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.

    • December 06, 2023
    • 12:00 PM
    • Temple Israel of Greater Miami - Wolfson Auditorium, 137 NE 19th St, Miami, FL 33132
    • 58
    Register

    Flight of the Wasp: The Rise, Fall, and Future of America's Original Ruling Class

    Fifteen families.
    Four hundred years. The complex saga of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite in
    America's history.

    For decades, writers from Cleveland Amory to Joseph Alsop to the editors of Politico have proclaimed the diminishment of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who for generations were the
    dominant socio-cultural-political force in America. While the WASP elite has, in the last half century, indeed drifted from American centrality to the periphery, its relevance and impact remain, as Michael Gross reveals in his compelling chronicle.

    From Colonial America's founding settlements through the Gilded Age to the present day, Gross traces the complex legacy of American WASPs--their
    profound accomplishments and egregious failures--through the lives of fifteen influential individuals and their very privileged, sometimes intermarried families. As the Bradford, Randolph, Morris, Biddle, Sanford, Peabody and Whitney clans progress, prosper and periodically stumble, defining aspects in the four-century sweep of American history emerge: our wide, oft-contentious religious diversity; the deep scars of slavery, genocide, and intolerance; the creation and sometime mis-use of astonishing economic and political power; an enduring belief in the future; an instinct to offset inequity with philanthropy; an equal capacity for irresponsible, sometimes wanton, behavior.

    "American society was supposed to be different," writes Gross, "but for most of our history we have had a patriciate, an aristocracy, a hereditary oligarchic upper class, who initiated the American national experiment." In previous acclaimed books such as 740 Park and Rogues' Gallery, Gross has explored elite culture in microcosm; expanding the canvas, Flight of the WASP chronicles it across four centuries and fifteen generations in an ambitious and consequential contribution to American history.


    Michael Gross is the author of New York Times bestsellers Model, 740 Park, and House of Outrageous Fortune, as well as Rogues' Gallery, My Generation, Unreal Estate, and Focus. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, New York, Esquire, GQ, Vanity Fair, and many other publications around the world. Online, he writes for Air Mail and The Daily Beast. Currently Editor at Large of Palmer: The Palm Beach Reader, he lives in New York City.


    Photo credit: Thorsten Roth
    Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press



    • 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.
    • Registration will close on Monday, December 4.

    10/22/2023


    • January 18, 2024
    • 12:00 PM
    • Temple Israel of Greater Miami - Wolfson Auditorium, 137 NE 19th St, Miami, FL 33132
    • 84
    Register

    From Death Row to Freedom: The Struggle for Racial Justice in the Pitts-Lee Case

    An insider's account of a wrongful conviction and the fight to overturn it during the civil rights era 

    This book is an insider's account of the case of Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee, two Black men who were wrongfully charged and convicted of the murder of two white gas station attendants in Port St. Joe, Florida, in 1963, and sentenced to death. Phillip Hubbart, a defense lawyer for Pitts and Lee for more than 10 years, examines the crime, the trial, and the appeals with both a keen legal perspective and an awareness of the endemic racism that pervaded the case and obstructed justice. Hubbart discusses how the case against Pitts and Lee was based entirely on confessions obtained from the defendants and an alleged "eyewitness" through prolonged, violent interrogations and how local authorities repeatedly rejected later evidence pointing to the real killer, a white man well known to the Port St. Joe police. The book follows the case's tortuous route through the Florida courts to the defendants' eventual exoneration in 1975 by the Florida governor and cabinet. From Death Row to Freedom is a thorough chronicle of deep prejudice in the courts and brutality at the hands of police during the civil rights era of the 1960s. Hubbart argues that the Pitts-Lee case is a piece of American history that must be remembered, along with other similar incidents, in order for the country to make any progress toward racial reconciliation today. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.


    Phillip A. Hubbart served for 19 years as a judge on the Third District Court of Appeal of Florida; 12 years as a public defender in Miami, Florida, and Washington, D.C.; and over 30 years as adjunct professor of law in Miami. From 1965 to 1975, he served as a defense attorney for Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee.


    Photo credit: @phillipahubbart
    Publisher: University Press of Florida



    • 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.
    • Registration will close on Tuesday, January 16.

