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UPCOMING EVENTS
Gabrielle Glaser with American Baby: A Mother, A Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption
Free Virtual Event: Tuesday, June 15 at 6 p.m. ET
Moderator: Peter O’Dowd, Senior Editor, Here & Now (WBUR)
Presented in partnership with WBUR (Boston) and its CitySpace
The shocking truth about postwar adoption in America, told through the bittersweet story of one teenager, the son she was forced to relinquish, and their search to find each other.
As closed records of adoption are being legally challenged in states nationwide and open adoption is the rule today, journalist Gabrielle Glaser takes us back to a dark time in America’s history. Her acclaimed book reveals the lucrative and exploitative adoption industry during the 1960s Baby Boom, when agencies removed children from their birth mothers, placed them with hopeful families, and then firmly closed the door between them. Acting “in the best interests of all,” they separated families, including Margaret Erle’s. Don’t miss hearing her story of love, loss, and the search for identity – a tale that she and her son born in 1961 share with millions of Americans, their “powerful” family history “illuminating a universal truth” (The New York Times Book Review).
Gabrielle Glaser is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist whose work on mental health, medicine, and culture has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, among other publications. She has appeared on many national radio and television programs, including NPR’s Fresh Air, All Things Considered, NBC’s Nightly News, and ABC’s World News Tonight.
Peter O'Dowd is the senior editor for Here & Now, produced by WBUR (Boston) public radio. He was previously news director for KJZZ in Phoenix, AZ, where he was also an editor and reporter. He got his start in broadcasting at Wyoming Public Radio.
Stephen Bown with The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire
Free Virtual Event: Monday, June 28 at 6 p.m. ET
Moderator: Jeff Breithaupt, Canadian-New Yorker songwriter, author, and podcaster
Presented in partnership with GBH Forum Network
One of Canada’s best-loved historians tells the story of his country’s origin and the shaping of North America by one trading company.
Just before Canada Day, join us for a spirited evening featuring scholar Stephen Bown and his compelling narrative history of Canada’s famous Hudson's Bay Company. Through the masterful control of a handful of English aristocrats, The Company rose from a small 1670 trading business – practical manufactured goods exchanged for furs with the Indigenous inhabitants of inland subarctic Canada – to the single biggest political and economic force in North America, ruling the lives of people from Hudson’s Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Don’t miss Bown’s illustrated presentation and insights on this rich and peopled history; and his discussion of Canada, then and now, with fellow countryman Jeff Breithaupt.
Stephen R. Bown has written ten books on the history of exploration, science, and ideas – including books on the medical mystery of scurvy, the Treaty of Tordesillas, the lives of Captain George Vancouver and of Roald Amundsen and a doomed Russian sea voyage. His works have been translated into nine languages won many awards including the BC Book Prize, the Alberta Book Award, the William Mills Prize for Polar Books. His previous book, The Island of Blue Foxes, about Vitus Bering's voyage to Alaska, was shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize. Born in Ottawa, he now lives near Banff in the Canadian Rockies.
Jeff Breithaupt is a writer, songwriter, podcaster, and is Vice President at Manhattan School of Music. He co-authored two books about pop music in the 1970s for St. Martin's Press, and is the lyricist half of the Breithaupt Brothers, an award-winning songwriting team whose work has been interpreted by such Broadway and jazz stars as Kelli O’Hara, Catherine Russell, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson. Jeff is an expert advocate for Canada's arts and cultural scene and has promoted Canadian talent on the New York and international stage. He lives in New York City, where he is launching the podcast Cansplaining with Jeff Breithaupt.
Peter S. Canellos with The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America's Judicial Hero
Free Virtual Event: Thursday, July 8 at 6 p.m. ET
Moderator: Carlo Rotella, Professor of English, American Studies and journalism, Boston College
Presented in partnership with the Boston Public Library and GBH Forum Network
The definitive, sweeping biography of an American hero who fought for civil rights and economic freedom during America’s Gilded Age.
They say that history is written by the victors. But not in the case of the most famous dissenter on the Supreme Court, Justice John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911). The circumstance of his upbringing in Kentucky, alongside an enslaved man his father raised as his own son, and his persistent vision of American equality propelled Harlan to be one of our nation’s greatest defender of civil rights. His dissents were widely read and a source of hope for decades. Thurgood Marshall regarded Harlan’s 1896 dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson as his “Bible” and legal roadmap to overturning segregation. As a celebration of our country—home of the free, home of the brave—don’t miss learning about Harlan’s life and times, and his work that began the legal revolutions of the New Deal and Civil Rights era.
Peter S. Canellos is Managing Editor of Politico, former Editorial Page Editor of The Boston Globe and an award-winning writer. He is the editor of the New York Times bestseller, Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy.
Carlo Rotella is Professor of English, American Studies, and journalism at Boston College. He is the author of several books, and his writing appears regularly in the New York Times Magazine and the Washington Post Magazine.
Menachem Kaiser with Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi
Free Virtual Event: Tuesday, July 20 at 6 p.m. ET
Moderator: Dr. Bernice Lerner, author and senior scholar at Boston University's Center for Character and Social Responsibility
A special book talk hosted and presented by our colleagues at the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center
A Brooklyn man’s quest to reclaim his family’s apartment building in Poland led to a new understanding of his relatives, and a frightening entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters.
On a Fulbright Fellowship in Lithuania in 2010, Toronto native Menachem Kaiser traveled to Poland and there, in the village of Sosnowiec, he was inspired to take up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building. His encounters with long-time residents of the building and with a Polish lawyer known as “The Killer” are intwined with a surprise discovery of a cousin’s secret memoir revered by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who believe it is an indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Don’t miss hearing about Kaiser’s extraordinary journey and exploration of the many issues surrounding inheritance, legacy, and family history. Hosted by the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center at NEHGS.
