(Photo: Peter Bailley,
Knox College)
Wednesday, January 24, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Timothy Gilfoyle, Loyola University Chicago
From Bill the Butcher to Tony Soprano, New York's underworld characters hold a special fascination. Meet George Appo (1856-1930), who grew up in the Five Points neighborhood of lower Manhattan. A pickpocket, con man, and opium addict, he was well-acquainted with New York's prison system. Historian Timothy Gilfoyle takes us deep into Appo's world in a talk about his new book.
A Pickpocket's Tale is available for purchase from the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore. A book signing follows the talk.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
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| Douglas L. Wilson (Photo: Peter Bailley, Knox College) |
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Saturday, January 27, 10:00 am
Speakers: Douglas L. Wilson, Knox College, and Joshua Wolf Shenk, Washington College
Chair: Rachel Bohlmann, The Newberry Library
Yet Lincoln himself acknowledged (and it was widely known among his contemporaries) that he suffered from melancholy. Today we would call his illness major clinical depression. Was his genius contingent on his unhappiness? Joshua Shenk's well-researched and inspiring book reveals that the qualities that made Lincoln - empathy, transcendent humanity, prodigious intellect, and moral clarity - were also the ones that made him miserable for much of his life.
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| Joshua Wolf Shenk (Photo: Greg Martin) |
Douglas Wilson and Joshua Wolf Shenk are members of the Advisory Committee to the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. Following their book presentations, the authors will talk informally with each other and with the audience about the American President whose two-hundredth birthday we will celebrate in 2009 in a discussion moderated by Rachel Bohlmann, the Newberry's liaison to the regional Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.
Lincoln's Sword and Lincoln's Melancholy are available for purchase from the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore. Book signings follow the talks. Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Saturday, March 10, 11:00 am
Speaker: Michael Honey, University of Washington, Tacoma
In 1968, most black city workers in Memphis were paid poverty wages, suffered wretched work conditions, and were harassed by abusive white supervisors. But when two sanitation workers were chewed up like garbage in a malfunctioning truck, a public employee strike erupted that brought to a boil long-simmering issues of racial injustice. Civil rights and labor struggles converged for Martin Luther King, Jr., as he saw the working poor carrying placards that said "I am a Man" as the best hope for America.
Going Down Jericho Road is available for purchase from the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore. A book signing follows the talk. Admission is free. No reservation is required.
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Saturday, March 24, 11:00 am
Speaker: Mark Elliott, Wagner College
Today "color-blind justice" is most often used to oppose attempts to redress past racial discrimination by giving preference to African Americans and other minorities. Ironically, the phrase was coined by Albion Tourgee (1838-1905), a white man who was lead counsel to the plaintiff in Plessy v. Ferguson - the first constitutional challenge to segregation argued before the United States Supreme Court. This biography by historian Mark Elliott, a former Newberry Library fellow, restores to memory the Union Army officer, Reconstruction judge in North Carolina, fearless lawyer, jurist, and writer, who fought for equality long after most white Americans had abandoned the ideals of Reconstruction.
Color Blind Justice is available for purchase from the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore.
A book signing follows the talk. Admission is free. No reservation is required.
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Wednesday, March 14, 6:30 pm
Speaker: Sara Paretsky
Sara Paretsky published her first story in The American Girl at the age of 11, but didn't turn to detective fiction until her 30s. Troubled by the way women were traditionally portrayed in that genre, Paretsky created V. I. Warshawski, a tough, independent female private eye, now one of the best-known characters in crime fiction. Growing up in a small eastern Kansas town, where she and her brothers were the only Jewish kids in school, Paretsky discusses how her Jewish upbringing has informed her life and her writing.
Sara Paretsky's papers are in the collections of the Newberry Library.
Tickets are available only from NextBook. Admission $8/$6 for students/under 25. To purchase tickets, call toll-free (888) 219-5222 on weekdays between 11:00 am and 3:00 pm CST. Depending on availability, tickets may also be available at the door.
Thursday, March 15, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Martin Espada
Award-winning poet Martin Espada will read from and discuss his new book of poems, The Republic of Poetry. A former tenant lawyer, Espada is a professor in the English Department, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he teaches creative writing and the work of Pablo Neruda
Admission is free, but reservations are required. Please call the Poetry Foundation at (312) 787-7070.
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Saturday, March 17, 10:00 am
Speaker: Charles Fanning, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale
(Alan Wald, University of Michigan, is unable to attend)
Dramatic Readings from James T. Farrell's Fiction: Drew Martin Productions
Celebrate St. Patrick's Day at a book launch party to commemorate an Irish-American author. Out of print for fifty years, Farrell's five O'Neill-O'Flaherty novels are being republished in spring and fall 2007, with new introductions by former Newberry fellow, Charles Fanning. Set in the Irish South Side of Chicago, the novels are described by scholar Alan Wald as "incontestable masterworks of American culture and a compelling narrative of the emerging consciousness of a truth-seeking intellectual, Danny O'Neill, from a tumultuous background rooted in two families, one working class the other lower middle class."
A World I Never Made will be available for purchase at the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore. Admission is free. No reservation is required. Unfortunately, the publisher informs us that No Star Is Lost will not be available on March 17.
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Wednesday, March 21, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Alison Weir
"Alison Weir's hugely popular history books are as gripping as novels," wrote The Times (London), "and now she has stepped effortlessly over the boundary. She revels in the freedom of fiction without sacrificing historical fact." Weir is known on both sides of the Atlantic for her many best-selling histories, including Eleanor of Aquitaine and The Life of Elizabeth I. Her first novel, Innocent Traitor, tells a suspense-filled, heart-rending story of the "Nine Days' Queen" - a fifteen-year-old girl who, following the death of Edward, King Henry VIII's only male heir, unwittingly became the center of a struggle for supremacy fueled by political intrigues and lethal religious fervor.
Innocent Traitor 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: pubprog@newberry.org