Boston Athenæum

August 2, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Many of the most vivid writings in Henry David Thoreau’s journals were inspired by the plants and animals that inhabit the sprawling fields, forests, and wetlands of Concord and nearby communities. An inveterate year-round rambler and keen and thoughtful observer, Thoreau wrote frequently about these creatures, faithfully recording each sighting or encounter with the accuracy of a scientist and the deep spirituality of a transcendentalist and mystic. In this lecture, Geoff Wisner will present Thoreau’s profound spirituality and belief in the earth-human connection as revealed through his explorations of Thoreau’s best nature writings.

June 13, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Addiction is perhaps the most significant, prevalent, and intractable social problem of the decade, and it has hit especially hard in Massachusetts. While experts from many fields have approached the issue, we see a unique role for the humanities to play in addressing addictive behaviors. Historians have chronicled the wide-reaching histories of the U.S. opioid crisis. Philosophers have explored the ethical status of addictive states and the moral obligations of societies to addicts. Nevertheless, no field has been more directly engaged with the subject of addiction than literary studies—though this may be less than obvious to policy makers and medical practitioners. Some of the greatest Anglo-American literature, with authors ranging from Ernest Hemingway to David Foster Wallace, is fundamentally concerned with addiction and alcoholism. Humanities fields have great potential to provide major insights, both into the social stigma associated with addictive behaviors, and

June 7, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. The story of Robert Gould Shaw is one of heroism and loss. A young man's coming of age was cut short by his early death. His life, beginning in gentle ease, was entwined with the rise of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, the first black regiment in the Union Army. Spurred on by Frederick Douglass, the Regiment proved itself at Fort Wagner. The monument to Colonel Shaw and his men is the work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who, like Shaw, discovered something about himself through the creation of an American masterpiece. Video: https://vimeo.com/220851445

June 6, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Few, if any, other contemporary philosophers have achieved a level of influence to rival that of Nietzsche. Largely ignored during his lifetime, he was, as he predicted, born posthumously. In this lecture, Christopher Hamilton will trace the outlines of Nietzsche’s thought, exploring his most famous theories—eternal recurrence, the Übermensch, slave revolt in morality, and the death of God—as well as some lesser-known elements of his work, revealing a thinker of immense generosity and subtlety, full of lightness and mischief. Hamilton offers an introduction to Nietzsche’s life and work and a profound reflection on his body of thought, perfect for beginning learners as well as those already familiar with this “prophet of modernity.” Link to video: https://vimeo.com/220654650

May 17, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Texas-born and Harvard-educated, Dr. Perry Baird was a rising medical star in the late 1920s and 1930s. Early in his career, ahead of his time, he grew fascinated with identifying the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he began to suffer from it himself. By the time the results of his groundbreaking experiments were published, Dr. Baird had been institutionalized many times, his medical license revoked, and his wife and daughters estranged. Mimi Baird grew up never fully knowing this story, as her family went silent about the father who had been absent for most of her childhood. Decades later, a string of extraordinary coincidences led to the recovery of a manuscript which Dr. Baird had written during his brutal institutionalization, confinement, and escape. Baird set off on a quest to piece together the memoir and the man. The result of his extraordinary record and her journey to bring his name to light is He Wanted the Moon, an unforgettable testament to the

Seana Moran, Helen Haste, Scott Seider, faculty from Boston University, Clark University, and Harvard University consider the significance(s) of civic engagement at the Boston Athenæum on April 25, 2017. WGBH reporter Adam Reilly moderates the discussion. Video: https://vimeo.com/216536292

April 26, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum, presented in conjunction with the Royal Oak Foundation. Drawing on her exclusive access to the Royal Family’s inner circle, New York Times bestselling author Sally Bedell Smith has published the first major biography of Prince Charles in more than two decades. In this illustrated lecture, Smith lays bare the contradictions of a man who is more complicated, tragic, and compelling than we knew, until now. Smith captures the essence of a man who has been described as an eighteenth-century gentleman with a twenty-first-century mission—a life filled with contradictions and convictions. This is a lecture not just about a man who would be king, but also about the duties that come with privilege. Video: https://vimeo.com/215072213

April 12, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Andrea Cohen’s poems search the shadow regions of yearning and loss, but they take surprising, sometimes meteoric leaps, landing in a place where brightness reigns. The voice in ‘Unfathoming’ strives to upend the title: to both acknowledge mystery, and with wile and grace, comprehend it.

