PROGRAM

Please join us as we welcome one of America’s preeminent historians, William E. Leuchtenburg, to discuss his latest book, The American President, an account of American presidential actions from the assassination of William McKinley in 1901 to Bill Clinton’s last night in office in January 2001.

Leuchtenburg, the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is the author of 15 books, and renowned for his pioneering work on Franklin D. Roosevelt, including his classic books, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 and In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan. In conversation with Harold Holzer, the Jonathan F. Fanton Director of Roosevelt House, Professor Leuchtenburg will assess U. S. presidents of the 20th century, including their conduct in office, preoccupations, and temperament, and chart the growth of presidential power from its lowly state in the late nineteenth century to the imperial presidency of the twentieth, a change manifested at home in periods of progressive reform and abroad, notably in two world wars, Vietnam, and the war on terror.

William E. Leuchtenburg  

William E. Leuchtenburg, is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Over the course of six decades, he taught at Columbia University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and, as a visiting professor, at Harvard, Cornell, Duke, William and Mary and other American universities, as well as at Oxford where he held the Harmsworth chair. He served as presidential elections analyst for NBC and as presidential inauguration consultant for CBS, PBS, and C-SPAN. Elected president of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Historians, he is the first recipient of the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Award for Distinguished Writing in American History of Enduring Public Significance. He is the author of fifteen books, including The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-32, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940, In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, The White House Looks South: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson,The FDR Years: On Roosevelt and His Legacy, and Herbert Hoover.