Boston Athenaeum

Boston Athenaeum

By Boston AthenaeumSociety & Culture
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Boston Athenaeum episodes

  • Michael J. Klarman, “The Framers' Coup”
    March 27, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Americans revere their Constitution. However, most of us are unaware how tumultuous and improbable the drafting and ratification processes were. As Benjamin Franklin keenly observed, any assembly of men bring with them "all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests and their selfish views." One need not deny that the Framers had good intentions in order to believe that they also had interests.
    Ultimately, both the Constitution's content and its ratification process raise troubling questions about democratic legitimacy. The Federalists were eager to avoid full-fledged democratic deliberation over the Constitution, and the document that was ratified was stacked in favor of their preferences. And in terms of substance, the Constitution was a significant departure from the more democratic state constitutions of the 1770s. Definitive and authoritative, The Framers' Coup explains why the Framers preferred such a constitution and how they managed to persuade the country to adopt it. We have lived with the consequences, both positive and negative, ever since.
    51 min
  • Sarah McBride, “Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality”
    March 8, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    In April 2012, when transgender issues had yet to break onto the national scene, Sarah McBride made headlines—and history—when she came out publicly as a transgender woman while serving as American University’s student body president. With a viral Facebook post that announced her identity, she suddenly found herself on the forefront of a movement, fighting for positive change. Since that day in April, Sarah has continued to make history, eventually becoming the first openly transgender person to address a major party convention.
    Before she became the first transgender person to speak at a national political convention in 2016 at the age of twenty-six, Sarah McBride struggled with the decision to come out—not just to her family but to the students of American University, where she was serving as student body president. She’d known she was a girl from her earliest memories, but it wasn’t until the Facebook post announcing her truth went viral that she realized just how much impact her story could have on the country.
    Four years later, McBride was one of the nation’s most prominent transgender activists, walking the halls of the White House, advocating the passing of laws, and addressing the country in the midst of a heated presidential election. And, she’d found her first love and future husband, Andy, a trans man and fellow activist, who complimented her in every way... until cancer tragically intervened. Informative, heartbreaking, and empowering, Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality is McBride’s story of love and loss, a powerful entry point into the LGBTQ community’s battle for equal rights and what it means to be openly transgender. From issues like bathroom access to health care, McBride weaves the important political and cultural milestones into a personal journey that will open hearts and change minds.
    32 min
  • Joel Richard Paul, “Without Precedent: John Marshall and His Times”
    March 5, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    No member of America's Founding Generation had a greater impact on the Constitution and the Supreme Court than John Marshall, and no one did more to preserve the delicate unity of the fledgling United States. From the nation's founding in 1776 and for the next forty years, Marshall was at the center of every political battle. As Chief Justice of the United States - the longest-serving in history - he established the independence of the judiciary and the supremacy of the federal Constitution and courts. As the leading Federalist in Virginia, he rivaled his cousin Thomas Jefferson in influence. As a diplomat and secretary of state, he defended American sovereignty against France and Britain, counseled President John Adams, and supervised the construction of the city of Washington. D.C.
    This is the astonishing true story of how a rough-cut frontiersman - born in Virginia in 1755 and with little formal education - invented himself as one of the nation's preeminent lawyers and politicians who then reinvented the Constitution to forge a stronger nation. Without Precedent is the engrossing account of the life and times of this exceptional man, who with cunning, imagination, and grace shaped America's future as he held together the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the country itself.
    48 min
  • Giles Milton,Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare:The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat
    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.
    46 min
  • Robert Shiller, “The Transformation of the American Dream”
    February 15, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    In his 1931 book The Epic of America James Truslow Adams first popularized the concept of the “American Dream" as "being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in older civilizations." But the meaning of the term changes through time as culture changes, and as opportunists try to redefine to their own advantage. It is this dream which he thought "lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores." But he also thought that, even in 1931, many were losing sight of this dream. The situation has worsened since he wrote.
