A BRIEF HISTORY OF PAST EVENTS

Though The Prologue Society was established in 1992,
this list has been updated annually at the close of each season since 2007.

    • 20 Apr 2023
    • 5:00 PM
    • Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables FL 33134

    Event-Details

    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.

    Books & Books and The Prologue Society present

    In Person: An Evening with David Grann

    discussing his new book

    The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
    (Doubleday, $30)

    Thursday, April 20 at 5pm

    Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables FL 33134


    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.


     RSVP HERE FOR THIS FREE EVENT

    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.


    Updated 3/27/2023
    • 25 Apr 2023
    • 12:00 PM
    • Temple Israel of Greater Miami - Wolfson Auditorium, 137 NE 19th St, Miami, FL 33132
    • 69
    Register

    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


    • 18 May 2023
    • 12:00 PM
    • Temple Israel of Greater Miami - Wolfson Auditorium, 137 NE 19th St, Miami, FL 33132
    • 88
    Register

    *** 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.

    With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things—no need for math, no need for map-reading, no need for memorization—are we risking our ability to think? As we empty our minds, will we one day be incapable of thoughtfulness?

    Addressing these questions, Simon Winchester explores how humans have attained, stored, and disseminated knowledge. Examining such disciplines as education, journalism, encyclopedia creation, museum curation, photography, and broadcasting, he looks at a whole range of knowledge diffusion—from the cuneiform writings of Babylon to the machine-made genius of artificial intelligence, by way of Gutenberg, Google, and Wikipedia to the huge Victorian assemblage of the Mundanaeum, the collection of everything ever known, currently stored in a damp basement in northern Belgium.

    Studded with strange and fascinating details, Knowing What We Know is a deep dive into learning and the human mind. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom? Does Rene Descartes’s Cogito, ergo sum—“I think therefore I am,” the foundation for human knowledge widely accepted since the Enlightenment—still hold?

    And what will the world be like if no one in it is wise?

     

    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

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    • 25 May 2023
    • 12:00 PM
    • Temple Israel of Greater Miami - Wolfson Auditorium, 137 NE 19th St, Miami, FL 33132
    • 76
    Register

    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

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PAST EVENTS

09 Mar 2023 Lunch with Richard Cohen, "Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past"
23 Feb 2023 Lunch with Rachel Abrams, "Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy"
30 Jan 2023 Lunch with Tracy Kidder, "Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's urgent mission to bring healing to homeless people"
15 Dec 2022 Lunch with Ada Ferrer, "Cuba: An American History"
21 Nov 2022 Lunch with Stacy Schiff, "The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams"
18 Oct 2022 Lunch with David Maraniss, "Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe"
07 Apr 2022 Helen Rappaport, "After the Romanovs"
14 Mar 2022 Imani Perry, "South to America"
22 Feb 2022 Carl Bernstein, "Chasing History"
28 Jan 2022 Scott Eyman, "20th Century-Fox"
06 Dec 2021 Andrew Roberts, "The Last King of America"
09 Nov 2021 H.W. Brands, "Our First Civil War"
19 Oct 2021 Nancy Goldstone, "In the Shadow of the Empress"
24 Sep 2021 Anderson Cooper, "Vanderbilt"
01 Jan 2021 Spring 2021 Events
01 Sep 2020 Fall 2020 Events
04 Apr 2020 Summer Hiatus
03 Apr 2020 *CANCELED* Lunch with Esther Safran Foer, "I Want You to Know We're Still Here"
06 Mar 2020 Lunch with Erik Larson, "The Splendid and the Vile"
27 Feb 2020 Lunch with Marilyn Holifield, "Seven Sisters and a Brother"
24 Jan 2020 Lunch with Andrew Bacevich, Jr., "The Age of Illusions"
17 Dec 2019 Lunch with Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret.), "Sailing True North"
22 Nov 2019 Lunch with Marie Arana, in Conversation with Dabney Park
15 Oct 2019 Lunch with Victoria Riskin, "Fay Wray and Robert Riskin"
25 Apr 2019 Lunch with Andrew S. Curran, "Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely"
27 Mar 2019 Lunch with William Middleton, "Double Vision"
12 Feb 2019 Lunch with Doug Bradburn, and "Washington: A Life" by Ron Chernow
31 Jan 2019 Lunch with Andrew Roberts, "Churchill: Walking with Destiny"
05 Dec 2018 Lunch with Antony Beevor, "The Battle of Arnhem"
16 Nov 2018 Lunch with Doris Kearns Goodwin, "Leadership"
04 Oct 2018 Lunch with Jack E. Davis, "The Gulf"
24 Aug 2018 An Evening with David Lawrence, Jr. (A Dedicated Life)
11 May 2018 An evening with Les Standiford (Center of Dreams) in conversation with Stuart Blumberg
18 Apr 2018 Lunch with David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon)
08 Mar 2018 Lunch with Giles Milton (Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare)
22 Feb 2018 Lunch with Bijan Omrani (Caesar's Footprints)
17 Jan 2018 Lunch with Simon Sebag Montefiore (Red Sky at Noon)
05 Dec 2017 Lunch with Arlo Haskell (The Jews of Key West)
17 Nov 2017 An evening with Walter Isaacson and Leonard Da Vinci (cocktails and hors d'oeuvres)
10 Oct 2017 Lunch with James Holland (The Allies Strike Back)
06 Apr 2017 Lunch with Annie Jacobsen (Phenomena)
15 Mar 2017 Lunch with Caitlin Fitz (Our Sister Republics)
15 Feb 2017 Lunch with Gregory W. Bush (White Sand Black Beach)
26 Jan 2017 Lunch with David Oshinsky (Bellevue)
08 Dec 2016 Lunch with David France (How to Survive a Plague)
17 Nov 2016 Lunch with Ross King (Mad Enchantment)
21 Oct 2016 Lunch with Jon Meacham (Destiny and Power)
22 Sep 2016 Lunch with Catherine Fletcher (The Black Prince of Florence)
31 Aug 2016 2016-2017 Fall Season Preview (September through December)
13 May 2016 Lunch with Simon Sebag Montefiore (The Romanovs)
14 Apr 2016 Lunch with Janice Nimura (Daughters of the Samurai)
17 Mar 2016 Lunch with Les Standiford (Water to the Angels)
24 Feb 2016 Lunch with Fergus Bordewich (The First Congress)
20 Jan 2016 Lunch with Arva Moore Parks (George Merrick, Son of the South Wind)
10 Dec 2015 Lunch with Sean McMeekin (The Ottoman Endgame)
30 Nov 2015 Lunch with Karl Rove (The Triumph of William McKinley)
20 Nov 2015 Lunch with Stacy Schiff (The Witches)
27 Oct 2015 Lunch with Tim Weiner (One Man Against the World)
07 Oct 2015 Arva Moore Parks | Special Event
Copyright 1992-2023 The Prologue Society, Inc.
Miami, Florida USA




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