March 23, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Acclaimed journalist Stephen Kinzer will discuss the domestic clamor over America’s imperial ventures at the dawn of the 20th century. After a century of continental expansion, the United States came upon an opportunity to expand overseas by capturing Spanish colonial possessions and other territories within its reach. The nation plunged into polemic debate, with political and intellectual giants contesting “the imperial idea.” Expansionists declared benevolent intent, touting the economic benefits of conquest, while anti-imperialists invoked America’s anti-colonial origins, condemning imperialist brutality. The former largely triumphed, as the United States soon controlled Cuba and annexed Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii, and the Philippines in a swift series of conquests. Kinzer will argue that the imperial/anti-imperial dichotomy remains a dominant feature of the American psyche.

March 13, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. American journalism was born in Boston on September 25, 1690 with the publication of the first colonial newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick. Eventually, the first three (and five of the first seven) North American newspapers were published in Boston. Boston was home to America’s first foreign language newspaper, Courier de Boston, first published in 1789, as well as the first Roman Catholic, Methodist Episcopal, and Jewish English-language newspapers in America. This lecture will trace the history of significant Boston journalism “firsts.” From the Boston Gazette’s coining of the term “gerrymandering” in the early 1800s to the Boston Post’s exposure of Carlo Ponzi’s financial scheme, Boston print journalism has inspired a legacy of hard-hitting American reporting and free press.

March 8, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Join Ann Goldstein—translator of works by Elena Ferrante, Primo Levi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Alessandro Baricco—for a lecture on the art and craft of translation, with examples from the broad range of works she has translated from Italian. Goldstein will offer audience members a peek into the complex considerations of translators with an analysis of two translated sentences from Primo Levi's The Truce.

February 25, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. New York Times best-selling author-illustrator Oliver Jeffers and fine artist Sam Winston will present on their collaboratively created picturebook, A Child of Books. An artistic love letter to reading and the imagination, A Child of Books combines Jeffers’s expressive images and Winston’s immersive typographical landscapes, as a girl and boy adventure through the rich terrain of stories.

February 21, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Lincoln’s White House is the first book to capture the look, feel, and smell of the executive mansion from the time of Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861 to his assassination in 1865. During this book talk, author James Conroy will bring to life the people who knew Lincoln’s White House, from servants to cabinet secretaries and more. Conroy relies on fresh research from previously untapped primary sources and a bold character-driven narrative to offer insight on how Lincoln lived, governed, battled, and ultimately, unified the country. Join us for a behind-the-scenes glimpse of day-to-day life in the time of Lincoln and four of the most tumultuous years in American history.

January 18, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Historically, Boston has been home to numerous prominent American poets. This remains true today, making its civic moniker of “the Athens of America” as fitting now as it was in the nineteenth century. This evening’s performance, directed by Poets’ Theatre President and Artistic Director Robert Scanlan, is a gathering of Boston’s best poets, including Jennie Barber, Martha Collins, David Ferry, Regie Gibson, George Kalogeris, Marcia Karp, Fred Marchant, Jill McDonough, Lloyd Schwartz, and Meg Tyler. They will read their own works paired with the works of their nineteenth-century predecessors, invoking the ghosts of poets such as William Cullen Bryant, Lydia Maria Child, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathanial Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edgar Allan Poe, and Walt Whitman. The program will pay tribute to the Athenæum’s rich historical and literary roots while demonstrating how a living and contemporary literary scene continues to be nourished by this tradi

