Signature Event Archive: Audio

Search the Signature Event Archive to discover past Library events. Watch videos, hear speaker interviews, and listen to audio recordings of previous presentations. Search by keyword (event title, subject, or presenter name), location or by date range.
Signature Event Video Video Signature Event Audio Audio Signature Event Interview Interviews
E.g., 2019/06/20
E.g., 2019/06/20

Courting Mr. Lincoln

We’re well acquainted with Abraham Lincoln the country lawyer, the principled statesman, the revered martyr. In a discussion of his new historical novel Courting Mr. Lincoln, author Louis Bayard fleshes out the personal side of our 16th president—through the eyes of the two people who knew him best, spirited young debutante and wife-to-be Mary Todd and handsome, charming roommate and confidant Joshua Speed. Bayard sits down with Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle.
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In a discussion of his new historical novel Courting Mr. Lincoln, author Louis Bayard fleshes out the personal side of our 16th president through the eyes of the two people who knew him best – spirited young debutante and wife-to-be Mary Todd and handsome, charming roommate and confidant Joshua Speed.
Thursday, May 9, 2019
Program: 
6:30 pm
Plaza Branch
Event Audio

America Meets the Middle East

Our country’s deep (and fitful) involvement in the Middle East traces to World War II, when the U.S. came to Britain’s assistance in North Africa, transported millions of tons of material across Iran in support of the Soviet Union, and protected the movement of critical oil across the Mediterranean Sea and through the Suez Canal.
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Military historian Brian Steed of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College continues a yearlong series focusing on the Middle East, discussing the evolution of America’s role as protector in the region.
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
Reception: 
6 pm
Program: 
6:30 pm
Central Library
Event Audio

Washington Black

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, named one of the best books of 2018 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time magazine, among others, Washington Black transformed Canadian author Esi Edugyan into an international literary star.

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Canadian author Esi Edugyan discusses the book that made him an international literary star, a novel – inspired by real events – about a young slave on a Barbados sugar plantation who escapes with the help of his cultured master. It examines both the scars of slavery and the weight of privilege.
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Program: 
6:30 pm
Plaza Branch
Event Audio

The Feather Thief

A young American flautist, Edwin Rist, broke into the British Museum of Natural History in Tring in 2009 and made off with nearly 300 bird skins. Bizarre, perhaps. But Rist had a passion for the art of salmon fly-tying, and knew the value of birds’ rare feathers—in the millions of dollars—to those who shared it. Each specimen was almost 200 years old. Many species were extinct.

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In a discussion of his book The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, author Kirk Wallace Johnson recounts the stunning theft of nearly 300 bird skins – yes, bird skins – from a British museum in 2009. Turns out the feathers were worth millions to those, including the American perpetrator, with a passion for the art of salmon fly-tying.
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Program: 
6:30 pm
Plaza Branch
Event Audio

Making Meat: Race, Labor, and the Kansas City Stockyards

Missouri Valley Sundays

In many ways, Kansas City’s early history is that of a stereotypical frontier town. Native Americans, pioneers, and cowboys are indelibly linked to the settlement of the area and the city’s heritage. Cattle and other livestock are crucial.

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In a discussion of his essay in the new book Wide-Open Town: Kansas City in the Pendergast Era, University of Missouri-Kansas City historian John Herron examines the city’s stockyards industry in the opening decades of the 20th century. Contrary to popular lore, it didn’t fit the spurs-and-rawhide image of the American West as much as it reflected American industrialization.
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Reception: 
1:30 pm
Program: 
2:00 pm
Central Library
Event Audio

In the Attempt Is the Success: A Poet's Way of Life

“To me,” Molly Peacock says, “a sonnet makes impossible emotions possible.” The revered poet, biographer, essayist, and short fiction writer, a former president of the Poetry Society of America, discusses and reads from her poetry and talks about the motivation she has drawn throughout her life from her motto: “In the attempt is the success.”
 
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Revered poet, biographer, essayist, and short fiction writer Molly Peacock discusses and reads from her poetry and talks about the motivation she has drawn throughout life from her motto: “In the attempt is the success.” The former president of the Poetry Society of America conducts a poetry workshop, Scare the Sonnet Into Working for You, earlier in the day.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Program: 
6:30 pm
Plaza Branch
Event Audio

Eisenhower: Becoming the Leader of the Free World

Louis Galambos, a Johns Hopkins University historian who edited the papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower, discusses his new book on Ike, exploring shifts in his identity and reputation over his lifetime and how our 34th president developed his distinctive leadership skills.
 
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Louis Galambos, a Johns Hopkins University historian who edited the papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower, discusses his new book on Ike, exploring shifts in his identity and reputation over his lifetime and how our 34th president developed his distinctive leadership skills.
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Reception: 
6 pm
Program: 
6:30 pm
Central Library
Event Audio

A Conversation With Tom Barbash

Writers at Work

With an award-winning novel, best-selling collection of short stories, and a nonfiction best-seller (On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11: A Story of Loss and Renewal), Tom Barbash knows no literary bounds.

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Accomplished author Tom Barbash joins UMKC’s Whitney Terrell in a Writers at Work discussion of Barbash’s work – including his latest novel, The Dakota Winters. It revolves around the iconic New York City apartment building, the Dakota, that was home to John Lennon and a host of other luminaries.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Program: 
6:30 pm
Central Library
Event Audio

Women's Rights, Family Values, and the Polarization of American Politics

The roots of today’s political fractiousness lie, in part, in a four-day gathering in Houston more than 40 years ago.
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University of South Carolina historian Marjorie Spruill looks back at an episode – the 1977 National Women’s Conference – that activist Gloria Steinem said “may take the prize as the most important event nobody knows about.” Feminists and conservative women’s activists battled over abortion, gay rights, and other issues, presaging today’s political fractiousness.
Thursday, April 11, 2019
Program: 
6:30 pm
Plaza Branch
Event Audio

Defiance: ‘A Monument to My Brother’

Discussion

Displaced from their home in Belarus during World War II, a then-teenage Gitla Doppelt and her family joined bands of forest-dwelling resistance fighters who worked to protect themselves and other Jewish noncombatants from their country’s Nazi occupiers.

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The Library takes a compelling, two-part look at the life of one of Kansas City’s dwindling number of Holocaust survivors, Gitla Doppelt, beginning Monday with a screening of the 2008 film Defiance (R). It tells the story of World War II resistance fighters who fled to the Belarussian forests and worked to protect themselves and other Jewish noncombatants from Nazi occupiers. Doppelt, a part of that group with her brothers and parents, speaks at the Plaza Branch two nights later.
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Program: 
6:30 pm
Plaza Branch
Event Audio

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