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Event Audio

To listen to an audio recording of a previous Library special event, click the icon. The audio file will launch the media player on your computer.

The most recent recording displays at the top. The Library offers recordings only with the permission of the presenter. Please allow 7-10 days for the recording to be posted.

  • Karen Cox explains how northern-based advertisers, manufacturers, musicians, writers, and filmmakers fashioned a romantic version of Dixieland to push products, calm anxiety about modernity – and maintain a racist status-quo.
    Karen Cox - Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture
    Tuesday, August 30, 2011
    Central Library

    From the late nineteenth century through World War II, popular culture portrayed the American South as a region ensconced in its antebellum past, draped in moonlight and magnolias, and represented by such southern icons as the mammy, the belle, the chivalrous planter, white-columned mansions, and even bolls of cotton. But what if this constructed nostalgia for the Old South was actually manufactured by outsiders?

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  • Cricket enthusiast Martin Rowe discusses the parallel and occasionally intertwined history of baseball and cricket.
    Martin Rowe: Right Off the Bat
    Wednesday, August 24, 2011
    Central Library

    Cricket buff Martin Rowe, co-author of Right Off the Bat, explains the parallel and occasionally intertwined history of baseball and cricket in a presentation that includes anecdotes, diagrams, photographs, and a curve (or dipper) or two.

    Along the way, Rowe examines how the two sports mirrored British and American social and racial struggles while expanding beyond the shores of their founding countries to become multinational endeavors commanding global followings that now challenge the future of both sports.

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  • Library Director Crosby Kemper III leads a public conversation with Boulevard Brewing Company founder John McDonald exploring how his award-winning company became the largest craft brewer in the Midwest and the largest independent American brewer in Missouri.
    A Conversation with John McDonald
    Wednesday, August 3, 2011
    Central Library

    Join a public conversation with local brewing pioneer John McDonald, founder of Boulevard Brewing Company.

    McDonald, recently named the 2011 Brewers Association Recognition Award winner, started the brewery in 1989 and hand delivered Boulevard beer to local restaurants in his pick-up truck. Today, his company employs over 90 people.

    Since 1989, the award-winning company has grown to become the largest craft brewer in the Midwest and the largest independent American brewer in Missouri.

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  • John Ferling discusses his compelling and accessible one-volume chronicle of the most pivotal period in America’s history, the battle in the Continental Congress over declaring American independence.
    John Ferling - Independence: The Struggle To Set America Free
    Wednesday, July 27, 2011
    Central Library

    No event in American history was more pivotal — or more contested — than the decision by Congress to declare independence in July 1776. Even months after American blood had been shed at Lexington and Concord, many colonists remained loyal to Britain.

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  • Representatives from the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum discuss the scientific, social, and political changes that took place during the Eisenhower presidency. The talk complements a new exhibit on display at the Museum in Abilene, Kansas.
    Eisenhower: Agent of Change
    Thursday, July 21, 2011
    Central Library

    Often referred to as eight years of peace and prosperity, the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-61) was in fact an era of great scientific, social, and political changes. Some were positive, others negative—but all came at a price and greatly affected the lives of the American people.

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  • Timothy Noel Tegge, clown, illusionist, ringmaster, and curator of the Tegge Circus Archives, speaks about his experiences in the circus and provides insight into the Reckless Beauty and Mounting Laughter exhibit.
    Timothy Noel Tegge - Reckless Beauty and Mounting Laughter
    Wednesday, July 20, 2011
    Central Library

    Born to a circus-clown father, Timothy Noel Tegge began performing in the ring by age 5. Today, while still working as a clown, he also acts as a circus illusionist, ringmaster, and performance director—and is curator of the Tegge Circus Archives, a repository of circus posters and ephemera he began collecting as a child.

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  • Columbia University marketing expert David Rogers examines how digital technologies—from smartphones to social network— connect us in networks that transform our relationships to businesses and each other.
    David Rogers - The Network Is Your Customer: Five Strategies To Thrive in a Digital Age
    Thursday, June 30, 2011
    Central Library
    Recommended reading:
    13 Books on Marketing for the Digital Age

    Presentation slides:
    The Network is Your Customer

    Marketing expert David Rogers, executive director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School, examines how digital technologies — from smartphones to social networks — connect us in networks that transform our relationships to businesses and each other.

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  • Emory University historian Deborah E. Lipstadt examines the May 1960 capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina and his subsequent trial that electrified the world.
    Deborah E. Lipstadt: The Eichmann Trial
    Wednesday, June 29, 2011
    Plaza Branch

    Emory University historian Deborah E. Lipstadt examines the May 1960 capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina and his subsequent trial that electrified the world.

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  • Stuart Hinds, of LaBudde Special Collections at Miller Nichols Library; David Jackson, of the Jackson County Historical Society; and Christopher Leitch, of the Kansas City Museum discuss a new archive thats reflects history of the gay and lesbian community in the Kansas City area.
    GLAMA: Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America
    Sunday, June 19, 2011
    Central Library

    The first-ever meeting of a national coalition of lesbian and gay leaders took place in Kansas City in 1966.

    What preceded such activism? How has the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community evolved? Answers are found in the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America, which is discussed by a panel of local experts: Stuart Hinds, Miller Nichols Library; David Jackson, Jackson County Historical Society; and Christopher Leitch, Kansas City Museum.

    This presentation is part of the Missouri Valley Speakers Series.

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  • The authors of The Sumner Story discuss the inspiring stories of graduates from the formerly segregated black high school in Kansas City, Kansas.
    The Sumner Story
    Thursday, June 16, 2011
    Central Library

    The authors of The Sumner Story discuss the history of Sumner High School, the formerly segregated black high school in Kansas City, Kansas, that is now the college-prep oriented Sumner Academy, which is consistently ranked among the top high schools in America.

    The book offers awe-inspiring details about the success of the school. The authors include Sumner alumni Wilma F. Bonner, Johnnieque Blackmon Love, Sandra Freelain, and Dwight D. Henderson.

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