2021 Symposium Events

Symposium Speaker – Elizabeth Mitchell. Elizabeth Mitchell’s newest book, Lincoln’s Lie: A True Civil War Caper Through Fake News, Wall Street, and the White House, was published in October 2020. Her other books include Liberty’s Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty, Three Strides Before the Wire: The Dark and Beautiful World of Horse Racing, and W.: Revenge of the Bush Dynasty. Her bestselling e-single, The Fearless Mrs. Goodwin, tells the tale of the first female detective in U.S. history. Mitchell was executive editor of George magazine. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Symposium Speaker – H. W. Brands Jr. H. W. Brands is an American historian who holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1985. He has authored 30 books on U.S. history, two of which have been selected as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book is John Brown and Abraham Lincoln. Born in 1953, Brands grew up in the Portland, Oregon area. He attended Jesuit High School, where he was a three-sport athlete and National Merit Scholar. Brands received his undergraduate degree in history from Stanford University in 1975, returning to Jesuit to teach mathematics. He taught at the high school for the next five years and earned a M.A. in Liberal Studies from Reed College in 1978, followed by an M.S. in Mathematics from Portland State in 1981. His dissertation was on the Eisenhower administration and its foreign policy during the Cold War.