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Boston Athenaeum

The Boston Athenaeum, one of the oldest and most distinguished independent libraries in the United States, was founded in 1807 by members of the Anthology Society, a group of fourteen Boston gentlemen who had joined together in 1805 to edit The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review. Their purpose was to form "an establishment similar to that of the Athenaeum and Lyceum of Liverpool in Great Britain; combining the advantages of a public library [and] containing the great works of learning and science in all languages." The library and Art Gallery, established in 1827, were soon flourishing, and grew rapidly, both by purchase of books and art and by frequent gifts. For nearly half a century the Athenaeum was the unchallenged center of intellectual life in Boston, and by 1851 had become one of the five largest libraries in the United States. Today its collections comprise over half a million volumes, with particular strengths in Boston history, New England state and local history, biography, English and American literature, and the fine and decorative arts. The Athenaeum supports a dynamic art gallery, and sponsors a lively variety of events such as lectures and concerts. It also serves as a stimulating center for discussions among scholars, bibliophiles, and a variety of community interest groups.break

http://www.bostonathenaeum.org

  • North Shore Boston: Country Houses of Essex County

    Tue, Oct 4, 2005
    Pamela Wilkinson Fox discusses more than 50 great houses in Boston's North Shore, designed by such architects as McKim, Mead & White, the Olmsted Brothers, Peabody & Stearns, and Ogden Codman. Since the mid-19th century, well-to-do Bostonians have fled the sweltering city streets for the cooling breezes, gently rolling hills, and rugged coastline of the fabled North Shore. From prestigious seaside communities such as Nahant, Marblehead, and Prides' Crossing to inland villages such as Wenham, Topsfield, and Ipswich, elegant country mansions arose, growing ever grander and more elaborate as the Age of Elegance progressed. Exclusive enclaves such as the Myopia Hunt Club, Eastern Yacht Club, and the Essex Country Club endowed the North Shore with a summer playground where Boston Brahmins mingled with Midwestern moguls (Henry Clay Frick, Richard Crane, and Edwin Swift), US Presidents (William Howard Taft and Calvin Coolidge), and artists and authors, including Maxfield Parrish, Edward Hopper, and Rudyard Kipling.
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  • William John Bankes: The Exiled Collector

    Thu, Oct 6, 2005
    Anne Sebba discusses her new book about William John Bankes, The Exiled Collector. William John Bankes was a former Tory MP, pioneer Egyptologist, renowned traveler, and consummate collector. A prominent figure in early Victorian Britain and friend to both Byron and the Duke of Wellington, Bankes was forced to flee Britain in 1841 and settled in Venice. He lost his possessions and property to the authorities, but unable to let his standing as an outlaw interfere with his affection for his prior estate, Bankes continued to decorate his beloved home and assemble his extraordinary collection. He collected obsessively for the house that he no longer owned, sending art, sculpture by Carlo Marochetti, huge quantities of marble, gilding, leatherwork, and Pietra Dura to the estate, which he visited in secret near the end of his life. Ms. Sebba recants the dramatic events in William Bankes' life, using previously unpublished archives, and examining the psychology of collecting as well as the pain and creativity of exile.
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  • Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature

    Thu, Oct 13, 2005
    Lewis Dabney lectures on his new book, Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature. From the Jazz Age through the McCarthy Era, Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) stood at the center of the American cultural scene. In his own youth a crucial champion of the young Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wilson went on to write three classics of literary and intellectual history (Axel's Castle, To the Finland Station, and Patriotic Gore), searching reportage, and criticism that has outlasted many of its subjects. Wilson documented his unruly private life, a formative love affair with Edna St Vincent Millay, a tempestuous marriage to Mary McCarthy, and volatile friendships with Fitzgerald and Vladimir Nabokov, among others, in fiction and journals, but Lewis Dabney is the first writer to integrate the life and the work.
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  • Colm Toibin on Mothers and Sons

    Thu, Mar 20, 2008
    Colm Toibin reads from his new collection of short stories, *Mothers and Sons*. Professor James Smith of Boston College introduces the author. **Colm Toibin** was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of five novels, including the Booker shortlisted *The Blackwater Lightship* and *The Master*, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He has been a Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University and a visiting writer at the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in Dublin.
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  • Mameve Medwed: Of Men and Their Mothers

    Tue, Jun 10, 2008
    Mameve Medwed reads from her latest novel Of Men and Their Mothers, an exploration of class difference, notions of men and women, and being a wife, a friend, and a nonjudgmental mother. When Maisie Grey finally gets rid of her mama's-boy husband and happily settles down with her teenage son, Tommy, she's still stuck with an irascible mother-in-law. Maisie vows that when Tommy brings someone home, she will be empathetic and supportive, and envelop the young woman in a loving embrace. But along comes September Silva, with her piercings, short skirts, black nail polish, and stay-out-all-night attitude. Eventually Maisie is forced to take a clear-eyed look at class differences, preconceived notions of men and women, and what it means to be a wife, a friend, and a nonjudgmental mother. When do you let go? And how do you let go if you're sure your son is making a very big mistake?
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  • Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825

