{"id":19782,"date":"2022-09-19T11:33:41","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T15:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=19782"},"modified":"2022-10-19T15:43:13","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T19:43:13","slug":"best-selling-author-erik-larson-to-present-the-art-of-being-fearless-oct-28-at-american-history-book-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/best-selling-author-erik-larson-to-present-the-art-of-being-fearless-oct-28-at-american-history-book-club\/","title":{"rendered":"Best-selling author Erik Larson to present \u201cThe Art of Being Fearless\u201d Oct. 20 at American History Book Club"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the historic Galveston hurricane of 1900 to America\u2019s first modern serial killer, to an intimate look at Winston Churchill during the Blitz, narrative nonfiction writer Erik Larson<\/a> has a habit of bringing historical events to life in ways that put them atop best-seller lists.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Oct. 20, Larson will be in Greenville to deliver a talk titled \u201cThe Art of Being Fearless: What Churchill Can Teach Us about Courage, Leadership and Hope in a Time of Crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The talk will draw from Larson\u2019s book, \u201cThe Splendid and the Vile,\u201d published in 2020. Larson\u2019s latest work of narrative nonfiction, and his sixth consecutive best seller, chronicles Churchill\u2019s first year as prime minister of Great Britain, a year in which German bombs killed as many as 45,000 Britons. Larson explores how Churchill taught his citizens \u201cthe art of being fearless.\u201d He also weaves a narrative about Churchill family dramas playing out at the same time. NPR called the book, \u201cA bravura performance by one of America\u2019s greatest storytellers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The event, at The Poinsett Club<\/a>, will begin at 5:30 p.m. with a reception and book signing, followed at 6 p.m. by a talk and audience Q&A. The evening is sponsored by the American History Book Club and Forum<\/a> (AHBC) and Furman University<\/a>. (See below for ticket information.)<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s A.V. and Kate Huff History Scholars student and alumni award winners will also be recognized at the event. The awards are named for A.V. Huff, a former Furman professor, dean and vice president for academic affairs, and his wife Kate Huff, a former elementary school teacher.<\/p>\n

The winner of the A.V. Huff History Scholars Award is Isaiah Ives ’23 from Boston, Massachusetts, who is majoring in history and minoring in Middle East and Islamic studies. Isaiah will work with Distinguished University Public Historian and Scholar Courtney Tollison to research local sites that were listed in \u201cThe Negro Motorist Green Book\u201d between 1936 and 1966. \u00a0They plan to publish their findings as an article in an edited collection on sites of significance to African Americans in South Carolina.<\/p>\n

There are two winners of the Kate Huff History Scholars award. Katelyn Barnett ’12 teaches 4th grade at Sterling School in Greenville, South Carolina. She is from Memphis, Tennessee, and majored in education before earning a master\u2019s degree in early childhood education from Furman. Before joining the teaching staff at Sterling School, Katelyn taught at Augusta Circle Elementary School.\u00a0 In 2017, she was the first recipient of the Kate Huff History Scholars Award.<\/p>\n

Audrey Neumann ’15 M’17 is a media specialist at Roebuck Elementary school in Spartanburg, South Carolina. This is her eighth year in education and her first year in the library. Audrey enjoys serving on the district\u2019s teacher forum as a former teacher of the year. She is excited to help develop a love of reading in all students in her new library role. Audrey received her first Kate Huff History Scholars Award in 2018.<\/p>\n

Larson graduated with a bachelor\u2019s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976. After seeing \u201cAll the President\u2019s Men\u201d he decided to become a journalist. He got a master\u2019s degree from Columbia University\u2019s journalism school, worked a short stint at a suburban Philadelphia newspaper, and found a home for a few years with The Wall Street Journal in Philadelphia and San Francisco. He left journalism in 1985, married a woman he met on a blind date, and helped raise the couple\u2019s three daughters. He published his first book in 1994, \u201cThe Naked Consumer: How Our Private Lives Become Public Commodities.\u201d<\/p>\n

His breakthrough book came in 1999: \u201cIsaac\u2019s Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History.\u201d The book braided a narrative about a tragic personal story of arrogance with another about the deadliest natural disaster in American history and became Larson\u2019s first New York Times bestseller.<\/p>\n

Next came \u201cThe Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America.\u201d The book won an Edgar Award for best fact-crime writing, was a finalist for a National Book Award, and was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. Kirkus Reviews wrote: \u201cGripping drama, captured with a reporter\u2019s nose for a good story and a novelist\u2019s flair for telling it. \u2026 Superb.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other best sellers followed: \u201cThunderstruck,\u201d about Guglielmo Marconi and British serial killer Hawley Harvey Crippen; \u201cIn the Garden of Beasts,\u201d about America\u2019s first ambassador to Nazi Germany; and \u201cDead Wake,\u201d about the last crossing of the Lusitania. More recently Larson produced a fictional audiobook called \u201cNo One Goes Alone,\u201d ghost stories grounded in history.<\/p>\n

Larson and his wife, retired neonatologist and former blind date Christine Gleason, live in a fourth-floor apartment in Manhattan. He works from an office bathed in sunlight and adorned with toys and trinkets, like a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, two monkey lamps and a tiny lemur made of straw that his daughter brought him from Madagascar. From his workspace he watches people walking their dogs to and from the park. \u201cSome mornings,\u201d he writes on his website<\/a>, \u201cwhen an ambulance happens to come by, they all howl at once. Not the walkers, just the dogs. It is a remarkable thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information and to purchase tickets ($50 in person; $35 virtually), contact Valerie Kelley at valerie.kelley@furman.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The talk will draw from Larson\u2019s book, \u201cThe Splendid and the Vile,\u201d published in 2020. Larson\u2019s latest work of narrative nonfiction, and his sixth consecutive best seller, chronicles Churchill\u2019s first year as prime minister of Great Britain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":19790,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[1072,741,1632],"class_list":["post-19782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","tag-american-history-book-club","tag-history","tag-huff-history-scholars"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}