LEXINGTON, Ky.—Richard Norton Smith, presidential historian and scholar in residence at George Mason University, where he teaches on the American presidency, will deliver Transylvania’s winter Kenan Lecture Monday, Feb. 16, at 7:30 p.m. in Haggin Auditorium. The lecture, “Our Lincoln,” is free and open to the public.
A graduate of Harvard University with a degree in government, Smith is a prolific writer. His book, Thomas E. Dewey and His Times was a finalist for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize. His 1997 book The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick received the Goldsmith Prize from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School and was described by Hilton Kramer as “the best book every written about the press.” Smith currently is working on a biography of Nelson A. Rockefeller.
Smith is ABC News’ presidential historian and a political analyst for PBS. In 2003, he was named founding director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill., and executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation. Previously, he served as director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the Reagan Center for Public Affairs, the Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library and the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics.
The Kenan Lecture Series is made possible by a grant from the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust. For more information, contact the public relations office at (859) 233-8120.