Lectures

May 2012

Tayari Jones, Silver Sparrow

Special guest: Pearl Cleage
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
8:00 PM
View the author's website

Set in a middle-class Atlanta neighborhood in the 1980s, Silver Sparrow revolves around the two families of James Witherspoon – the public one and the secret one.  When daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters.  It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered.  As Jones explores the backstories of her flawed characters, including the father, the two mothers, the grandmother, and the uncle, she reveals the joy, as well as the destruction, they brought to one another’s lives.
 

Tayari Jones has written for McSweeney’s, the New York Times, and the Believer.  Her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, received best-of-the-year recognition from the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Creative Loafing, and The Untelling received the Lillian C. Smith Award from the Southern Regional Council.  Jones holds degrees from Spelman College, Arizona State University, and the University of Iowa. 

Livingston Lecture: Jeff Shaara, A Blaze of Glory
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
8:00 PM

In the first novel of a new trilogy, New York Times-bestselling author Jeff Shaara returns to the Civil War terrain he knows best.  A Blaze of Glory takes us to the action-packed Western Theater for a vivid re-creation of one of the war’s bloodiest and most iconic engagements, the Battle of Shiloh.  Drawing on meticulous research, Shaara dramatizes the key actions and decisions of the commanders on both sides: Albert Sidney Johnston, U.S. Grant, William T. Sherman, P.G.T. Beauregard, and the illustrious Nathan Bedford Forrest.  Here, too, are the thoughts and voices of the junior officers, conscripts, and enlisted men who gave all for their cause.
 
Jeff Shaara is the author of The Steel Wave, The Rising Tide, To the Last Man, The Glorious Cause, Rise to Rebellion, and Gone for Soldiers, as well as Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure, which complete the Civil War trilogy that began with his father's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, The Killer Angels.   

Atlanta History Center Civil War Sesquicentennial Related Activity 

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June 2012

Elson Lecture: Andrew Polsky, Elusive Victories: The American Presidency at War
Tuesday, June, 12, 2012
8:00 PM

In Elusive Victories, Polsky provides a study of six wartime presidents, drawing lessons about the limit of presidential power during conflict.  He examines Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush, to show how each overestimated his power as commander-in-chief.  In each, the presidents’ resources did not match the recurring challenges of war.  With insight, Polsky identifies issues that inform current and future policymakers in the first comprehensive account of presidential leadership during wartime.

Andrew J. Polsky is professor of political science at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.  A former editor of Polity, he is the author of The Rise of the Therapeutic State and has written for Political Science Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, American Politics Research, and other journals.
 

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September 2012

Cherokee Garden Library: Peter Hatch:  “A Rich Spot of Earth:” Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden at Monticello
Thursday, September 13, 2012
7:00 PM

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States of America, was a revolutionary gardener. Today, the vegetables and herbs Jefferson favored are thriving in the 1,000-foot terraced vegetable garden at his home Monticello. Extensively and painstakingly restored under Peter J. Hatch’s brilliant direction, Jefferson’s unique vegetable garden now boasts the same medley of plants he enthusiastically cultivated in the early nineteenth century. The garden is a living expression of Jefferson’s genius and his distinctly American attitudes. Its impact on the culinary, garden and landscape history of the United States continues to the present day.

Since 1977, Hatch has played an essential role in the maintenance, interpretation, and restoration of Monticello's 2,400-acre landscape. He has written several previous books on Jefferson’s gardens and is an advisor for First Lady Michelle Obama’s White House kitchen garden.  He lives in Charlottesville, VA.
 

This special evening is a fundraising event for the Cherokee Garden Library endowment. Individual ticket, $25; patron levels are $250, $500, and $1,000. Reservations are required. Call 404.814.4046 or email.

The Aiken Lectures are made possible with generous funding from the trust of Lucy Rucker Aiken.

The Elson Lectures are made possible with generous funding from Ambassador and Mrs. Edward Elson. The Elson Lectures feature scholarly addresses by our nation's prominent historians.

The Livingston Lectures are made possible with generous funding from the Livingston Foundation of Atlanta.

The Cherokee Garden Library Lecture Series features expert-led discussions covering Southern garden history, historic horticulture and the preservation and restoration of historic gardens and landscapes in the Southeast. 

The Sidney Isenberg Lectures present some of the leading writers of our times, and are supported in part through the generosity of its donors. Past lecturers have included Ken Burns, Judith and Milton Viorst, Calvin Trillin, and James McBride, among others.