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Saturday, September 15, 11:00 am
Speaker: Orville Vernon Burton, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Age of Lincoln is a provocative, original history of the five decades that pivoted around the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Historian Vernon Burton argues that abolishing slavery, though extraordinary, was not this age's most profound accomplishment. The enduring legacy was to inscribe personal liberty into the nation's millennial aspirations. In a remarkable reappraisal of Lincoln, Burton shows how the President's Southernness empowered him to conduct a civil war that redefined freedom as a personal right protected by the rule of law. In the violent decades that followed, the extent of that freedom would be contested by racism and unregulated capitalism, but not its central place in what defined the country.
The Age of Lincoln will be for sale in the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore.
A book signing will follow the talk. Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Saturday, December 1, 11:00 am
Speaker: David W. Blight, Yale University
Slave narratives are extremely rare, and even rarer are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away to free themselves. In two newly uncovered narratives, handed down through family and friends, Wallace Turnage (1846-1916) and John Washington (1838-1918) tell how they reached Union Army lines through a combination of intelligence, daring, and sheer luck. Prize-winning historian David Blight prefaces their narratives with a life history of each man, reconstructing their childhoods as sons of white slaveholders, their service as cooks and camp hands during the Civil War, and their climb to black working-class stability in the north, where they reunited their families. Their stories suggest rich new answers to the question of how four million people moved from slavery to freedom.
A Slave No More will be for sale in the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore. A book signing will follow the talk. Admission is free. No reservation is required.
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Monday, October 15, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Ann Patchett
"In my novels I like to bring together a group of disparate characters, throw them into an unexpected situation, and explore the consequences," writes Ann Patchett. In Run, the prizewinning, best-selling author of Bel Canto creates just such a situation. An encounter with strangers, an argument, and a car accident on a snowy night disrupt and then transform the lives of Bernard Doyle, a former mayor of Boston, and his family, which includes two adopted African American sons.
Run will be available for purchase at the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore.
A book signing follows the talk. Admission is free. No reservation is required.
The Newberry Library
Center for Public Programs
60 West Walton Street
Chicago, IL 60610-7324
telephone: (312) 255-3700
fax: (312) 255-3680
e-mail: programs@newberry.org