Boston Athenæum

April 29, 2019 at the Boston Athenæum. Join us for a conversation with two leading voices in the movement to bring about criminal justice reform, New York Times Magazine journalist Emily Bazelon and Boston-based advocate and former prosecutor Adam Foss. In their respective fields, both grapple with the fact that the image of the American criminal justice system as a contest between the prosecution and the defense with judges ensuring a fair fight does not, in fact, match the reality. Much of the time, it is prosecutors more than judges who control the outcome of a case, and oftentimes with devastating consequences. Emily Bazelon’s new book entitled Charged examines this heretofore unchecked power of prosecutors and how this power undermines the American criminal justice system. She exposes the damage overzealous prosecutors can inflict alongside those—like Adam Foss—who seek to reform the system. Adam Foss, who formerly served as Assistant District Attorney in the Juvenile Division of the Suffolk County Di

April 23, 2019 at the Boston Athenæum. In her New York Times best-selling Between You & Me, Mary Norris delighted readers with her irreverent tales of pencils, punctuation, and punctiliousness over three decades in The New Yorker’s celebrated copy department. In Greek to Me, she delivers another wise and witty paean to the art of expressing oneself clearly and convincingly, this time filtered through her greatest passion: all things Greek. From convincing her New Yorker bosses to pay for Ancient Greek studies to traveling the sacred way in search of Persephone, Greek to Me is an unforgettable account of both her lifelong love affair with words and her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way, Norris explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, and reveals the surprising ways Greek helped form English. Filled with Norris’s memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine—and more than a few Greek waiters—Greek to Me is

March 28, 2019 at the Boston Athenæum. The Trial of Lizzie Borden tells the true story of one of the most sensational murder trials in American history. When Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally hacked to death in Fall River, Massachusetts, in August 1892, the arrest of the couple’s younger daughter Lizzie turned the case into international news and her trial into a spectacle unparalleled in American history. Reporters flocked to the scene. Well-known columnists took up conspicuous seats in the courtroom. The defendant was relentlessly scrutinized for signs of guilt or innocence. Everyone—rich and poor, suffragists and social conservatives, legal scholars and laypeople—had an opinion about Lizzie Borden’s guilt or innocence. Was she a cold-blooded murderess or an unjustly persecuted lady? Did she or didn’t she? The popular fascination with the Borden murders and its central enigmatic character has endured for more than one hundred years. Immortalized in rhyme, told and retold in every conceivable genre, t

April 18, 2019 at the Boston Athenæum. This event was held in collaboration with the Somerset Club. John Singer Sargent, the most sought-after portraitist of his age, painted hundreds of women, the rich and famous, noble and artistic. Perhaps the most interesting woman he ever painted was the social reformer, women's-rights advocate, hostess, author and Athenæum member Annie Adams Fields. He painted her in 1890, his crucial American year. Both before and after that, during Sargent’s stays in Boston and Annie’s trips to London, the two fostered a mutual admiration within their overlapping circles of friends. Annie’s portrait has just come home from a big Sargent show in Stockholm. We want to welcome her back by exploring the backstory of this Athenæum treasure.

March 22, 2019 at the Boston Athenæum. When a decades-long court battle resulted in her family’s freedom in 1855, seven-year-old Mary Mildred Williams unexpectedly became the face of American slavery. Famous abolitionists Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Albion Andrew would help Mary and her family in freedom, but Senator Charles Sumner saw a monumental political opportunity. Due to generations of sexual violence, Mary’s skin was so light that she “passed” as white, and this fact would make her the key to his white audience’s sympathy. During his sold-out abolitionist lecture series, Sumner paraded Mary in front of rapt audiences as evidence that slavery was not bounded by race. Weaving together long-overlooked primary sources and arresting images, including the daguerreotype that turned Mary into the poster child of a movement, Jessie Morgan-Owens investigates tangled generations of sexual enslavement and the fraught politics that led Mary to Sumner. She follows Mary’s story thro

March 21, 2019 at the Boston Athenæum. In the late 1860s, an ambitious New York illustrator – not yet recognized as an artist – made his first picture of the sea. Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was 33 years old, freshly back from France, and finding his way. Over the next 11 years Homer’s journey would take him to a variety of marine destinations, from New Jersey to Maine, but especially – and repeatedly – to Gloucester and other parts of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. It was on Cape Ann that Homer made his first watercolors, and where he learned his great calling: to be a marine artist. And it was there, in Gloucester in 1880, at the end of these 11 years, that he enjoyed the most productive season of his life, composing more than 100 watercolors of astonishing beauty. In August, 40 public and private collections will share some of Homer’s finest marine works at the Cape Ann Museum, in the heart of Gloucester, for the first close examination of the making of this great marine artist. Homer’s journey forever chang

