Friday, April 17, 2009 8:05 PM CDT
Presidential historian, biographer next speaker in EIU Edgar series
Staff Report
CHARLESTON — Historian and biographer Richard Norton Smith has a mantra. “There’s no excuse for a dull book, a dull museum or a dull speech,” he says. “Especially when dealing with history — the most fascinating subject I know.”
Campus and community residents will have the opportunity to see Smith practice what he preaches as the fourth speaker in the Edgar Lecture Series, hosted at Eastern Illinois University.
His talk, “The Triumph of Politics: Abraham Lincoln at 200,” will begin at 7 p.m. April 21 at The Theatre, located in the Doudna Fine Arts Center.
Admission is free and open to the public. A public reception will follow in the building’s concourse.
The Edgar Lecture Series, established in 2007 by former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar and his wife, Brenda, in continuing support of their alma mater, allows the university to host two speakers a year — one in the fall and one in the spring. Lectures are to focus primarily on state government and shall address current issues in state government and their historical implications.
The Edgars launched the series, with the former governor and first lady speaking in the fall and spring, respectively, of the 2007-08 academic year. Mike Lawrence, Edgar’s former press secretary and senior policy adviser, spoke last fall.
Smith first met Edgar nearly a decade ago while serving as the director of the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Mich. A few years later, as the founding director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Smith was able to “spend a fair amount of time” with the former governor since Edgar, at the time, was serving as president of the ALPLM Foundation. He continues to serve on the board of directors.
The two men’s association was “one of the most pleasant parts” of the job, Smith said, adding that he was delighted to have been invited as a speaker in the Edgar Lecture Series.
Smith hopes to both educate and entertain his audience as he discusses Lincoln who, the historian says admiringly, “was someone who never stopped growing.“
Smith, who currently serves as scholar-in-residence at George Mason University in suburban Washington, maintains an “unstuffy approach to the past,” which has made him a familiar face to viewers of ABC, C-SPAN, and the “News Hour with Jim Lehrer.” A 1975 Harvard graduate, he is the author of eight books; his “Thomas E. Dewey and His Times” was a finalist for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize.
He is presently working on a biography of New York Governor and Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller.
Between 1987 and 2001, Smith served as director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center in Abilene, Kan.; the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and the Reagan Center for Public Affairs in Simi Valley, Calif.; and the Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library in Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor, Mich. respectively.
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