Leon Levy Center for Biography’s February Events

January 30, 2023January 30, 2023 Amanda Rajnauth

Please consider attending one or all of these upcoming biography events. Please note that all of their events, including these, are recorded and later posted here.

Beverly Gage on J. Edgar Hoover

in conversation with Kai Bird
Tuesday, February 7, 6:30 pm
Elebash Recital Hall, the Graduate Center

J. Edgar Hoover was a colossus who dominated half a century of American history and planted the seeds for much of today’s conservative political landscape. Beverly Gage’s monumental biography explores the full sweep of Hoover’s life and career, from his birth in 1895 to a modest Washington civil-service family through his death in 1972. In her nuanced and definitive portrait, Gage shows how Hoover was far more than a one-dimensional tyrant and schemer who strong-armed the rest of the country into submission.

Beverly Gage is professor of 20th-century American history at Yale. She is the author of The Day Wall Street Exploded, which examines the history of terrorism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She writes frequently for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker, among other publications.

Leon Levy Center Executive Director Kai Bird co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf, 2005). A major motion picture based on this biography is scheduled to appear in 2023. He has also written biographies of John J. McCloy and McGeorge Bundy—and a memoir, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis (Scribner, 2010). His biography of President Jimmy Carter, The Outlier: the Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, was published in 2021 by Crown Books.

Register for this in-person event here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beverly-gage-on-j-edgar-hoover-with-kai-bird-tickets-518303849767

Hilary A. Hallett on Elinor Glyn and the Invention of the It Girl

in conversation with David Nasaw
Thursday, February 16, 6:30 pm
The Kelly Skylight Room, the Graduate Center

In this groundbreaking portrait of a courageous icon of independence, Hilary A. Hallett traces Elinor Glyn’s meteoric rise from a depressed society darling to a world-renowned celebrity author who consorted with world leaders from St. Petersburg to Cairo to New York. After reporting from the trenches during World War I, Glyn was lured by American movie producers from Paris to Los Angeles for her remarkable third act. Weaving together years of deep archival research, Hallett movingly conveys how Glyn crafted early Hollywood’s glamorous romantic aesthetic. She taught the screen’s greatest leading men to make love in ways that set audiences aflame, and coined the term “It Girl,” which turned actress Clara Bow into the symbol of the first sexual revolution.

Hilary A. Hallett is the Mendelson Family Professor and director of American studies and associate professor of history at Columbia University. The author of Go West, Young Women! The Rise of Early Hollywood, she has written for the Los Angeles Times.

Graduate Center Professor Emeritus David Nasaw is a founding member of Radical History Review. His most recent book is The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War (2020). In addition, he is the author of prize-winning biographies that have been short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize, including The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst; Andrew Carnegie; and The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy.

Register for this in-person event here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hilary-a-hallett-on-elinor-glyn-in-conversation-with-david-nasaw-tickets-516290106607

John A. Farrell on Ted Kennedy

in conversation with Kai Bird
Wednesday, February 22, 6:30 pm
Elebash Recital Hall, the Graduate Center

John A. Farrell’s magnificent biography of Edward M. Kennedy is the first single-volume life of the great figure since his death. Farrell’s long acquaintance with the Kennedy universe and the acclaim accorded his previous books—including his New York Times bestselling biography of Richard Nixon, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—helped garner him access to a remarkable range of new sources, including segments of Kennedy’s personal diary and his private confessions to members of his family in the days that followed the accident on Chappaquiddick. Farrell is, without question, one of America’s greatest political biographers and a storyteller of deep wisdom and empathy. His book does full justice to this famously epic and turbulent life of almost unimaginable tragedy and triumph.

John A. Farrell (www.jafarrell.com) is the author of Richard Nixon: The Life, which won the PEN America award for the best biography, and the New-York Historical Society book prize for the best volume of American history, of 2017. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His new book: Ted Kennedy: A Life, made the list of finalists for the National Book Award. In 2001 he published Tip O’Neill and the Democratic Century, which won the Hardeman prize for the best book on Congress. His book, Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, won the Los Angeles Times book award for best biography of 2012.

Leon Levy Center Executive Director Kai Bird co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Knopf, 2005). A major motion picture based on this biography is scheduled to appear in 2023. He has also written biographies of John J. McCloy and McGeorge Bundy—and a memoir, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis (Scribner, 2010). His biography of President Jimmy Carter, The Outlier: the Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, was published in 2021 by Crown Books.

Register for this in-person event here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/john-a-farrell-on-ted-kennedy-in-conversation-with-kai-bird-tickets-518314581867

Melvyn P. Leffler on George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein

in conversation with Peter Beinart
Monday, February 27, 6:30 pm
The Kelly Skylight Room, the Graduate Center

America’s decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 is arguably the most important foreign policy choice of the entire post-Cold War era. Nearly two decades after the event, it remains central to understanding current international politics and US foreign relations. In Confronting Saddam Hussein, Melvyn P. Leffler analyzes why the US chose war and who was most responsible for the decision. Employing a unique set of personal interviews with dozens of top officials and declassified American and British documents, Leffler vividly portrays the emotions and anxieties that shaped the thinking of the president after the shocking events of 9/11.

Melvyn P. Leffler is Emeritus Professor of American History at The University of Virginia. He is the author of For the Soul of Mankind (2007), which won the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association, and A Preponderance of Power (1993), which won the Bancroft, Hoover, and Ferrell Prizes. Most recently, he published Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015 (2017).

Peter Beinart teaches national reporting and opinion writing at the Newmark J-School and political science at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is editor-at-large for Jewish Currents, a CNN political commentator, and a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. His first book, The Good Fight, was published by HarperCollins in 2006. His second book, The Icarus Syndrome, was published by HarperCollins in 2010. His third, The Crisis of Zionism, was published by Times Books in 2012.

Register for this in-person event here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/melvyn-p-leffler-on-george-w-bush-and-saddam-hussein-with-peter-beinart-tickets-518331462357

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Leon Levy Center for Biography’s February Events

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