the same time, the British dispatched the largest armada ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean. In a seamless narrative, Ellis weaves the political and military experiences as two sides of a single story, and shows how events on one front influenced outcomes on the other. Revolutionary Summer enlivens these familiar historical events with freshness at once revelatory and compelling.
Joseph Ellis is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Founding Brothers. His portrait of Thomas Jefferson, American Sphinx, won the National Book Award. He recently retired from his position as the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with his wife and youngest son.
The Livingston Lectures are made possible with generous funding from the Livingston Foundation of Atlanta.
“You Should be Kissed - and Often”: What’s in a Kiss? America’s top Romance Authors Discuss the Enduring Passion for Sweeping Love Stories
Thursday, July 18, 2013
7:00 PM
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
Gone With the Wind is one of the most popular books of all time and the love story between its main characters, Rhett and Scarlett, is one of the most enduring love stories. Hear from six of the most popular Romance authors working in the genre today as they discuss their work. Panelists are Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Eloisa James, Sarah Maclean, Cathy Maxwell, Rachel Gibson, and Kerrelyn Sparks.
Elson Lecture: H.W. Brands, The Man Who Saved the Union
Thursday, July 25, 2013
8:00 PM
Location: Atlanta History Center
Ulysses S. Grant rose from obscurity to lead the Union to victory in the Civil War. Following the war, America turned to Grant to unite the country as president. Though he was an enormously popular president, within decades of his death his reputation was in tatters, the victim of Southerners who resented his policies on Reconstruction. In H.W. Brands' biography, Grant emerges as a heroic figure as Brands reconsiders Grant's legacy and provides an intimate portrait of a man who saved the Union on the battlefield and served the nation as a principled political leader.
H.W. Brands is the Dickson Allen Anderson Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. A New York Times-bestselling author, he was the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin and again for Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.
August 2013
Earl Hess, Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign
Saturday, August 17, 2013
2:00 PM
Location: Atlanta History Center
While fighting his way toward Atlanta, William T. Sherman encountered his greatest obstacle at Kennesaw Mountain, where Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee held a heavily fortified position. In Kennesaw Mountain, Earl J. Hess explains how the battle, with its combination of maneuver and combat, severely tried the endurance of the common soldier and why Johnston's strategy might have been the best chance to halt the Federal drive to Atlanta. A final section explores the Confederate earthworks preserved within the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.
Earl J. Hess is Stewart W. McClelland Chair in History at Lincoln Memorial University and is the author of a number of books, including The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi.
Aiken Lecture: James McBride, The Good Lord Bird
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
8:00 PM
Location: Atlanta History Center
From the bestselling author of The Color of Water and Song Yet Sung comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade, and who must pass as a girl to survive. Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, when the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henry’s master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave town—with Brown, who believes he’s a girl. An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, and told with McBride’s meticulous eye for detail and character, The Good Lord Bird is both a rousing adventure and a moving exploration of identity and survival.
The Aiken Lecture Series is supported by the Lucy Rucker Aiken Foundation.
September 2013
Livingston Lecture: A. Scott Berg, Wilson
Monday, September 30, 2013
8:00 PM
Location: Atlanta History Center
One hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson stands as one of the most influential and enigmatic figures of the twentieth century. After over decade of research and writing, Pulitzer Prize-winning author A. Scott Berg completed Wilson, the most personal and penetrating biography written about the twenty-eighth president. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of documents in the Wilson Archives, Berg was the first biographer to gain access to two recently discovered caches of papers belonging to those close to Wilson. This is not just Wilson the icon, but Wilson the man.
A. Scott Berg is the author of four best-selling biographies: Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, winner of the National Book Award; Goldwyn; Lindbergh, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; and Kate Remembered.
The Livingston Lectures are made possible with generous funding from the Livingston Foundation of Atlanta.
October 2013
Cherokee Garden Lecture Series: An Evening with Mario Nievera, Forever Green: A Landscape Architect’s Innovative Gardens Offer Environments to Love and Delight
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
7:00 PM
Location: Atlanta History Center
Join renowned landscape architect Mario Nievera who will lead us on an illustrated tour of his landscapes throughout the United States as featured in his first book, Forever Green: A Landscape Architect’s Innovative Gardens Offer Environments to Love and Delight. Nievera will showcase his extensive range of designs for civic spaces, parks, and residential estates, such as a garden terrace overlooking New York's Central Park to a public garden attached to The Flagler Museum in Palm Beach. His design work provides an extraordinary opportunity for ideas on how to create your own fabulous landscapes. Mario Nievera has a keen eye and talent to combine hardscape materials and lush plantings creating unique landscape compositions, which are admired and published in design magazines and newspapers throughout the world.
