Lectures
The Atlanta History Center offers a variety of lectures throughout the year showcasing award-winning authors who share insight into their latest publication. Books are available for purchase in the Atlanta History Center Museum Shop during lectures and a book signing follows each Aiken, Elson, and Livingston lecture. View lectures presented at the Margaret Mitchell House, our Midtown campus.
Admission for all lectures is $5 for members, $10 for nonmembers, and FREE to AHC Insiders unless otherwise noted. Reservations are required for all lectures. Please call 404.814.4150 or reserve your tickets online. All lecture ticket purchases are non-refundable.
Continuing the trilogy that began with A Blaze of Glory, the New York Times-bestselling author Jeff Shaara returns to chronicle another decisive chapter in America’s Civil War. In A Chain of Thunder, the action shifts to the fortress city of Vicksburg. There, in the vaunted “Gibraltar of the Confederacy,” a siege for the ages cemented the reputation of one Union general and all but seal the fate of the rebel cause. Drawing on comprehensive research and his intimate knowledge of the Vicksburg Campaign, Jeff Shaara weaves fiction out of the cloth of historical fact. By giving voice to their experiences at Vicksburg, A Chain of Thunder vividly evokes a battle whose outcome still reverberates more than 150 years after the cannons fell silent. 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.
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.
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. |
Livingston Lecture Series: Aiken Lecture Series: Elson Lecture Series: Sidney Isenberg Lecture Series: |
Elson Lecture: Jeff Shaara
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
Cherokee Garden Lecture Series: An Evening with Mario Nievera, Forever Green: A Landscape Architect’s Innovative Gardens Offer Environments to Love and Delight
