Photos, left to right: Gail Collins talks to sold-out audience; the American Ancestors Research Center at 99 Newbury Street; the historic rotunda at start of an event.

Virtual Events featuring American and Family History

To serve and inspire the Boston community – and curious readers everywhere – in this unprecedented at-home time, the American Inspiration series has shifted to a virtual format. Furthering our mission to engage, inspire and connect, we present today’s celebrated authors and their new books free to you online. We often work in partnership Boston Public Library, GBH Forum, the State Library of Massachusetts, and other cultural organizations around the city.

Our newest series, American Stories, Inspiration Today, is co-produced with the BPL. Launched in April 2020, it built on the momentum of our in-person programs. See below for our past authors and their books across all series, virtual and in our historic rotunda at 99-101 Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay. Join us online anytime, or in person in 2021, to explore the themes of personal identity, families and immigration, and social and cultural history.

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Upcoming Virtual Events:

• David Hill with The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America’s Forgotten Capital of Vice — Thursday, October 1, at 6pm
• David Michaelis with Eleanor (Roosevelt) — Thursday, October 8, at 6pm
• Claire Messud with Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write: An Autobiography in Essays — Tuesday, October 20, at 6pm
• Family History Benefit Event featuring author and historian Jill Lepore — Thursday, October 29, at 6pm
• Tamara Payne with The Dead are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X — Thursday, November 5, at 6pm
• Nathaniel Philbrick, Baxter Lecture on Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War — Thursday, November 12, at 6pm

David Hill with The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America’s Forgotten Capital of Vice

Thursday, October 1, at 6pm

Moderator: Scott C. Steward, Editor in Chief, NEHGS

This “fascinating portrait of Hot Springs in its heyday covers 1931 through 1968.” – Wall Street Journal

Drawing on FBI transcripts, newspaper clippings, court documents, and interviews with family members, David Hill brings to life the once high-rolling and glamorous resort town of Hot Springs, Arkansas, in the mid-20th century; a city of sinful luxuries frequented by Duke Ellington, Mae West, Babe Ruth, and Al Capone, and where President Bill Clinton spent his formative years. This rich, character-driven work of true crime and Southern history reads like a novel, offering surprising historical details and insights. Presenting the story of Hill’s own grandmother, The Vapors is also a poignant work of family history.

David Hill is a writer from Hot Springs, Arkansas. His work has appeared regularly in Grantland and The Ringer, and has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, and New York magazine, as well as on This American Life.

David Michaelis with Eleanor

Thursday, October 8, at 6pm

Presented in partnership with the State Library of Massachusetts and Porter Square Books

A breakthrough portrait of America’s longest-serving First Lady, rich with family history.

This cradle-to-grave biography – the first single-volume portrait in six decades - rediscovers Eleanor Roosevelt’s life of transformation, from her Gilded Age childhood as the orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt; to an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin Franklin, with whom she became a New York “power couple”; to her life-culminating role as world-circling activist, diplomat, and chief architect of international human rights. Drawing on new research, Michaelis’s riveting portrait is rich with insight into Eleanor’s emotional life and relationships, her struggles with motherhood, and role as her husband’s surrogate in which she transformed the career-ending storm of polio into the sunrise of the U.S. president who brought the nation out of the Depression and on to victory in World War II. Don’t miss learning more about this major American figure, a role model for heartfelt and effective political engagement.

David Michaelis is the bestselling author of Schulz and Peanuts and N.C. Wyeth, which won the Ambassador Book Award for Biography.

Claire Messud with Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write: An Autobiography in Essays

Thursday, October 20, at 6pm

Moderator: Dani Shapiro, novelist, memoirist, and creator and host of Family Secrets podcast
Presented in partnership with the Boston Public Library and GBH Forum Network

A glimpse into a beloved novelist’s inner world, shaped by family, art, and literature.

In her fiction, Claire Messud "has specialized in creating unusual female characters with ferocious, imaginative inner lives" (New York Times Magazine). Now, in twenty-six intimate, brilliant, and funny essays, she reflects on her own life and family: a childhood move from her Connecticut home to Australia; the complex relationship between her modern Canadian mother and a fiercely single French Catholic aunt; and a trip to Beirut, where her pied-noir father had once lived, while he was dying. She also meditates on contemporary classic works of literature and explores her own drive to write.

Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction including the New York Times bestsellers The Emperor’s Children and The Burning Girl, which was also a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Tamara Payne with The Dead are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

Thursday, November 5, at 6pm

Moderator: L’Merchie Frazier, Director of Education and Interpretation, Museum of African American History
Presented in partnership with the Boston Public Library and GBH Forum Network

This epic biography is the product of 30 years of research by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Les Payne

This comprehensive and historic biography paints an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, setting him against the larger backdrop of American history. Drawn from hundreds of hours of the interviews including with all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI moles and cops, and political leaders around the world, The Dead Are Arising traces his life from his Nebraska birth in 1925 to his Harlem assassination in 1965. It provides searing vignettes culled from Malcolm’s Depression-era youth, describing the influence of his Garveyite parents: his father, Earl, a circuit-riding preacher; and his mother, Louise, who instilled black pride in her children. Don’t miss hearing from Tamara Payne, the author’s daughter – who, following her father’s death, heroically completed the biography – about this penetrating and riveting work, which has been longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award, featured on numerous “best of” lists, and heralded by O, the Oprah Magazine.

Les Payne was a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist and a former editor at Newsday. A founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, he also wrote an award-winning syndicated column. Tamara Payne served as Les Payne’s principal researcher.

Nathaniel Philbrick, Baxter Lecture on Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War

Thursday, November 12, at 6 pm

Moderator: Ryan. J. Woods, COO and EVP of American Ancestors and NEHGS
Presented by the Boston Public Library in partnership with American Ancestors NEHGS, the State Library of Massachusetts, and GBH Forum Network

In commemoration of the 400th Anniversary of the Mayflower landing

The award-winning New England author will speak with Ryan J. Woods about his celebrated work Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War as part of the Boston Public Library’s Baxter Lecture series “promoting commemorative and public understanding of the history of the settlement of and immigration to New England.”

Jonathan Reckford with Our Better Angels: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World

POSTPONED - rescheduled dates and/or information will be shared in April.

The CEO of Habitat for Humanity will share stories and insights from his inspiring and insightful new book, Our Better Angels, which celebrates the shared principles that unite us. Picking up President Jimmy Carter where leaves off in the book’s foreword—“When the waters rise, so do our better angels”—Jonathan Reckford draws from his experience working with people krom all walks of life to show how seven timeless virtues—kindness, community, empowerment, joy, respect, generosity, and service—can improve the quality of our lives, our families, and communities around the world.

Jonathan Reckford has led Habitat for Humanity International since 2005; under his leadership, the global housing organization has grown from serving 125,000 individuals a year to more than 8.7 million people in 2018 alone. Reckford’s March talk will be held at Trinity Church, in nearby Copley Square, and featured as part of their annual Price Lectures series.