Speaker

Megan Kate Nelson

Lecture date

April 14th, 2026

Time

7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Title

The Westerners: Myth-Making and Belonging on the American Frontier

Born and raised in Colorado, Megan Kate Nelson is a historian and writer based in Boston. She is the author of four books, including Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America and The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West, which was a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist in History. 

Nelson’s forthcoming book, The Westerners: Myth-Making and Belonging on the American Frontier (April 2026), tells two richly detailed and interwoven stories. The first reveals the captivating lives of women and men moving through the American West — Indigenous peoples, Black Americans, Mexican Americans, and Canadian and Asian immigrants — during the nineteenth century. The second tracks the attempts of many Americans to erase these westerners from history, through a frontier myth that lionized individualism and conquest and celebrated white settlers traveling west in search of prosperity. Centering the book on seven extraordinary individuals, Nelson highlights the perseverance and ingenuity of the communities that have otherwise been forgotten or erased from history.

Speaker

Rick Atkinson

Lecture date

May 12th, 2026

Time

7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Title

Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777–1780 (Revolution Trilogy, 2)

Rick Atkinson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of eight narrative histories about five American wars, including The Long Gray Line, the Liberation Trilogy (An Army at Dawn, The Day of Battle, and The Guns at Last Light), and The British Are Coming, the first volume of the Revolution Trilogy. He has won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes for history and journalism. 

In the second volume of the Revolution trilogy, George Washington’s army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat. Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777–1780 provides a riveting narrative covering the middle years of the American Revolution. Timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the revolution, Atkinson’s brilliant account of the lethal conflict between the Americans and the British offers not only deeply researched and spectacularly dramatic history, but also a fresh perspective on the demands that a democracy makes on each of its citizens.