Mario Nievera, ASLA, is principal and partner of Nievera Williams Design, one of the top landscape architectural firms in the United States with offices in Palm Beach and New York. Nievera and his partner, Keith Williams, plan and develop diverse projects for residential estates, community parks, and corporate and institutional properties, both nationally and abroad. Nievera received his Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree from Purdue University in 1987. He frequently lectures about his firm's work throughout the United States. He is actively involved with the American Society of Landscape Architects and donates his firm's design and consulting services for many nonprofit organizations, as well as serving as a member of the board of directors of several nonprofit organizations. Nievera's work has been featured in many national and international design publications, including Architectural Digest, W, Southern Accents, The New York Times, Town & Country, House Beautiful, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, and Garden Design. His firm has earned numerous awards and recognitions for their superlative and sensitive design work.
Lecture followed by book signing and reception. Admission to this lecture is $25.00. Reservations are required; please call 404.814.4150 or reserve your tickets online at AtlantaHistoryCenter.com/Lectures.
Allan Gurganus, Local Souls: Novellas
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
7:00 PM
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
Allan Gurganus’ first book in a decade, Local Souls, returns to Falls, North Carolina, the mythic site of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. With three linked novellas, he charts adultery, obsession, and incest in our New South. Gurganus finds new pathos in old tensions between marriage and eros, with gigantic hopes battling smalltown conventions. Told with brio and sympathy, Local Souls is a universal work about a village. Its black comedy creates affection for its characters and an aching aftermath of human consequences.
Allan Gurganus, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, has written four other works of fiction, whose adaptations have earned him four Emmys. Gurganus lives in North Carolina.
John Ferling, Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry That Forged a Nation
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
8:00 PM
Location: Atlanta History Center
A conflict that truly shaped our republic, the competing visions for America between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton’s is recounted in Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry That Forged a Nation. Both men were visionaries, but their dreams for the young nation were opposites. Jefferson believed passionately in individual liberty, an egalitarian society, and a weak central government with power left to the states. Hamilton sought a powerful national government to ensure the nation’s security and economic greatness. Those competing legacies continue to shape our politics and our nation to this day.
John Ferling has written about the Revolutionary War and the politics of independence, as well as biographies of George Washington and John Adams. He is professor emeritus of history at the University of West Georgia and is the author of the award-winning A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. He and his wife, Carol, live near Atlanta.
December 2013
Edwidge Danticat, Claire of the Sea Light
Thursday, December 5, 2013
7:00 PM
Location: Margaret Mitchell House
From the best-selling author of Breath, Eyes, Memory and Krik? Krak!, comes a work of about the intertwined lives of a small town where a little girl, Claire has gone missing. As her father and others look for her, painful secrets and startling truths are unearthed among a host of men and women whose stories connect to Claire, her parents, and the town itself. Told with lyricism and economy, Claire of the Sea Light explores what it means to be a parent, child, neighbor, lover, and friend amid the magic and heartbreak of ordinary life.
Edwidge Danticat is the author of Brother, I'm Dying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; and The Dew Breaker, winner of the inaugural Story Prize.
ABOUT THE ATLANTA HISTORY CENTER:
Founded in 1926, the Atlanta History Center is an all-inclusive, thirty-three-acre destination featuring the Atlanta History Museum, one of the nation’s largest history museums; two historic houses, the 1928 Swan House and the 1860 Smith Family Farm; the Centennial Olympic Games Museum; the Kenan Research Center; the Grand Overlook event space; Chick-Fil-A at the Coca-Cola Café, a museum shop, and 22 acres of Historic Gardens with paths and the kid-friendly Connor Brown Discovery Trail. In addition, the History Center operates the Margaret Mitchell House located in Midtown Atlanta.
For information on Atlanta History Center offerings, hours of operation and admission call 404.814.4000 or visit AtlantaHistoryCenter.com.
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