Spring 2020 Events
The Last 100 Days: FDR at War and at Peace
April 22, 2020
The first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency are justly famous, viewed as a period of political action without equal in American history. Yet as historian David B. Woolner reveals, the end of FDR’s presidency might very well surpass it in drama and consequence…
The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory
April 6, 2020
When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation,” its “sole superpower,” the future looked very bright…
Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974
March 26, 2020
How did the United States become so divided? Fault Lines offers a richly told, wide-angle history view toward an answer.
If you were asked when America became polarized, your answer would likely depend on your age: you might say during Barack Obama’s presidency, or with the post-9/11 war on terror, or the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, or the “Reagan Revolution” and the the rise of the New Right…
THIRD RAIL: Two States 101
February 25, 2020
Two States 101: Examining the Past, Present and Future of a Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict aims to help the audience better understand the complexities around a viable two-state outcome, the impact of potential annexation of all or parts of the West Bank, the current situation in Gaza, and what will happen…
Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America
February 10, 2020
Anointed with Oil places religion and oil at the center of American history. As prize-winning historian Darren Dochuk reveals, from the earliest discovery of oil in America during the Civil War, citizens saw oil as the nation’s special blessing and its peculiar burden, the source of its prophetic mission in the world…
Lady First: The World of First Lady Sarah Polk
January 22, 2020
While the Woman’s Rights convention was taking place at Seneca Falls in 1848, First Lady Sarah Childress Polk was wielding influence unprecedented for a woman in Washington, D.C. Yet, while history remembers the women of the convention, it has all but forgotten Sarah Polk…