|
Tuesday, June 14 |
Michael Kryzanek, professor of political science, Bridgewater State University, and author of “Debates, Differences and Divisions: The 25 Issues that Shape American Politics”
Michael Kryzanek is the head of the political science department at Bridgewater State College. His book takes the position that American politics can best be understood by examining the issues that reflect the ideas, principles, concerns, fears, morals and hopes of the American people. Debates, Differences and Divisions looks at twenty-five “hot button” issues affecting American politics and policy today. The author argues that these issues are the heart and soul of the American political system, serving as the basis for the disagreements that drive our political system into action.
Buy Tickets
|
|
Tuesday, June 21 |
John Laurence Busch, author of Steam Coffin
For millennia, humans well-knew that there was a force far more powerful than they upon the Earth, and that was Nature itself. They could only dream of overcoming its power, or try to believe in the myths and fables of others who supposedly had done so.
Then, at the dawn of the 19th century, along came a brilliant, creative, controversial American by the name of Robert Fulton. In the late summer of 1807, he ran his experimental “steamboat” from New York City to Albany, not once, but repeatedly. With these continuing commercial trips, Fulton showed that it was possible to alter artificially both a person’s location and the amount of time it took to
change it. In so doing, he also broke through an enormous psychological barrier that had existed in people’s minds; it was, in fact, possible to overcome Nature to practical effect.But running these steamboats on rivers, lakes and bays was one thing. Taking such a vessel on a voyage across the ocean was a different proposition altogether. Experienced mariners didn’t think it could be done. These early steamboats were just too flimsy and unwieldy to withstand the dangers of the deep.Yet there was at least one man who believed otherwise. His name was Captain Moses Rogers. He set out to design a steam vessel that was capable of overcoming the vicissitudes of
the sea. This craft would be not a steamboat, but a steamship, the first of its kind.Finding a crew for such a new-fangled contraption proved to be exceedingly difficult. Mariners—conditioned as they were to “knowing the ropes” of a sailing ship—looked upon this new vessel, and its unnatural means of propulsion, with the greatest suspicion. To them, it was not a “Steam Ship”—instead, it was a “Steam Coffin.”
Buy Tickets
|
|
Tuesday, June 28 |
Joan Winfield Currie, author of the Revolutionary War trilogy “Beyond All Reason, “Beyond All Odds” and “Beyond the Horizon”
Local author Joan Winfield Currie has created a trio of novels set during the American Revolutionary War and talks of how families divided as to
which side to support. Set in the Carolinas, the author weaves an epic tale that chronicles the lives of a brother and sister who choose different sides and suffer the consequences of their choices in an atmosphere of war and nation building.
Buy Tickets
|
|
Tuesday, July 12 |
Neil Miller, author of “Banned in Boston”
Tufts Professor of Journalism Neil Miller examines the history of Boston’s “Watch and Ward Society”—a small but well-funded group of moral watchdogs of ‘indecency’ in Boston entertainment starting in the 1870’s. This history of censorship and self-appointed morality police as they argued against freedom of speech and other civil liberties as they strove to stop the spread of books, burlesque and all ‘social evils’ that they felt were spreading across society.
Buy Tickets
|
|
Tuesday, July 19 |
Mitchell Zuckoff, author of “Lost in Shangri-La: The True Story of a Plane Crash into a Hidden World”
On May 13, 1945, twenty-four officers and enlisted men and women stationed on what was then Dutch New Guinea boarded a transport plane named the Gremlin Special for a sightseeing trip over “Shangri-La.” However, this Shangri-La was the home of Stone Age warriors—spear-carrying tribesmen rumored to be headhunters and cannibals. But the pleasure tour became an unforgettable battle for survival when the plane crashed. Miraculously, three passengers survived.
Emotionally devastated, badly injured, and vulnerable to disease, parasites, and poisonous snakes in the wet jungle climate, the trio faced certain death unless they left the wreckage. Caught between man-eating headhunters and the enemy Japanese, with nothing to sustain them but a handful of candy and their own fortitude, they endured a harrowing trek down the mountainside—an exhausting journey into the unknown that would lead them straight into a primitive tribe of superstitious natives who had never before seen a white man–or woman.Drawn from personal interviews, declassified Army documents, personal photos and mementos, a daily journal kept between the crash and the rescue effort, and original film footage, Lost in Shangri-La recounts this incredible true-life adventure for the first time. Mitchell Zuckoff reveals how the determined trio—dehydrated, sick, and in pain—traversed the dense jungle
foliage to find help; how a brave band of Filipino-American paratroopers, led by a dogged captain, risked their own lives to save the survivors; how the Americans would be protected by and eventually befriend a noble native chief and his people; and how a cowboy colonel was willing to risk a previously untried rescue mission to get them out.
Buy Tickets
|
