Event Archive

Search our archive of past events at the Library! You can search by keyword - such as event title, subject, or presenter name - or by a date range. To search for an exact phrase, put it in quotation marks. If you know the specific date of an event, enter the same date in both fields. Search results will only show events that match ALL entered terms.

Format: 2013-05-20
Format: 2013-05-20
  • Vaclav Havel went from dissident playwright to leader of the Czech Republic. Celebrate his  life with Czech food and drink and a performance of his one-act comedy Audience by the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre.
    Friday, October 5, 2012

    Dissident playwright Vaclav Havel (1936-2011) went from satirizing Czechoslovakia’s Communist leaders to become the first president of the free Czech Republic. Kansas City’s Czech and Slavic community celebrates Havel’s life with ethnic food and drink and a performance by the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre of Audience, Havel’s one-act comedy. Audience skewers daily life (in this case a meeting between a brewery worker and his boss) in a totalitarian society.

  • Join your fellow citizens in viewing the debates between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. The evening's topic: Domestic policy. Following the debates, a panel led by UMKC professors Max Joseph Skidmore, Sr. and Max Joseph Skidmore, Jr. will discuss the evening's events.
    Wednesday, October 3, 2012

    Join us for a public viewing of the 2012 Presidential and Vice Presidential Debates.

    A panel discussion follows each debate.

    Co-sponsored by A&S Continuing Education at the University of Missouri - Kansas City.

  • Noted illustrator Shane Evans  emcees an evening of music and poetry dedicated to helping Kansas City teens better understand the importance of voting and staying abreast of current events.  Music by DJ David Warren; spoken word performances by Natasha  Ria El Scari & Rob Herron.
    Wednesday, October 3, 2012

    Young voters are invited to experience a night of music, poetry, and civic awareness. Plus they can register to vote in time for November’s big election.

    This is a non-partisan event aimed at getting teens and young adults involved in the electoral process. Following the event, the first presidential debate will be shown in the auditorium.

    Co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters.

  • Editor Steve Paul and a panel of authors - Catherine Browder, Matthew Eck, and Andres Rodriguez - share stories about Kansas City’s seedy underbelly
    Tuesday, October 2, 2012

    Steve Paul is joined by three of the area writers who contributed to Kansas City Noir, a collection of short stories that takes readers on a journey through the dark underbelly of our sunny Midwestern metropolis.

  • The Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre presents The Hindu and the Cowboy, a play designed to give voice to a variety of Kansas Citians by exploring the experiences that have shaped their lives.
    Monday, October 1, 2012

    Staged by the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre, this work, along with Bingo on the Boulevard on October 7th, is based on stories of real Kansas Citians collected by playwright Donna Ziegenhorn. In The Hindu and the Cowboy audiences meet an Auschwitz survivor, a Muslim student, and a cowboy clinging to his family’s land.

    Both plays give voice to everyday people. The performances are part of this year’s Festival of Faiths Kansas City.

  • Think you’re film literate? Not until you’ve experienced the masterpieces of world cinema presented as part of this
    Sunday, September 30, 2012

     

    Twenty Films Essential to Cinema Literacy

    Think you’re film literate? Not until you’ve experienced the masterpieces of world cinema presented as part of this new series. Former Kansas City Star film critic Robert W. Butler (now a member of the Library’s Public Affairs staff) provides opening and closing remarks.

  • Author William H. Chafe, who studies American politics through politicians’ personal lives,  reveals the core complexity of William Jefferson Clinton as an individual, a husband, and as a national public figure.
    Thursday, September 27, 2012

    Taking the White House requires a team, and America had never seen anything like the husband-and-wife team of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

    Historian William H. Chafe, a pioneer in the study of American politics through the personal lives of politicians, reveals the core complexity of the Clintons as individuals, as a couple, and as national figures.

    Chafe is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History at Duke University and the author of Bill and Hillary: The Politics of the Personal.

  • Historian Allan R. Millett, author of a monumental trilogy about the Korean conflict, examines the “local” war that quickly entangled the military forces of both the United States and Communist China.
    Wednesday, September 26, 2012

    Americans view the Korean conflict as an American war in which the United States lost nearly 38,000 men. But above all else it was a war between Koreans that began years earlier, according to historian Allan R. Millett, in a discussion of his most recent book The War for Korea 1950-51: They Came from the North.

  • After touring the South, comic travel writer Chuck Thompson wonders if it isn’t once again time for Dixie to secede from the Union.
    Tuesday, September 25, 2012

    Isn’t it about time for the South to once again secede from the Union? Comic travel writer Chuck Thompson thinks so, arguing that the South is not and never has been wholly committed to being part of the United States.

    Thompson discusses his new book Better Off Without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession and dishes insight, humor, fearless politics, and sheer nerve. And lots of laughs. The book is based on his recent travels south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

  • Award-winning reporter Eleanor Clift joins Library Director Crosby Kemper III for a public conversation about the 2012 presidential election.
    Monday, September 24, 2012

    Reporter/pundit Eleanor Clift joins Kansas City Public Library Director Crosby Kemper III for a public conversation about 2012 presidential election.

    Today electing a president is vastly more complex an undertaking than what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Yet the process remains exciting and hugely important. And if it is sometimes disillusioning, it can also be inspiring.