Lectures at Atlanta History Center
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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.
Admission for all lectures is $5 for members, $10 for nonmembers, and FREE to Annual Fund donors unless otherwise noted.
Reservations are required for all lectures. For more information or to purchase tickets, please call 404.814.4150.
Learn more about our Margaret Mitchell House lectures.
Tommy Hills, author of Red State Rising: Triumph of the Republican Party in Georgia, and Dr. Bob Holmes, author of Maynard Jackson: The Biography, will discuss their most recent books about politics in Georgia.
Theda Perdue, Professor of Southern Culture at the University of North Carolina, discusses her new book Race and the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition of 1895. The book examines the world's fair held in Atlanta, where white organizers - in order to attract business to the area - hoped to demonstrate they had solved problems of race in the city. The exposition featured American Indians, African Americans, and other racial, ethnic, and gender communities as part of the event's installations. Perdue finds that this turn-of-the-century performance of race played out in surprising ways, particularly in terms of the voice this event gave to the minorities who took part.
Mark Twain is arguably the most famous and influential writer in American history. His legacy is defined by The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Little is known, however, about the crucial years during which Samuel Clemens transformed himself into the beloved American writer we celebrate today as Mark Twain. Samuel Clemens traveled by stagecoach to the Wild West in 1861 as an ex-Confederate guerilla and unemployed riverboat pilot, and returned six years later as Mark Twain. Lighting Out for the Territory tells how Samuel Clemens reinvented himself, while evading Indians and gunslingers, failing as a miner, dodging duels, surfing in Hawaii, and more trouble along the way. Backed by solid scholarship, this is the first full-length study of Twain’s life-changing time in the AmericanWest, where he began his writing career and shaped himself into an American favorite. Roy Morris is the editor of Military Heritage magazine, has served as a consultant for A&E Network and the History Channel, and is the author of five books, including The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln’s Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America; Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876; and The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War. He lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Join us for a fascinating afternoon with renowned author, Emily Herring Wilson, who will discuss her newly-released book, Becoming Elizabeth Lawrence: Discovered Letters of a Southern Gardener (John F. Blair, Publisher, April 1, 2010). Wilson explores the friendship of famous playwright and actress Ann Preston Bridgers and Elizabeth Lawrence, who would become one of America’s best garden writers. Bridgers’ talent for friendship and for identifying the talent of others led to her correspondence with Elizabeth Lawrence. Elizabeth, a graduate of Barnard College and the first female to graduate from the landscape design program at what is now North Carolina State University, was struggling to make a career for herself in Raleigh at a time when there was little work for landscape designers, especially women and especially in the South. When Ann moved back to Raleigh in the early 1930s, she and Elizabeth struck up a friendship that continued after Elizabeth moved to Charlotte in 1948 and endured until Ann’s death in 1967. They were two women of different generations who valued their opinions and their privacy and did not conform to images of the so-called Southern lady. Ann encouraged Elizabeth to find a way to live as she wished and guided her to write articles for some of the new women’s magazines. Elizabeth was already making a splendid garden, and with Ann’s help she began to write about her passion. By 1942, she was so successful that Lawrence’s first book, A Southern Garden, was published. It is still considered a classic. Although only a small number of Ann’s letters were preserved, editor Emily Herring Wilson discovered a treasure trove of Elizabeth’s letters to her mentor. Through those letters, readers can glimpse what life in a Southern town was like for women, especially during the 1930s and 1940s. Elizabeth discusses family, friends, books, plays, travels, ideas, and, of course, writing. Elizabeth (who died in 1984) was featured as one of the 25 greatest gardeners in the world by Horticulture magazine. That acclaim would never have come her way without her friendship with Ann Preston Bridgers. The lecture is free to the public. Reservations are required; please call 404.814.4046. A book signing will follow the lecture.
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Additional Information Listen to archived video webcasts of Atlanta History Center lectures provided by Atlanta Forum Network. |
Livingston Lecture
Cherokee Garden Library
