Previous Special Events

Was he an anti-Semite and a Nazi sympathizer? An appeaser and isolationist?

For all his public activities – financier, film producer, kingmaker, father of a president - Joseph P. Kennedy remains an elusive figure. Historian David Nasaw draws on exclusive access to Kennedy’s papers to explore the complicated personality.

Nasaw is Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Distinguished Professor of American History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Architectural historian Keith Eggener looks at the heritage of architect Louis Curtiss (1865-1924), often described as “the Frank Lloyd Wright of Kansas City” and a pioneer of the “curtain wall” design featured in his 1909 Boley Building at 11th and Walnut.

Featuring internal skeletons of steel or concrete and sheathed in lightweight glass, Curtiss’ buildings paved the way for the modern skyscraper.

Eggener is a professor of American Art and Architecture and director of graduate studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

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.

Tchaikovsky's immortal music played in the style of AC/DC?

The Sugar Plum Fairy as a cross-dressing burlesque performer?

No, this won't be your mother's Nutcracker.

With their tongues firmly in cheek, members of Kansas City's Owen/Cox Dance Group usher in the holiday season with The Nutcracker and the Mouse King on Friday, November 30, 2012, at 6:30 p.m. at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St.

In the late 19th century statesman Otto von Bismarck unified Germany while embodying everything brutal and ruthless about Prussian culture. Biographer Jonathan Steinberg allows Bismarck’s friends and foes to tell the story of this complex giant: a hypochondriac with the constitution of an ox and a brutal tyrant who could easily shed tears.

Steinberg is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Modern European History at the University of Pennsylvania.

A specialist in the Atomic Age, Michael Scheibach examines how Americans in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s dealt with the threat of nuclear annihilation with an emphasis on the impact of Civil Defense drills, merchandising campaigns using atomic imagery, and popular entertainments like comic books and science fiction movies.

Author Robert W. Merry wraps up the presidential election – and the Hail to the Chiefs series – with a fresh, playful, and challenging way of rating our presidents. He is the author of Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians.

Merry has been a Washington correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and the executive editor of Congressional Quarterly.

Co-presented with the Truman Library Institute; co-sponsored by KCUR’s Up To Date.

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.

The plays and poetry of William Shakespeare have inspired some of the world’s most beautiful music.

This performance by members of the Bach Aria Soloists, including violinist Elizabeth Suh Lane and guitarist Beau Bledsoe, will feature the music of Bach, Purcell, Handel, and Mendelssohn.

Between musical selections, the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival presents scenes from Shakespeare’s plays performed by local actors John Rensenhouse and Cinnamon Schultz.

Why study Freud? Harvard Medical School’s Edison K. Miyawaki, author of What to Read on Love, not Sex: Freud, Fiction, and the Articulation of Truth in Modern Psychological Science employs Freud’s affection for stories culled from our collective cultural past to explain modern psychology. The result is a book that literary critic Harold Bloom describes as “a heartening and moving reconsideration of Freud’s legacy.”