For most of human history, we have led not just an earthly existence but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are—our religious beliefs, power structures, scientific advances, and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. And that disconnect comes at a cost.

 

In The Human Cosmos, Jo Marchant takes us on a tour through the history of humanity's relationship with the heavens. We travel to the Hall of the Bulls in Lascaux and witness the winter solstice at a 5,000-year-old tomb at Newgrange. We visit Medieval monks grappling with the nature of time and Tahitian sailors navigating by the stars. We discover how light reveals the chemical composition of the sun, and we are with Einstein as he works out that space and time are one and the same. And we find out why stargazing can be really, really good for us.

It is time for us to rediscover the full potential of the universe we inhabit, its wonder, its effect on our health, and its potential for inspiration and revelation.

Boston Athenæum Podcast

Jo Marchant, "The Human Cosmos: A Secret History of the Stars"

When Florence Finch died at the age of 101, few of her Ithaca, NY neighbors knew that this unassuming Filipina native was a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, whose courage and sacrifice were unsurpassed in the Pacific War against Japan. Long accustomed to keeping her secrets close in service of the Allies, Finch waited fifty years to reveal the story of those dramatic and harrowing days to her own children.

With a wealth of original sources including taped interviews, personal journals, and unpublished memoirs, The Indomitable Florence Finch unfolds against the Bataan Death March, the fall of Corregidor, and the daily struggle to survive a brutal occupying force. Award-winning military historian and former Congressman Robert J. Mrazek brings to light this long-hidden American patriot. The Indomitable Florence Finch is the story of the transcendent bravery of a woman who belongs in America's pantheon of war heroes.

Robert Mrazek, "The Indomitable Florence Finch: The Story of a War Widow Turned Resistance Fighter"

In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this overwhelmingly white women's movement did not win the vote for most black women. Securing their rights required a movement of their own.

In Vanguard, acclaimed historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women's political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work of black women—Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and more—who were the vanguard of women's rights, calling on America to realize its best ideals.

Martha S. Jones and Karen Holmes Ward, "Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers"

A genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no other. A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality, and literary mastery. A man who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else. Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of. But it doesn’t tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant.
 
In This Is Shakespeare, Emma Smith takes us into a world of politicking and copycatting, as we watch Shakespeare emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd (the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day), flirting with and skirting around the cutthroat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval, and technological change. Smith writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity, and sex. Instead of offering the answers, the Shakespeare she reveals poses awkward questions, always inviting the reader to ponder ambiguities.

Emma Smith and Stephen Greenblatt, "This is Shakespeare"

Painting by Numbers presents a groundbreaking blend of art historical and social scientific methods to chart, for the first time, the sheer scale of nineteenth-century artistic production. With new quantitative evidence for more than five hundred thousand works of art, Diana Seave Greenwald provides fresh insights into the nineteenth century, and the extent to which art historians have focused on a limited—and potentially biased—sample of artwork from that time. She addresses long-standing questions about the effects of industrialization, gender, and empire on the art world, and she models more expansive approaches for studying art history in the age of the digital humanities.

Examining art in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Greenwald features datasets created from indices and exhibition catalogs that—to date—have been used primarily as finding aids. From this body of information, she reveals the importance of access to the countryside for painters showing images of nature at the Paris Salon, the ways in which time-consuming domestic responsibilities pushed women artists in the United States to work in lower-prestige genres, and how images of empire were largely absent from the walls of London’s Royal Academy at the height of British imperial power. Ultimately, Greenwald considers how many works may have been excluded from art historical inquiry and shows how data can help reintegrate them into the history of art, even after such pieces have disappeared or faded into obscurity.

Diana Greenwald, "Painting by Numbers: Data-Driven Histories of Nineteenth-Century Art"

When the US Constitution won popular approval in 1788, it was the culmination of thirty years of passionate argument over the nature of government. But ratification hardly ended the conversation. For the next half century, ordinary Americans and statesmen alike continued to wrestle with weighty questions in the halls of government and in the pages of newspapers. Should the nation's borders be expanded? Should America allow slavery to spread westward? What rights should Indian nations hold? What was the proper role of the judicial branch?