March 13, 2019 at the Boston Athenæum. Join us for an evening with one of the nation’s leading experts on global engagement, Jed Willard, who will give a lecture and lead a neutral discussion on the rise of global nationalism. This event is held in collaboration with Civic Series--an organization that designs non-partisan events to explore complex issues in a non-confrontational way. An extended Q&A and discussion will follow a 30 minute overview. For the last two decades, the focus of cooperation and globalization has helped grow economies and bring prosperity to most, but clearly not all. The President of the United States declared himself a nationalist and joined an increasing number of far-right leaders in Russia, Germany, Brazil, and Turkey. As countries start to build diplomatic barriers against each other, decades-old global relationships are dissolving and across the world power is shifting toward isolationism and new allegiances are being formed. Questions such as the following will be addressed

March 3, 2019 at the Boston Athenæum. Topographers, illustrators, and painter-printmakers explored and created images of the Grand Canyon, and the evolution of these genres parallels the history of American printmaking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Beginning with geological studies and including prints for tourists and collectors, printmakers have approached the Canyon from the vantage point of line, tone, and pattern. In so doing, they made significant contributions to imaging one of the United States’ most renowned geological monuments, yet their works have not been extensively studied like those of painters and photographers. Sublime Impressions: Prints and Printmakers of the Grand Canyon traces the history of printmaking in the Grand Canyon from the topographical images of the first explorers to the abstracted works of twentieth-century modernists to show how a medium changed the way the Grand Canyon was represented and, thus, the public’s perception of it.

January 10, 2019 at the Boston Athenæum. As climate change nears potentially disastrous tipping points, a solution is hiding in plain sight. Several countries have successfully replaced fossil fuels with low-carbon energy sources by combining renewable energy with a quick buildout of nuclear power. By following their example, the world could dramatically cut fossil fuel use by midcentury, even as energy consumption continues to rise. Joshua Goldstein and Staffan Qvist explain how clean energy rapidly replaced fossil fuels in such places as Sweden, France, South Korea, and Ontario, Canada, while enhancing both prosperity and the natural environment. They encourage a fresh look at the assumptions that have long shaped the climate change debate. The event will be moderated by Harvard Professor and acclaimed scientist Steven Pinker.

September 12, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum. On its 150th anniversary, discover the story of the beloved classic that has captured the imaginations of generations. Soon after publication on September 30, 1868, Little Women became an enormous bestseller and one of America’s favorite novels. Its popularity quickly spread throughout the world, and the book has become an international classic. Alcott’s novel has moved generations of women, many of them writers; Simone de Beauvoir, J. K. Rowling, bell hooks, Cynthia Ozick, Jane Smiley, Margo Jefferson, and Ursula K. Le Guin were inspired by Little Women, particularly its portrait of the iconoclastic young writer, Jo. In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, Rioux recounts how Louisa May Alcott came to write Little Women, drawing inspiration for it from her own life. Rioux also examines why this tale of family and community ties, set while the Civil War tore America apart, has resonated through later wars, the Depression, and times of changing opportunities for women. In gauging its

December 10, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum. This free-for-members event is made possible with support from the William Orville Thomson Endowment, which is generously funded by Athenæum Proprietor Peter Thomson. We often allow ourselves to be lulled into the notion that the real impacts of climate change will come with sea level rise sometime much later in this century. The truth is that the significant changes of climate are upon us, and the likelihood that we will be hit by catastrophic precipitation-based flooding increases annually. The expectation is that we will suffer flooding like Pensacola, Florida; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Columbia, South Carolina; and Houston, Texas sooner than later, and very likely in the coming twenty years. Yet there are things we can do now to mitigate and even eliminate any impacts, the necessary changes can largely pay for themselves, and those changes would dramatically improve the appeal and livability of our city and region. Join Bob Zimmerman, former executive director of

December 3, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum. In the fall of 1780, after five frustrating years of war, George Washington had come to realize that the only way to defeat the British Empire was with the help of the French navy. But as he had learned after two years of trying, coordinating his army’s movements with those of a fleet of warships based thousands of miles away was next to impossible. And then, on September 5, 1781, the impossible happened. Recognized today as one of the most important naval engagements in the history of the world, the Battle of the Chesapeake–fought without a single American ship–made the subsequent victory of the Americans at Yorktown a virtual inevitability. In a narrative that moves from Washington’s headquarters on the Hudson River, to the wooded hillside in North Carolina where Nathanael Greene fought Lord Cornwallis to a vicious draw, to Lafayette’s brilliant series of maneuvers across Tidewater Virginia, New York Times bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick details the epic and

November 7, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum. The romance between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre has been celebrated as one of the greatest of the twentieth century. From the beginning, their relationship was a tumultuous one, in which the couple’s excesses were as widely known as their passion for each other. Despite their love, both Scott and Zelda engaged in flirtations that threatened to tear the couple apart. But none had a more profound impact on the two—and on Scott’s writing—than the liaison between Zelda and French aviator Edouard Jozan. Though other biographies have written of Jozan as one of Scott’s romantic rivals, accounts of the pilot’s effect on the couple have been superficial at best. In The Gatsby Affair: Scott, Zelda, and the Betrayal That Shaped an American Classic, Kendall Taylor examines the dalliance between the southern belle and the French pilot from a fresh perspective. Drawing on conversations and correspondence with Jozan’s daughter, as well as materials from the Jozan family arc

