“Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote” Lecture

Please join us for a virtual lecture presentation on Zoom on Monday, January 11, 2021 at 6:30pm with Presidential Writings expert, Craig Fehrman. In this fascinating, illustrated lecture, Fehrman will open a rich new window into presidential biographies by analyzing American presidents through the lens of the works they have written. Registration is required to attend this free Gunn Museum virtual program. The Zoom link will be sent to your provided email address. Visit the Gunn Museum’s registration page to sign up!

Most Americans are familiar with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation, yet few can name his published collection of speeches, Political Debates between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, that helped him win the presidency.

Touching on Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, the first presidential book to influence a campaign; John Adams’s Autobiography, the first score-settling presidential memoir; never-before published letters from John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan, Fehrman will cast fresh light on the private drives and self-doubts that fueled our nation’s leaders. His stories and telling details create an unprecedented and surprisingly human take on our presidents, including George Washington and the notes for a biographer he wrote in secret and then tried to have burned! Drawing on his personal experiences, Fehrman will also describe what it was like, as a researcher, finding brand new documents in Kennedy’s handwriting at the JFK Library. Turning to his audience, he will inquire whether it knows the history of history lovers such as themselves.

Craig Fehrman is an author, journalist and historian who has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among others.  In 2020, he has written two notable books: Author in Chief – The Untold Story of Our Presidents and The Books They Wrote which Thomas Mallon in the Wall Street Journal described as “one of the best books on the American presidency to appear in recent years” and The Best Presidential Writing from 1789 to the Present.  Fehrman did his graduate studies at Yale University. Currently, he lives in Indiana with his wife and children and is an adjunct professor at Indiana University.

For more information view www.gunnmuseum.org or contact the Gunn Historical Museum in Washington, CT at 860-868-7756 or [email protected].