In The Words that Made Us, Akhil Reed Amar unites history and law in a vivid narrative of the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, and he expertly assesses the answers they offered. His account of the document's origins and consolidation is a guide for anyone seeking to properly understand America's Constitution today.

Akhil Reed Amar, "The Words that Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840"

When we talk about patriotism in America, we tend to mean one form: the version captured in shared celebrations like the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance. But as Ben Railton argues, that celebratory patriotism is just one of four distinct forms: celebratory, the communal expression of an idealized America; mythic, the creation of national myths that exclude certain communities; active, acts of service and sacrifice for the nation; and critical, arguments for how the nation has fallen short of its ideals that seek to move us toward that more perfect union.

In Of Thee I Sing, Railton defines those four forms of American patriotism, using the four verses of “America the Beautiful” as examples of each type, and traces them across our histories. Doing so allows us to reframe seemingly familiar histories such as the Revolution, the Civil War, and the Greatest Generation, as well as texts such as the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance. And it helps us rediscover forgotten histories and figures, from Revolutionary War Loyalists and the World War I Espionage and Sedition Acts to active patriots like Civil War nurse Susie King Taylor and the suffragist Silent Sentinels to critical patriotic authors like William Apess and James Baldwin.

Tracing the contested history of American patriotism also helps us better understand many of our 21st century debates: from Donald Trump’s divisive deployment of celebratory and mythic forms of patriotism to the backlash to the critical patriotisms expressed by Colin Kaepernick and the 1619 Project. Only by engaging with the multiple forms of American patriotism, past and present, can we begin to move forward toward a more perfect union that we all can celebrate.

Ben Railton, "Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism"

In the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women in the workplace still found themselves relegated to secretarial positions or locked out of jobs entirely. This was especially true in the news business, a backwater of male chauvinism where a woman might be lucky to get a foothold on the “women’s pages.” But when a pioneering nonprofit called National Public Radio came along in the 1970s, and the door to serious journalism opened a crack, four remarkable women came along and blew it off the hinges.

Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie is journalist Lisa Napoli’s captivating account of these four women, their deep and enduring friendships, and the trail they blazed to becoming icons. They had radically different stories. Cokie Roberts was born into a political dynasty, roamed the halls of Congress as a child, and felt a tug toward public service. Susan Stamberg, who had lived in India with her husband who worked for the State Department, was the first woman to anchor a nightly news program and pressed for accommodations to balance work and home life. Linda Wertheimer, the daughter of shopkeepers in New Mexico, fought her way to a scholarship and a spot on-air. And Nina Totenberg, the network's legal affairs correspondent, invented a new way to cover the Supreme Court. Based on extensive interviews and calling on the author’s deep connections in news and public radio, Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie will be as beguiling and sharp as its formidable subjects.

Lisa Napoli, Ellen Clegg, & Margaret Low, "Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Founding Mothers of NPR"

They say that history is written by the victors. But not in the case of the most famous dissenter on the Supreme Court. Almost a century after his death, it was John Marshall Harlan’s words that helped end segregation, and gave us our civil rights and our modern economic freedom.

But his legacy would not have been possible without the courage of Robert Harlan, a slave who John’s father raised like a son in the same household. After the Civil War, Robert emerges as a political leader. With Black people holding power in the Republican Party, it is Robert who helps John land his appointment to the Supreme Court.

At first, John is awed by his fellow justices, but the country is changing. Northern whites are prepared to take away black rights to appease the South. Giant trusts are monopolizing entire industries. Against this onslaught, the Supreme Court seemed all too willing to strip away civil rights and invalidate labor protections. As case after case comes before the court, challenging his core values, John makes a fateful decision: He breaks with his colleagues in fundamental ways, becoming the nation’s prime defender of the rights of Black people, immigrant laborers, and people in distant lands occupied by the United States.

Harlan’s dissents, particularly in Plessy v. Ferguson, were widely read and a source of hope for decades. Thurgood Marshall called Harlan’s Plessy dissent his “Bible”—and his legal roadmap to overturning segregation. In the end, Harlan’s words built the foundations for the legal revolutions of the New Deal and Civil Rights eras.