    Now the American Dream is most often equated with the dream of owning a spacious home. In the United States, the new values affect major government decisions on housing, regulation, and mortgage guarantees. Conflating the American Dream with expensive housing has had dangerous consequences—it may have even contributed to the housing bubble that led to the financial crisis of 2008.
    46 min
  • Martin Puchner, “The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization”
    February 13, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    In “The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History”, Martin Puchner tells the story of literature and its power to shape people, civilizations, and world history by exploring sixteen selected key stories from over 4,000 years of world literature. Beginning with the Iliad's influence on Alexander the Great to J. K. Rowling today, Martin Puncher takes us on a remarkable journey through history, as he tells stories of people whose lives and beliefs led them to create groundbreaking texts that affected the world they were born into, and the world in which we live today.
    Along the way, we learn fascinating facts and insights about people—how Gutenberg paved the way for Luther, Benjamin Franklin’s pioneering work as a media entrepreneur, Goethe’s invention of world literature in Sicily, and Akhmatova’s and Solzhenitsyn’s secret writings in the Soviet Union. Throughout The Written World, Martin Puchner captures the inventions—writing technologies, the printing press, the book—that have shaped religion, politics, and commerce.
    42 min
  • Dr. John A. Buchtel, “A Picture of a Book is Not a Book”
    February 7, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    For two centuries the members and proprietors of the Boston Athenæum have pooled their resources, interests, and expertise to create an extraordinary shared collection of rare books. From a hand-colored copy of the monumental 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle to the imaginative sculptural structures of contemporary book artist Julie Chen, the books in the Athenæum's collection are available to each and every member, as well as to a broader community of scholars, learners, and book-lovers.
    Incoming Curator of Rare Books and Head of Special Collections Dr. John A. Buchtel explores what it means for an athenæum to continue collecting, cataloging, preserving, and providing access to physical books in our increasingly digital age. Books, he argues, convey a range of meaning, emotional and aesthetic power, and historical connectedness that extends far beyond their texts. Drawing on examples he has encountered during two decades in the field, Buchtel meditates on the human presences revealed in books considered as artifacts: their producers, owners, and readers. Offering examples of books he anticipates pulling off the shelves when he takes up his new position at the Boston Athenӕum in June 2018, he reflects as well on the first-hand enjoyment of finely wrought bookbindings, illustrations, and typography.
    51 min
  • Georgia Barnhill, “What Makes Fitz Henry Lane's Lithographs So Special?”
    February 6, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    In this richly illustrated talk, Georgia Barnhill sheds fresh light on the beloved American luminist painter and printmaker Fitz Henry Lane, the subject of her current exhibition, Drawn from Nature & On Stone: The Lithographs of Fitz Henry Lane at the Cape Ann Museum. Barnhill, curator emerita of graphic arts at the American Antiquarian Society, considers Lane’s work within the context of his contemporaries, Benjamin Chimney, Robert Cooke, Benjamin F. Nutting, Robert Salmon, David Claypoole Johnston—among others and explores his deep association with the Boston Athenæum, where the artist first exhibited in 1841.
    53 min
  • Nancy Koehn, “Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times”
    January 29, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    An enthralling historical narrative filled with critical leadership insights that will be of interest to a wide range of readers—including those in government, business, education, and the arts—Forged in Crisis, by celebrated Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn, spotlights five masters of crisis: polar explorer Ernest Shackleton; President Abraham Lincoln; legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass; Nazi-resisting clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and environmental crusader Rachel Carson.
    What do such disparate figures have in common? Why do their extraordinary stories continue to amaze and inspire? In delivering the answers to those questions, Nancy Koehn offers a remarkable template by which to judge those in our own time to whom the public has given its trust.
    48 min
  • Jane Goodrich, “The House at Lobster Cove”
    January 25, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    In The House at Lobster Cove, you see behind the doors of Kragsyde, the famous shingle-style house that once sheltered and shaped the elusive Bostonian George Nixon Black. While Black was probably content to slip away unnoticed, Kragsyde was to have no such fate. Published many times when it was first designed, and adored by architects and scholars ever since, the marvelous and photogenic house has made it impossible for Black to disappear.
    Using characters, letters and events from history, Jane Goodrich's first novel is part family saga and part love story, as well as an engaging personal journey for the author. Although Kragsyde was demolished in 1929, it was later rebuilt, in every detail, by Goodrich and her husband, doing all the work themselves on an island in Maine.
    37 min

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The Boston Athenaeum, 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.…