Producer Callie Crossley leads a panel of black journalists in a discussion on the power of the black press in social movements, beginning in the 1800s and continuing to the present day. The presentation includes an audio clip from the documentary Soldiers Without Swords.
Professor Mitchell Zuckoff follows the life of Italian immigrant Charles Ponzi (1882-1949), legendary con man who set up the Securities Exchange Company, which promised investors massive returns on their investments based on the buying and trading of international postal reply coupons. The scheme, begun around 1918, collapsed in 1920 after the Boston Post revealed it to the public. The presentation includes slides.
Audio and video options are available.
Professor Lewis Dabney traces the life of Edmund Wilson (1895-1972), major literary critic of the 20th century. Dabney discusses Wilson's three classics of literary and intellectual history—Axel's Castle, To the Finland Station, and Patriotic Gore—and the many women with whom Wilson had rocky relationships.
Audio and video options are available.
Three World War II veterans share their stories of serving on PT Boats in the Solomon Islands at the same time as John F. Kennedy during World War II. (John F. Kennedy's PT Boat, PT-109, was struck and sunk in 1943.) The presentation includes film clips of the (now deceased) survivors of PT-109.
Crime historian Karen Elizabeth Chaney examines the case of Lizzie Bordan, accused of killing her father and stepmother with an ax in Fall River, MA, on August 4, 1892. Chaney focuses on the journalistic coverage of the case and the gender issues and sensationalism it dealt in.
Audio and video options are available.
Filmmaker George Stevens, Jr., introduces and discusses D-Day to Berlin, the Emmy Award-winning documentary he made using color footage that his father, director George Stevens, filmed across Europe at the end of World War II. In 1943, Stevens, Sr., was assigned to follow the invasion of Normandy with the 6th Army for the purpose of recording their operations for army archives; the footage used to make up D-Day to Berlin was discovered after his death and follows Stevens and his crew as they follow the Allied Army.
Audio and video options are available.
Newsanchor Tom Brokaw discusses his chronicling of the Greatest Generation in his book with the same title. The Greatest Generation tells the stories of America's citizens who came of age during the Great Depression and World War II. Brokaw also discusses his career with NBC Nightly News, where he has been the sole anchor and managing editor since 1983.
The lecture audio is available in mp3 format.
Former JFK advisor and historian Arthur Schlesinger, journalist Tom Wicker, and veteran political analyst and former Nixon staffer Kevin Phillips explore the varying legacies of the United State's wartime presidents.
Both Thomas E. Heslin, editor of the Providence Journal, and Paul Edward Parker, a reporter from the paper, discuss their coverage of and investigations into a 2003 fire that killed 100 people at the Station Nightclub, near Providence, RI.
Historian Sheldon M. Stern, author of Averting the Final Failure, discusses the secret Executive Committee meetings among President Kennedy and his most trusted advisors during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His presentation includes video footage of Kennedy.