Spanning from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement and beyond, The Great Dissenter is an epic rendering of the American legal system’s greatest failures and most inspiring successes.

Peter S. Canellos and Farah Stockman, "The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan"

The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense―economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize–winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind.

How did elitism and an anti-totalitarian skepticism of passion and ideology give way to a new sensibility defined by freewheeling experimentation and loving the Beatles? How was the ideal of “freedom” applied to causes that ranged from anti-communism and civil rights to radical acts of self-creation via art and even crime? With the wit and insight familiar to readers of The Metaphysical Club and his New Yorker essays, Menand takes us inside Hannah Arendt’s Manhattan, the Paris of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Merce Cunningham and John Cage’s residencies at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, and the Memphis studio where Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley created a new music for the American teenager. He examines the post war vogue for French existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, the rise of abstract expressionism and pop art, Allen Ginsberg’s friendship with Lionel Trilling, James Baldwin’s transformation into a Civil Rights spokesman, Susan Sontag’s challenges to the New York Intellectuals, the defeat of obscenity laws, and the rise of the New Hollywood.

Stressing the rich flow of ideas across the Atlantic, he also shows how Europeans played a vital role in promoting and influencing American art and entertainment. By the end of the Vietnam era, the American government had lost the moral prestige it enjoyed at the end of the Second World War, but America’s once-despised culture had become respected and adored. With unprecedented verve and range, this book explains how that happened.

Louis Menand and Maya Jasanoff, "The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War"

Stephen Kinzer discussing his work at the Boston Athenaeum on February 25, 2014.

Stephen Kinzer "The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War

For readers of Caste, Sapiens, and The Dawn of Everything, join us for a page-turning deep-dive into how bias is learned—plus a strikingly original and highly effective set of tools to un-learn it. Drawing on two decades of original research and experience training thousands of students, Anu Gupta, a lawyer, scientist, and educator whose work focuses on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, has written a comprehensive and compellingly readable guide for anyone who wants to understand and unlearn conscious and unconscious biases.

Author Talk | BREAKING BIAS: Where Stereotypes and Prejudices Come From by Anu Gupta

March 23, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum.

Anyone who has spent time in New England will recognize the century-old buildings that Maureen Meister will discuss in a slide lecture based upon her new book—the first comprehensive study of Arts and Crafts architecture in the region. Focusing on the 1890s through the 1920s, she will explain how a group of Boston architects and craftsmen encountered English Arts and Crafts theorists, including John Ruskin and William Morris, and produced exquisite works of their own. Among the architects were Ralph Adams Cram, Lois Lilley Howe, Charles Maginnis, and R. Clipston Sturgis. They were conservative in some respects, promoting designs based on historical precedent and the region's heritage, while they also were forward-looking, blending Arts and Crafts values with Progressive Era idealism. Their legacy is apparent in landmarks honored today in cities and towns across New England.

Maureen Meister, "Arts and Crafts Architecture: History and Heritage in New England"

September 24, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. 

When Samuel Stillman Pierce (1807-1880) opened his store, S.S. Pierce, in 1831 at the corner of Tremont and Court Streets in downtown Boston, he vowed "I may not make money, but I shall make a reputation." Pierce was known as the purveyor of fancy goods and potent libations to Victorian Bostonians. He catered to the carriage trade and created a company that would involve four generations of the Pierce Family in its successful operations. With its own coat of arms adorning a distinctive red label on canned goods, and the largest line of privately packed fancy foods in the world, S.S. Pierce sold its delicacies not only through eight New England stores of its own but also through distributors across the United States and by worldwide mail order. Boston Athenæum members John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. were considered celebrity customers at S.S. Pierce.

Anthony Sammarco, "S. S. Pierce: A Boston Tradition"

November 11, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum.

Boston Athenæum began collecting Neoclassical art shortly after its establishment in 1807. At the time Neoclassicism was a hugely popular artistic movement, due in part to the romanticized view of the United States’ system of government being modeled on Greco-Roman and Enlightenment ideals. Mary Beard’s S.P.Q.R.: A History of Ancient Rome provides insight into the realities of the ancient Roman world and thereby context for understanding the 19th-century Neoclassical movement.