November 8, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum. In the precarious first decades of the Boston Athenæum, no one did more to keep the fledgling institution alive than its first librarian, William Smith Shaw. Slovenly in his appearance and extreme in his politics, Shaw could easily come across as disagreeable to his Boston contemporaries. Yet Shaw was much more than the prickly personality who looks disdainfully down at us from his portrait in the Athenæum Newspaper Room. His character was marked by considerable virtues as well, and it is these virtues that should inspire us today, in the troubled and perplexing twenty-first century. In telling the colorful and tragic story of Shaw's life, we will look behind the portrait to find the glowing strengths that helped preserve the Athenaeum in its infancy, strengths that may help inform the institution's work in its maturity.

November 28, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum. On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm. As one fireman recounted later, “Once that first stack got going, it was Goodbye, Charlie.” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2,000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed 400,000 books and damaged 700,000 more. Investigators descended on the scene, but over thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who? Weaving her life-long love of books and reading with the fascinating history of libraries and the sometimes-eccentric characters who run them, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean presents a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling story as only she can. With her signature wit, insight, compassion, and

June 19, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum. Precision is an essential component of the modern world. Much of what is important in our everyday lives—our cell phones, our computers, our cars, our ballpoint pens—is fitted together with precision to operate with near-perfection. But, what is precision and why is it important? Who invented it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in our world blinded us to other things of equal value? Can the precise and the natural co-exist in society? The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World locates the origins of precision in Industrial Age England and introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production. Thomas Jefferson brought their discoveries to the United States, setting the fledgling nation on its course to become a manufacturing titan. Through Winchester’s inimitable, learned, and charming storytelling, you will discover why so many words having to do with cars and driving—“garage,” “chauffeur”—come from the French and where th

June 7, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum. Today the United States represents about 5% of the world’s population but possesses approximately 40% of its guns. We also experience the highest number of mass shootings, which represent only a small fraction of our annual gun deaths. Perhaps ironically, the spread of guns and naturalization of gun deaths is linked to a widespread acceptance of self-defense, the right to fight back with lethal force when one feels threatened. Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair With Lethal Self-Defense explores the complex path by which the English common law “duty to retreat” from threat was transformed into a selective right to kill. Caroline Light will discuss how our nation’s history influences contemporary understandings of vulnerability and threat, and how appeals to race, gender, and class difference shape the adjudication of self-defense cases. In the process, Light seeks to illuminate a history hidden in plain sight, by showing how violent self-defense has bee

May 30, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum. From Daniel Boone to Teddy Roosevelt, hunting is one of America's most sacred-but also most fraught-traditions. It was promoted in the 19th century as a way to reconnect "soft" urban Americans with nature and to the legacy of the country's pathfinding heroes. Fair chase, a hunting code of ethics emphasizing fairness, rugged independence, and restraint towards wildlife, emerged as a worldview and gave birth to the conservation movement. But the sport's popularity also caused class, ethnic, and racial divisions, and stirred debate about the treatment of Native Americans and the role of hunting in preparing young men for war. This sweeping and balanced book offers a definitive account of hunting in America. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of our nation's foundational myths.

October 22, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum. As an aging, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social causes, the psychological roots, and the twisted consequences of tyranny. In exploring the psyche (and psychoses) of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, Coriolanus, and the societies they rule over, Stephen Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the catastrophic consequences of its execution. Cherished institutions seem fragile, political classes are in disarray, economic misery fuels populist anger, people knowingly accept being lied to, partisan rancor dominates, spectacular indecency rules—these aspects of a society in crisis fascinated Shakespeare and shaped some of his most memorable plays. With uncanny insight, he shone a spotlight on the infantile psychology and unquenchable narcissistic appetites of demagogues—and the cynicism and opportunism of the various enablers and hangers-on who surround them—a

May 23, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum. Six years in the making, James Walker’s twenty-foot long The Battle of Gettysburg debuted in Boston on March 14, 1870. No less than five major Boston newspapers lauded the work’s sweep and substance, praising its “remarkable minuteness and comprehensiveness and . . . fidelity.” Indeed, several of the generals depicted in the work (Longstreet, Meade, Hancock, Webb, Hall, and others) vouched for its accuracy—and its pathos. After its first appearance, The Battle of Gettysburg embarked on a cross-country tour with owner, the historian John Badger Bachelder, to “delight and instruct” American audiences. The popularity of the picture and the narrative of the battle of Gettysburg generated a souvenir market including guide books, descriptive keys, and small-scale print reproductions. This commercial industry around Walker’s panoramic painting enabled Bachelder to shape popular perceptions on how Americans interpreted the battle that continue to the present day.