Insiders Events
Atlanta History Center Insiders is our upgraded membership program that provides upgraded benefits and one-of-a kind opportunities for our members at the Patron level ($500) and above. Starting in September 2012, we take you “Inside the Past” with events that allow Insiders to experience unique aspects of our exhibitions, gardens, and historic houses that are not offered to the general public. In addition, you automatically qualify for complimentary admission to our popular lecture series. RSVP below or call 404.814.4101
From Civil War historian Allen C. Guelzo comes the reality of the Battle of Gettysburg, portraying the ordinary soldier and depicting the personalities and circumstances that produced one of the great battles of all time. Never before has a book examined the intense fighting of the individual soldier, studied the politics of military decisions, or placed the battle in the context of nineteenth-century military practice. What emerges is a previously untold story, and through such scrutiny the cornerstone battle of the Civil War is given vivid new life. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era and Director of Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College. He is the author of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America and Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, both winners of the Lincoln Prize. His work has appeared among others in the American Historical Review, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Wall Street Journal. Support: The Livingston Lectures are made possible with generous funding from the Livingston Foundation of Atlanta. This lecture will be held at the 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. Support: The Livingston Lectures are made possible with generous funding from the Livingston Foundation of Atlanta.
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. 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.
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.
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. |
Livingston Lecture Series: Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion
Livingston Lecture: Joseph J. Ellis, Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence
Elson Lecture: H.W. Brands, The Man Who Saved the Union
AHC Lecture: Earl Hess, Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign 
Livingston Lecture: A. Scott Berg, Wilson