Menachem Kaiser holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and was a Fulbright Fellow to Lithuania. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, New York, and elsewhere.
Dr. Bernice Lerner is author of All the Horrors of War: A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, and a senior scholar at Boston University's Center for Character and Social Responsibility.
Produced by GBH Forum Network in partnership with Boston Public Library
PAST EVENTS
June 3, 2021
Joseph M. Bagley
Boston's Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them
Presented in partnership with the State Library of Massachusetts
May 25, 2021
Skip Finley
Whaling Captains of Color: America's First Meritocracy
Presented in partnership with Boston Public Library, the State Library of Massachusetts, and Museum of African American History
May 12, 2021
Daniel James Brown
Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II
Presented in partnership with Boston Public Library, the Japan Society of Boston, and GBH Forum Network
May 6, 2021
Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
Names of New York: Discovering the City's Past, Present, and Future Through Its Place-Names
April 29, 2021
Quiara Alegría Hudes
My Broken Language: A Memoir
Presented in partnership with Boston Public Library, Huntington Theatre Company, Porter Square Books, and GBH Forum Network
April 13, 2021
Tobey Pearl
Terror to the Wicked: America’s First Trial by Jury That Ended a War and Helped to Form a Nation
Presented in partnership with Boston Public Library and State Library of Massachusetts
April 8, 2021
Stellene Volandes
Jewels that Made History: 100 Stones, Myths, and Legends
March 23, 2021
John Matteson
A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation
In partnership with Porter Square Books and GBH Forum Network
March 2, 2021
Russell Shorto
Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob
February 23, 2021
Anna Malaika Tubbs
The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation
In partnership with Boston Public Library, State Library of Massachusetts, and the Museum of African American History
February 18, 2021
Richard Thompson Ford
Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History
In partnership with the Peabody Essex Museum
February 4, 2021
Janice P. Nimura
The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women—and Women to Medicine
In partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum Network
January 19, 2021
Nadia Owusu
Aftershocks: A Memoir
In partnership with GBH Forum Network
January 13, 2021
Eric Jay Dolin
A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes
In partnership with the State Library of Massachusetts
December 16, 2020
Christina Schwarz
Bonnie
December 7, 2020
Nicholas Basbanes
Cross of Snow: The Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In partnership with the State Library of Massachusetts and GBH Forum Network
December 3, 2020
David S. Reynolds
Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times
In partnership with Porter Square Books
November 12, 2020
Nathaniel Philbrick
Baxter Lecture on Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War
In partnership with Boston Public Library, the State Library of Massachusetts, and GBH Forum
November 5, 2020
Tamara Payne
The Dead are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
In partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum
October 20, 2020
Claire Messud
Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write
In partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum
October 8, 2020
David Michaelis
Eleanor
In partnership with the State Library of Massachusetts and Porter Square Books
October 1, 2020
David Hill
The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America’s Forgotten Capital of Vice
September 10, 2020
Pam Fessler
Carville’s Cure: Leprosy, Stigma, and the Fight for Justice
In partnership with Boston Public Library, State Library of Massachusetts, and GBH Forum
August 25, 2020
E. Dolores Johnson
Say I’m Dead : A Family Memory of Race, Secrets and Love
In partnership with Boston Public Library, Museum of African American History, State Library of Massachusetts, and GBH Forum Network
August 20, 2020
Susan Eisenhower
How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decision
In partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum
August 11, 2020
Gretchen Sorin
Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights
In partnership with Boston Public Library, Museum of African American History, and GBH Forum Network
July 23, 2020
Larry Tye
Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy
In partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum
June 24, 2020
Rick Beyer
Rivals Unto Death: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr
In partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum
June 8, 2020
Honor Moore
Our Revolution: A Mother and Daughter at Mid-Century
In partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum
May 20, 2020
Libby Copeland
The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are
In partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum
May 14, 2020
Stephen Puleo
Voyage of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine, and the Remarkable Story of America's First Humanitarian Mission
In partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum
April 28, 2020
Phuc Tran
Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In
In partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum
April 16, 2020
TaraShea Nesbit
Beheld: A Novel
In partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum
March 6, 2020
Adam Hochschild
Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes
In partnership with Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center, the Jewish Women’s Archive, and GBH Forum
February 26, 2020
Kristen Richardson
The Season: A Social History of the Debutante
No video available
February 11, 2020
Marcia Chatelain
Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America
In partnership with GBH Forum
February 11, 2020
Marcia Chatelain
Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America
In conversation with GBH News Reporter Callie Crossley at the BPL Studio
January 30, 2020
Scott Simon
Honoring The Career Of NPR Broadcaster Scott Simon
In partnership with GBH Forum
January 30, 2020
Scott Simon
Sunnyside Plaza
In conversation with WGBH News Reporter Craig Lemoult at the BPL Studio
January 14, 2020
William Martin
Bound For Gold: A Novel of the California Gold Rush
No video available
December 10, 2019
Holly George-Warren
Janis: Her Life and Music
In partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum
November 21, 2019
George Howe Colt
The Game: Harvard, Yale, and America in 1968
In partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum
November 12, 2019
Donald L. Miller
Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign that Broke the Confederacy
No video available
October 18, 2019
Gail Collins
No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History
In partnership with GBH Forum
October 18, 2019
Gail Collins
No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History
With Boston Public Radio at the BPL Studio
September 26, 2019
Brian Jay Jones
Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination
No video available
September 17, 2019
Susan Ronald
Condé Nast: The Man and His Empire
No video availableQuestions? Please email signatureevents@nehgs.org
or call 617-226-1215 or 888-296-3447.