By 63 BCE, the city of Rome was a sprawling, imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants. But how did this massive city—the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria—emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? In S.P.Q.R., Beard changes our historical perspective, exploring how the Romans themselves challenged the idea of imperial rule, how they responded to terrorism and revolution, and how they invented a new idea of citizenship and nation, while also keeping her eye open for those overlooked in traditional histories: women, slaves and ex-slaves, conspirators, and losers. Like the best detectives, Beard separates fact from fiction, myth and propaganda from historical record. She introduces the familiar characters of Julius Caesar, Cicero, and Nero as well as the untold, the loud women, the shrewd bakers, and the brave jokers. S.P.Q.R. promises to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.

Mary Beard, “S.P.Q.R.: A History of Ancient Rome”

April 12, 2016 at the Boston Athenæum. 

For centuries, the final resting place of Richard III, England’s last Plantagenet king, remained a mystery. In 2012, a team of archaeologists from the University of Leicester set out to search for the burial site of the king, who died in 1485 in the Battle of Bosworth Field. Against all odds, the project located the site under a parking lot in central Leicester. In this lecture, Richard Buckley, the leader of the search team, will tell the remarkable story of the search and the complex process of confirming Richard’s identity.

Find more information at: https://www.le.ac.uk/richardiii/

Richard Buckley, “The King Under the Car Park: The Search for Richard III”

April 27, 2016 at the Boston Athenæum. 

In this collaboration with the Emerald Necklace Conservatory, Lauren Meier will highlight the parks, parkways, park systems, and scenic reservations featured in the latest volume of The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: Plans and Views of Public Parks. She will also explore the park design legacy of the Olmsted firm, which carried Olmsted’s innovation into the 20th century.

Lauren Meier, “Frederick Law Olmsted's Legacy of Public Parks”

Tuesday, May 20, 2014 at the Boston Athenæum.

In Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution Nathaniel Philbrick brings a fresh perspective to the story that ignited the American Revolution. The real central character in this story is Boston, where vigilantes fill the streets with a sinister and frightening violence even as calmer patriots struggle to see their way to rebellion. The action of the book tracks in detail the eighteen months following the Boston Tea Party (Dec. 1773), as Boston turned from the center of patriot defiance to a British-occupied city under a patriot siege.
 
Through storied events such as the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, Philbrick builds to the extraordinary moment in American history when a group of ordinary citizens stood up to several regiments of British regulars as the Battle of Bunker Hill. This is the great tipping point, the bloodiest engagement of the Revolution when several hundred citizen soldiers had the bravery and discipline to hold their fire until the British soldiers, each one with a bayonet mounted to the barrel of his musket, marched to within fifteen yards of the patriot entrenchment. Only then, once they could see “the whites of their eyes,” did the rebels fire, ultimately killing or wounding almost half the British force. Not until the third British charge did the Americans retreat, and only then because they had run out of ammunition. With this single battle, the ultimate course of the American Revolution had been foretold.

Nathaniel Philbrick, “Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution”

October 20, 2016 at the Boston Athenæum. Women are invariably those left behind in wartime, but in World War II Paris this was particularly the case, as husbands were either fighting at the front or captured and forced to work in German factories. It was women more than men who came face-to-face with the German conquerors on a daily basis as waitresses, shop assistants, prostitutes or merely on the metro where a German soldier had priority over seats. The German men were often charming and Parisian women, often, did whatever they needed to do to survive. Many of them faced life-and-death decisions every day. By looking at a wide range of individuals from collaborators to resisters, including native Parisians and those living in Paris temporarily, working women, mothers, housewives, mistresses, journalists, and spies, Anne Sebba reveals truths about basic human instincts and desires.

Anne Sebba, “Les Parisiennes”

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.

Dan Souza and Molly Birnbaum - America's Test Kitchen, “Cook’s Science”

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

Sally Bedell Smith, “Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life”

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 the subjective experience of addiction.