    10/22/2023


PAST EVENTS

November 02, 2023 An Evening with Mary Beard, "Emperor of Rome"
October 22, 2023 An Evening with Walter Isaacson, "Elon Musk"
September 20, 2023 Lunch with Jill Lepore, "The Deadline: Essays"
June 01, 2023 Summer Hiatus
May 25, 2023 Lunch with Simon Sebag Montefiore, "The World: A Family History of Humanity"
May 18, 2023 Lunch with Simon Winchester, "Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge, From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic"
April 25, 2023 Lunch with Peter Cozzens, "A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South"
April 20, 2023 An Evening with David Grann: A Books & Books and The Prologue Society Event
March 09, 2023 Lunch with Richard Cohen, "Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past"
February 23, 2023 Lunch with Rachel Abrams, "Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy"
January 30, 2023 Lunch with Tracy Kidder, "Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's urgent mission to bring healing to homeless people"
December 15, 2022 Lunch with Ada Ferrer, "Cuba: An American History"
November 21, 2022 Lunch with Stacy Schiff, "The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams"
October 18, 2022 Lunch with David Maraniss, "Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe"
April 07, 2022 Helen Rappaport, "After the Romanovs"
March 14, 2022 Imani Perry, "South to America"
February 22, 2022 Carl Bernstein, "Chasing History"
January 28, 2022 Scott Eyman, "20th Century-Fox"
December 06, 2021 Andrew Roberts, "The Last King of America"
November 09, 2021 H.W. Brands, "Our First Civil War"
October 19, 2021 Nancy Goldstone, "In the Shadow of the Empress"
September 24, 2021 Anderson Cooper, "Vanderbilt"
January 01, 2021 Spring 2021 Events
September 01, 2020 Fall 2020 Events
April 03, 2020 *CANCELED* Lunch with Esther Safran Foer, "I Want You to Know We're Still Here"
March 06, 2020 Lunch with Erik Larson, "The Splendid and the Vile"
February 27, 2020 Lunch with Marilyn Holifield, "Seven Sisters and a Brother"
January 24, 2020 Lunch with Andrew Bacevich, Jr., "The Age of Illusions"
December 17, 2019 Lunch with Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret.), "Sailing True North"
November 22, 2019 Lunch with Marie Arana, in Conversation with Dabney Park
October 15, 2019 Lunch with Victoria Riskin, "Fay Wray and Robert Riskin"
April 25, 2019 Lunch with Andrew S. Curran, "Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely"
March 27, 2019 Lunch with William Middleton, "Double Vision"
February 12, 2019 Lunch with Doug Bradburn, and "Washington: A Life" by Ron Chernow
January 31, 2019 Lunch with Andrew Roberts, "Churchill: Walking with Destiny"
December 05, 2018 Lunch with Antony Beevor, "The Battle of Arnhem"
November 16, 2018 Lunch with Doris Kearns Goodwin, "Leadership"
October 04, 2018 Lunch with Jack E. Davis, "The Gulf"
August 24, 2018 An Evening with David Lawrence, Jr. (A Dedicated Life)
May 11, 2018 An evening with Les Standiford (Center of Dreams) in conversation with Stuart Blumberg
April 18, 2018 Lunch with David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon)
March 08, 2018 Lunch with Giles Milton (Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare)
February 22, 2018 Lunch with Bijan Omrani (Caesar's Footprints)
January 17, 2018 Lunch with Simon Sebag Montefiore (Red Sky at Noon)
December 05, 2017 Lunch with Arlo Haskell (The Jews of Key West)
November 17, 2017 An evening with Walter Isaacson and Leonard Da Vinci (cocktails and hors d'oeuvres)
October 10, 2017 Lunch with James Holland (The Allies Strike Back)
April 06, 2017 Lunch with Annie Jacobsen (Phenomena)
March 15, 2017 Lunch with Caitlin Fitz (Our Sister Republics)
February 15, 2017 Lunch with Gregory W. Bush (White Sand Black Beach)
January 26, 2017 Lunch with David Oshinsky (Bellevue)
December 08, 2016 Lunch with David France (How to Survive a Plague)
November 17, 2016 Lunch with Ross King (Mad Enchantment)
October 21, 2016 Lunch with Jon Meacham (Destiny and Power)
September 22, 2016 Lunch with Catherine Fletcher (The Black Prince of Florence)
August 31, 2016 2016-2017 Fall Season Preview (September through December)
May 13, 2016 Lunch with Simon Sebag Montefiore (The Romanovs)
April 14, 2016 Lunch with Janice Nimura (Daughters of the Samurai)
March 17, 2016 Lunch with Les Standiford (Water to the Angels)
February 24, 2016 Lunch with Fergus Bordewich (The First Congress)
January 20, 2016 Lunch with Arva Moore Parks (George Merrick, Son of the South Wind)
December 10, 2015 Lunch with Sean McMeekin (The Ottoman Endgame)
November 30, 2015 Lunch with Karl Rove (The Triumph of William McKinley)
November 20, 2015 Lunch with Stacy Schiff (The Witches)
October 27, 2015 Lunch with Tim Weiner (One Man Against the World)
October 07, 2015 Arva Moore Parks | Special Event
Copyright 1992-2023 The Prologue Society, Inc.
Miami, Florida USA




SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave
Powered by Wild Apricot Membership Software