McDonald Center for America’s Founding Principles to Welcome Richard Brookhiser for Public Talk on Nov. 11

459

MACON – Mercer University's McDonald Center for America's Founding Principles will welcome historian, biographer and journalist Richard Brookhiser for a public lecture on Nov. 11.

Brookhiser's talk is titled “Founders' Son: Abraham Lincoln and the American Founding” and will take place at 6 p.m. in the Presidents Dining Room inside the University Center on the Macon campus.

Brookhiser is a popular historian of the founding period, having written a series of biographies on America's founders, including James Madison, Gouverneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. His most recent book is on Abraham Lincoln's relationship to the founding generation. He also serves as a columnist for American History.

He curated “Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America,” an exhibition at the New York Historical Society, and wrote and hosted Rediscovering George Washington and Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton, films directed by Michael Patrick for PBS. In 2008, he was awarded the National Medal of the Humanities, and in 2011, a Guggenheim Fellowship.

“We're very excited to be bringing Richard Brookhiser to campus. He is one of the nation's foremost biographers of the founding generation and writes books that are both edifying and accessible to a wide audience,” said Dr. Will Jordan, associate professor of political science and co-director of the McDonald Center. “In his latest book, he manages to accomplish the increasingly difficult task, given the volume of Lincoln books, of looking at Lincoln in a new way.”

Additionally, Brookhiser is a senior editor at National Review, where he has worked since graduating from Yale University in 1977. He also wrote a column for the New York Observer for 20 years and has done freelance work for magazines such as The New Yorker, Cosmopolitan, Commentary and Vanity Fair.

About the Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for America's Founding Principles

The Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for America's Founding Principles exists to supplement Mercer University's excellent liberal arts program with a redoubled commitment to the foundational texts and ideas that have shaped Western Civilization and the American political order. This focus on the core texts of the Western tradition helps to revitalize a cross-centuries dialogue about citizenship, human rights, and political, economic and religious freedom, thereby deepening the moral imagination and fostering civic and cultural literacy.

The McDonald Center's programming includes the annual A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas, faculty-student reading groups, a general education course on America's Founding Principles, summer Great Books programs for high school teachers and students, and undergraduate research fellowships. All programming is designed to enhance Mercer's longstanding role as a distinctive home of liberal learning, a place where serious students come to live the life of the mind and emerge more thoughtful and engaged citizens.