    Thu, May 14, 2009
    Translator Alan Hoffman discusses Auguste Levasseur's book *Lafayette in America*, which recounts how the 67-year-old hero of the American Revolution and apostle of liberty in Europe was welcomed in an adoring frenzy by the American people. With its panoramic view of the young country, its burgeoning cities and towns, its technological innovations like the Erie Canal, and its industrious people, this book captures America on the cusp of its jubilee year. A decade before Tocqueville, Auguste Levasseur, private secretary to the Marquis de Lafayette, observed and reported on the state of the American Republic as he accompanied General Lafayette on his Farewell Tour of all 24 United States. Levasseur's journal describes the Americans' enormous pride in the republican institutions created by the revolutionary generation and the ensuing growth and prosperity. He recounts their intense feelings of gratitude towards those who had won the republic, among whom Lafayette was the sole surviving major general of the Continental Army. Levasseur also chronicles Lafayette's affectionate visits with his old friends John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams, and his encounter with Senator Andrew Jackson. A keen observer, Levasseur gives us a sense of the characters of these men who, with Lafayette's paternal friend George Washington, led the United States through its first six decades.
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  • Crack in the Edge of the World: The 1906 CA Earthquake

    Thu, Nov 3, 2005
    Simon Winchester discusses the Great California Earthquake of 1906, which he has written about extensively in his new book, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. Simon Winchester, who has brought the unlikely subject of geology to the literary forefront in his national bestsellers Krakatoa and The Map That Changed the World, now shines his literary light on the most dramatic natural calamity in US history in A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. Using the devastating 7.9 quake that struck the bustling city of San Francisco as a narrative springboard, Winchester offers a panoramic blend of history and science that captures the "savage interruption" and its destructive aftermath with gripping immediacy. Winchester explores the global geology that jolted the Earth awake on the fateful day and suggests why it certainly will happen again.
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  • After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World

    Tue, Nov 8, 2005
    The distinguished historian A.N. Wilson charts Britain's rise to world dominance. In his much anticipated sequel to the classic *The Victorians*, he describes how, in little more than a generation, Britain's power and influence in the world virtually dissolved. Wilson presents a panoramic view of an era, stretching from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, to the dawn of the Cold War in the early 1950s. He offers riveting accounts of the savagery of World War I and the world-altering upheaval of the Communist Revolution and explains Britain's role in shaping the destiny of the Middle East, casting a new light on the World War II years. Wilson's perspective is not confined to the trenches of the battlefield and the halls of parliament: he also examines the parallel story of the beginnings of Modernism, looking at novelists, philosophers, poets, and painters to see what they reveal about the activities of the politicians, scientists, and generals. Blending military, political, social, and cultural history, A.N. Wilson offers an absorbing portrait of the decline of one of the world's great powers.
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  • Alanson B. Houghton: Ambassador of the New Era

    Thu, Jan 26, 2006
    Jeffrey J. Matthews provides a clear and concise account of Alanson B. Houghton's diplomatic experience during the 1920s, and consequently, a fresh assessment of US foreign policy during a pivotal decade in world history. Matthews explores why the United States failed to establish a stable world order during the New Era and additionally sheds light on the key historiographical themes of isolationism, new-imperialism, and corporations. American industrialist and politician Alanson B. Houghton, was the world's most influential diplomat during the "New Era" of the 1920s. Houghton, who served as ambassador to both Germany (1922 through 1925) and Great Britain (1925 through 1929), offers a unique window into the formation and implementation of American foreign policy. As the leading ambassador in Europe, he played a key role in the major diplomatic achievements of the era, including the Dawes Plan for reparations, the Locarno security treaties, and the Kellogg-Briand peace pact. While Houghton's significant contributions to these international accords are fully explored, the major theme of this book is his emergence as chief critic of US foreign policy within the Harding and Coolidge administrations.
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  • George Washington's God

    Thu, Mar 9, 2006
    Michael Novak, one of the country's leading conservative thinkers, offers the first in-depth look at the religious life of George Washington. Washington has long been viewed as the patron saint of secular government, but Novak's new book *Washington's God* reveals that it was Washington's strong faith in divine Providence that gave meaning and force to his monumental life. Narrowly escaping a British trap during the Battle of Brooklyn, Washington did not credit his survival to courage or tactical expertise; he blamed himself for marching his men into seemingly certain doom and marveled at the Providence that delivered them. Throughout his career, Washington remained convinced that America's liberty was dependent on faithfulness to God's will and trust in Providence. *Washington's God* shows him not only as a man of resource, strength, and virtue, but also as a man with deeply religious values. This new presentation of Washington will bring him into today's debates about the role of faith in government and will challenge much we thought we knew about the inner life of the father of our country.
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