Video: https://vimeo.com/221754272

Susan L. Mizruchi, “Opioids: The Literary, Experiential Point of View”

September 20, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.

On March 29, 1849, the ten-year-old Maharajah of the Punjab handed over to the British East India Company in a formal Act of Submission to Queen Victoria not only swathes of the richest land in India, but also arguably the single most valuable object in the subcontinent: the celebrated Koh-i-Noor diamond.
Using original eyewitness accounts and chronicles never before translated into English to craft the first comprehensive and authoritative history of the object, William Dalrymple and Anita Anand trace the true history of the diamond, dispelling the myths that have long surrounded this awe-inspiring jewel.

William Dalrymple, “Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Famous Diamond”

November 7, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.

In 1942, reeling from Japan’s devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States military launched a secret program to recruit young, female college graduates to act as code breakers in the newly ramped up war effort. In Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Liza Mundy reveals for the first time the revolutionary achievements and patriotic service of the remarkable young women who cracked German and Japanese military codes. As Mundy shows, their astonishing code-breaking triumphs helped secure an Allied victory before their vow of secrecy nearly erased their vital contributions from US history.

Liza Mundy, “Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II”

November 15, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.

Chatsworth has been home to the Cavendish family and the hereditary dukes of Devonshire since the original Elizabethan house was built on the site purchased by Sir William Cavendish in 1549. A famous historic house in England, Chatsworth is renowned as much for its fashionable history—its majestic dresses and tiaras, magnificent lace, and splendid uniforms—as its unrivaled collection of art, palatial gardens, and celebrated family dynasty. From the sixteenth-century Inigo Jones drawings of stage costumes to comical pieces, like the eleventh Duke’s jumper embroidered with “Never Marry a Mitford,” Lady Burlington will offer a personal perspective, as well as discuss Chatsworth’s well-known fashionable residents.

Laura Cavendish, Countess of Burlington, “House Style: Five Centuries of Fashion at Chatsworth”

December 4, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.

Immigration, terrorism, the dangers of nationalism, the promise and peril of technological innovation: these forces shaped the life and work of Joseph Conrad at the dawn of the twentieth century. Joseph Conrad described the beginnings of globalization as we recognize it today. As an immigrant from Poland to England, and in travels from Malaysia to Congo to the Caribbean, Conrad traced an interconnected world and described it in a literary oeuvre of prophetic power. His life and work offer a history of globalization from the inside out, and powerfully reflect the aspirations and the challenges of the modern world.

Through an expert blend of history, biography, literary criticism, and travelogue, Maya Jasanoff will discuss the strands of Conrad’s experiences and the stories of his four greatest works—The Secret Agent, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo. The Dawn Watch casts new light on Conrad’s era, and offers fresh insight into our own.

Maya Jasanoff, “The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World”

February 28, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.

In the spring of 1939, a top-secret organization was founded in London: its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler’s war machine, through spectacular acts of sabotage. The guerrilla campaign that followed was as extraordinary as the six men who directed it. One of them, William Fairbairn, was a portly pensioner with an unusual passion: he was the world’s leading expert in silent killing, hired to train the guerrillas being parachuted behind enemy lines. Another, Cecil Clarke, was an engineer and caravan-designer turned maverick bomb-maker. Led by dapper Scotsman Colin Gubbins, these men—along with three others—formed a secret inner circle that, aided by a group of formidable ladies, changed the course of the Second World War: a cohort hand-picked by Winston Churchill, whom he called his Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

Giles Milton,Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare:The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat

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 the expression “lock, stock and barrel” originated. You’ll learn about the relationship between the making of guns and the design of shoes, and what a shower head had to do with the design of the Hubble Telescope.

Simon Winchester, “The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World”

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 current status, Rioux shows why Little Women remains a book with such power that people carry its characters and spirit throughout their lives.

Anne Boyd Rioux, “Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters”

May 30, 2019 at the Boston Athenæum.