February 16, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Until recently, history remembered Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson (1876-1948) as the wife of wealthy Bostonian Larz Kilgour Anderson (1866-1937). Their Brookline estate is now Larz Anderson Park. However, the public perception of Mrs. Anderson as an heiress and socialite was shattered in April 2016 with the publication of Stephen Moskey’s Larz and Isabel Anderson: Wealth and Celebrity in the Gilded Age, a new account of the couple’s extraordinary lives. Based on research conducted in libraries and archives across the US and Europe (including the Boston Athenæum), Moskey’s work has transformed Mrs. Anderson’s legacy and public image. We now know her for what she was: a prolific writer and editor of over 40 titles; a librettist and impresario of popular musicals performed during the Great Depression; and a courageous nurse serving on the battlefields of France and Belgium during WWI. Mrs. Anderson emerges from the pages of this book as an exemplary woman of the early mod

February 15, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. The warnings come one after another, from biologists, meteorologists, pathologists, and hydrologists, all offering some variation on the same story: the world we inhabit is changing rapidly—and not always for the better. Centuries of fossil fuel consumption has caused atmospheric levels of carbon to spike beyond anything our species has ever experienced. Each month brings record temperatures as clean water grows scarce. 200 million environmental refugees are expected by 2050. In a world increasingly characterized by the effects of climate disruption—political, environmental, economic, and social—it comes as no surprise that writers and artists have begun to seize and depict the personal and collective implications of climate change. Across media and genre, writers and artists convey urgency and bear witness to the ongoing destruction of our planet, while encouraging humanity to rise to the challenges ahead. This presentation will explore the ways in which American w

January 30, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Join us to consider the historic and contemporary intersection of art, war, and culture. Guests Michael D. Fay, former United States Marine Corps combat artist, and Tara Leigh Tappert, cultural historian, will discuss the role and influence of wartime experiences on culture and the arts since WWI, addressing both art’s place on the battlefield and its rehabilitative qualities for veterans. They will also discuss contemporary issues surrounding art and war in a post-9/11 era, including art’s capacity to subvert stereotypes about war and the impact art made by combat artists and veterans has on the national discourse on war and the military.

January 26, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. For the past 25 years (and long before it became a trend), America’s Test Kitchen has used the art of science to perfect cooking. America’s Test Kitchen’s carefully crafted process guarantees success through the use of biology, chemistry, and physics to ask big questions about how and why ingredients and cooking techniques work. Cook’s Science: How to Unlock Flavor in 50 of Our Favorite Ingredients distills thousands of kitchen tests and decades of recipes into a landmark cookbook that will change the way Americans cook at home. This book talk will explore the basic science behind different cooking methods that make their ingredients taste best.

January 25, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Join Marc Kantrowitz to explore some of the most notorious legal cases in American history! Hear about America’s most famous comedian being framed for murder; the country’s first capital case involving an older woman and her (much) younger lover; the fatal shooting of a renowned architect amidst a crowded party by Mad Harry Thaw; and the real-life inspiration for Norman Bates, whose gruesome crimes outmatch that of any fictional character. These cases titillated, if not repulsed, the entire nation but are now nearly forgotten. Discover these infamous characters and many more from the rich pages of history.

January 19, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum. Edward Lear (1812-1888) is known and cherished for “The Owl and the Pussycat” and other works of literary nonsense. He was also an accomplished painter of birds, mammals, reptiles, and landscapes. Lear depicted parrots, macaws, toucans, owls, and other birds with scientific accuracy and a noteworthy sense of character, and reproduced his illustrations using the newly invented technique of lithography. An adventurous global traveler, Lear painted mammals ranging from hedgehogs and kangaroos to bats and Tasmanian devils. Although Lear’s nonsense verse has often prompted comparisons to Lewis Carroll, his private and enigmatic disposition has left him little known and less understood than his literary peer. Robert McCracken Peck, author of the new illustrated book The Natural History of Edward Lear, will discuss the remarkable life and work of this beloved children’s writer, who abruptly and mysteriously abandoned his scientific aspirations soon after achieving preeminenc