In collaboration with Books & Books, The Prologue Society invites you to attend An Evening with David Grann at 5pm on Thursday, April 20, at the Books & Books Coral Gables store.

Our own Jim Herron will be introducing David and many of our members will recognize David as our April 2018 author when his new book was Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.

We hope you will join us!

Be sure to also register HERE for our three remaining 2022-2023 luncheons: Peter Cozzens on April 25, Simon Winchester on May 18, and Simon Sebag Montefiore on May 25.

A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South

From acclaimed historian Peter Cozzens, the story of the pivotal struggle between the Creek Indians and an insatiable, young United States for control over the Deep South

The Creek War is one of the most tragic episodes in American history, leading to the greatest loss of Native American life on what is now U.S. soil. What began as a vicious internal conflict among the Creek Indians metastasized like a cancer. The ensuing Creek War of 1813-1814 shattered Native American control of the Deep South and led to the infamous Trail of Tears, in which the government forcibly removed the southeastern Indians from their homeland. The war also gave Andrew Jackson his first combat leadership role, and his newfound popularity after defeating the Creeks would set him on the path to the White House. In A Brutal Reckoning, Peter Cozzens vividly captures the young Jackson, describing a brilliant but harsh military commander with unbridled ambition, a taste for cruelty, and a fraught sense of honor and duty. Jackson would not have won the war without the help of Native American allies, yet he denied their role and even insisted on their displacement, together with all the Indians of the American South in the Trail of Tears.

A conflict involving not only white Americans and Native Americans, but also the British and the Spanish, the Creek War opened the Deep South to the Cotton Kingdom, setting the stage for the American Civil War yet to come. No other single Indian conflict had such significant impact on the fate of America—and A Brutal Reckoning is the definitive book on this forgotten chapter in our history.

Peter Cozzens is the author or editor of eighteen acclaimed books on the American Civil War and the Indian Wars of the American West, and a member of the Advisory Council of the Lincoln Prize. In 2002, he was presented with the William R. Rivkin Award, for his achievements as an officer in the American Foreign Service, the association’s highest honor. He lives in Kensington, Maryland.

Photo credit: Antonia Feldman
Publisher: Knopf

• Guests: Non-members are welcome to attend one luncheon per season. Members may bring with them an unlimited number of non-member guests, as long as the guests, individually, abide by the above Non-member Guest policy.
  
• Registration: Pre-registration is required.
• Payment: Pre-payment is required.
• Cancellation Policy: Refunds will not be allowed for cancellations received after registration closes, and no-shows.

Updated 12/14/2022

*** NEW DATE: MAY 18, 2023 ***

Originally May 4

Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge, From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic

From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is award winning writer Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds.

Simon Winchester is the acclaimed author of many books, including The Professor and the Madman, The Men Who United the States, The Map That Changed the World, The Man Who Loved China, A Crack in the Edge of the World, and Krakatoa, all of which were New York Times bestsellers and appeared on numerous best and notable lists. In 2006, Winchester was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. He resides in western Massachusetts.

Photo credit: Rupert Winchester
Publisher: Harper

• Guests: Non-members are welcome to attend one luncheon per season. Members may bring with them an unlimited number of non-member guests, as long as the guests, individually, abide by the above Non-member Guest policy.
  
• Registration: Pre-registration is required.
• Payment: Pre-payment is required.
• Cancellation Policy: Refunds will not be allowed for cancellations received after registration closes, and no-shows.

Updated 3/17/2023

The World: A Family History of Humanity

A magisterial world history unlike any other that tells the story of humanity through the one thing we all have in common: families • From the New York Times best-selling author of The Romanovs

Around 950,000 years ago, a family of five walked along the beach and left behind the oldest family footprints ever discovered. For award-winning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, these poignant, familiar fossils serve as an inspiration for a new kind of world history, one that is genuinely global, spans all eras and all continents, and focuses on the family ties that connect every one of us.

In this epic, ever-surprising book, Montefiore chronicles the world’s great dynasties across human history through palace intrigues, love affairs, and family lives, linking grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion, and technology to the people at the heart of the human drama. It features a cast of extraordinary diversity: in addition to rulers and conquerors, there are priests, charlatans, artists, scientists, tycoons, gangsters, lovers, husbands, wives, and children. There is Hongwu, the beggar who founded the Ming dynasty; Ewuare, the Leopard-King of Benin; Henry Christophe, King of Haiti; Kamehameha, the conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, the Arab empress who defied Rome; Lady Murasaki, the first female novelist; Sayyida al-Hurra, the Moroccan pirate-queen. Here too are moderns such as Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Volodymyr Zelensky. Here are the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Krupps, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis and Kenyattas, Saudis, Kims and Assads. These powerful families represent the breadth of human endeavor, with bloody succession battles, treacherous conspiracies, and shocking megalomania alongside flourishing culture, moving romances, and enlightened benevolence. A dazzling achievement as spellbinding as fiction, The World captures the whole human story in a single, masterful narrative.

Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian of Russia and the Middle East whose books are published in more than forty languages. Catherine the Great and Potemkin was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards, and Young Stalin won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography, the Costa Biography Award, and le Grande Prix de la biographie politique. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in London.

Photo credit: Marcus Leni
Publisher: Knopf

• Guests: Non-members are welcome to attend one luncheon per season. Members may bring with them an unlimited number of non-member guests, as long as the guests, individually, abide by the above Non-member Guest policy.
  
• Registration: Pre-registration is required.
• Payment: Pre-payment is required.
• Cancellation Policy: Refunds will not be allowed for cancellations received after registration closes, and no-shows.

Updated 2/10/2023