Nina Campbell’s almost fifty-year career exemplifies the best of English interior design. Campbell imparts her design wisdom through a biography of her career and recent decorating projects, sharing tips and secrets of the trade. A selection of the designer’s own London residences outlines her experimentations and passions—from pared-back grandeur to bold plays of scale and modern use of texture and color. A survey of Nina’s high-profile commissions completed in the last five years demonstrates how she employs the key principles of her design aesthetic in a variety of contexts, from prestigious addresses in London and New York, a pied-à-terre in Rome, and a retreat in the English countryside to a historic German hotel, a viewing pavilion at the Ascot, and a Los Angeles bedroom suite. The running theme is how Campbell has taken the tenets of classic English style and uses them to create a style germane to the twenty-first century. This eponymous book masterfully illustrates one of the most enduring decorating styles of the past fifty years in English design—traditional interiors with vibrant colors, luxurious textiles, pared-down elegance, and, above all, true comfort.

Nina Campbell, "Nina Campbell Interior Decoration: Elegance and Ease"

April 11, 2019 at the Boston Athenæum. 


This lecture is in conjunction with the Royal Oak Foundation.

In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent command: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." This spy was Virginia Hall, a young socialite from Baltimore, who, after being rejected from the Foreign Service because of her gender and prosthetic leg, talked her way into the SOE, the WWII British spy organization dubbed Churchill's "ministry of ungentlemanly warfare." Hall, known as the "Madonna of the Resistance," was one of the greatest spies in American and English history, yet her full story remains untold. At a time when sending female secret agents into enemy territory was still strictly forbidden, Hall coordinated a network of spies to report on German troop movements, arranged equipment parachute drops for Resistance fighters, and recruited and trained guerrilla units to ambush enemy convoys and blow up bridges and railroads. Even as her face covered WANTED posters throughout Europe, Hall refused orders to evacuate. She finally escaped in a death- defying climb over of the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown, and her associates imprisoned or executed. But, adamant that she had more lives to save, she plunged back into the field with the American OSS secret service, directing partisan armies to back up the Allied forces landing on Normandy beaches. A Woman of No Importance: The Spy Who Helped Win WWII will reveal the captivating story of a formidable, yet shockingly overlooked, heroine whose fierce persistence helped win the war.

Sonia Purnell, "A Woman of No Importance"

January 9, 2020 at the Boston Athenæum.

An over-zealous Boston art dealer in the early years of the 20th century made knowingly false attributions of 18th-century portraits from the Salem-Boston area. The attributions were promulgated by colleagues and later by art scholars until disproved by two other historians. The saga is a sub-chapter in Norton’s upcoming book on the Salem 18th-century portrait artist, Benjamin Blyth. Sometimes mistaken for Copleys, Blyth’s portraits include the Massachusetts Historical Society’s iconic images of the newly married John and Abigail Adams, the Providence man who started the US postal system, the clergyman who promoted settlement of the Northwest Territory, and numerous figures of the American Revolution and their families. The upcoming book by Norton doubles the attributions for pastels and oils and, for the first time, lists miniatures.

Bettina Norton, “A Foray into Forgery and the Boston Athenæum's Role in Exposing It”

The Boston Athenæum, a membership library, first opened its doors in 1807, and its rich history as a library and cultural institution has been well documented in the annals of Boston’s cultural life. Today, it remains a vibrant and active institution that serves a wide variety of members and scholars. With more than 600,000 titles in its book collection, the Boston Athenæum functions as a public library for many of its members, with a large and distinguished circulating collection, a newspaper and magazine reading room, quiet spaces and rooms for reading and researching, a children’s library, and wireless internet access throughout its building. The Art Department mounts three exhibitions per year in the institution's  Norma Jean Calderwood Gallery, rotating selections in the Recent Acquisitions Gallery, and a number of less formal installations in places and cases around the building. The Special Collections resources are world-renowned, and include maps, manuscripts, rare books, and archival materials. Our Conservation Department works to preserve all our collections. Other activities for members and the public include lectures, panel discussions, poetry readings, musical performances, films, and special events, many of which are followed by receptions. Members are able to take advantage of our second- and fifth-floor terraces during fine weather, and to search electronic databases and our digital collections from their homes and offices.

Boston Athenæum

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