Open Invitation to meet Dr. Richard White at the Lore Kephart '86 Distinguished Historians Lecture Series

This year's Lore Kephart '86 Distinguished Lecture Series is bringing Dr. Richard White, the esteemed Margaret Byrne Professor of American History at Stanford University, to Villanova University for a lecture titled: "The Late Great Environmental Crisis of the Gilded Age: A Success Story."

The Lecture Series is a gift by my father to the university from which my mother graduated with honors after raising three children. Each year it brings extraordinary people to the campus for dialogue with students and the community. Jill Lepore has joined us. Andrew Bacevich. James McPherson. Others.

The selection of Dr. Richard White for this year's lecture is especially timely—and inspired. Dr. White is a Pulitzer-Prize nominated historian with a special interest in environmental history and Native American history. Through his Spatial History Lab at Stanford, he "explores the construction of space by transcontinental railroads during the late nineteenth century." It's a topic about which he wrote in Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, a Los Angeles Times Book Award winner.

My father, the Kephart family, and Villanova University invite you to join us for this free event:

October 1, 2015

7 PM - 9 PM

Villanova Room, Connelly Center

Villanova University

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The Lore Kephart '86 Distinguished Historians Lecture Series Introduces Dr. Isabel Hull and Thoughts on the First World War

It has been my privilege, through the years, to share word of the annual lecture series created by my father and Villanova University in memory of my mother, Lore Kephart. My mother was, herself, a distinguished woman—not just a graduate of Villanova and a writer, but a woman of great intelligence and grace who also (with enviable ease) served dinners no one who ever ate them will forget.

My mother would have deeply appreciated the time that the Villanova team, together with my father, put into selecting Dr. Isabel V. Hull, Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University, as this year's honored guest. Dr. Hull has two degrees from Yale University in History, as well as an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan. At Cornell she teaches courses with titles like "The International Laws of War," "The First World War: Causes, Conduct, Consequences," and "History of Liberalism." She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a John Guggenheim Fellow, and an Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Research Fellow.

This year Dr. Hull published her new book, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law in the First World War, which Samuel Moyn, writing in the Wall Street Journal, wrote: "is a strong demonstration of the worth of international law and the laws of war in particular, and vindicates Ms. Hull's standing as one of our greatest historians of modern European politics."

It is this book that will form the basis of Dr. Hull's talk at Villanova University on October 9, starting at 7 o'clock. The event is free and open to the public. The Kephart family and Villanova University extend a warm invitation.

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Three Days to Remember: my mother, my friends, my girls, my seaside, poems, words

Everything about this weekend was perfect.

On Friday evening I joined my father at Villanova University, where my mother was being honored by artist Niko Chocheli. This was shortly after learning that my fabulous nephew has chosen to attend a very fine college not far from my own home. The kind of news any aunt would want to hear.

On Saturday, after writing a Going Over poem for a certain band of students who will be reading this Berlin novel over the summer, I had the immense privilege of visiting Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls on behalf of the first-ever, immaculately well-run Teen Writers Festival. All thanks to Sister Kimberly Miller and K.M. Walton, who organized the day, to the girls who came, to the families who encouraged them, and to my fellow rocking writers. The community strengthens. The friendships grow.

I read, and was deeply moved by, the portraits my own students at Penn created about people who matter to them. Something essential happens when we stop to remember. When we ask. When we listen. When we evoke. History of impressions.

My story about pre-season/post-storm Beach Haven appeared in the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer, sharing a front cover page with Philadelphia's own archbishop, one of those small coincidences that makes a writer smile.

A poem I wrote appeared on Serena Agusto-Cox's blog here, in honor of National Poetry Month.

Words I'd once written about the young adult label were quoted alongside the thoughts of Lauren Oliver and Cornelia Funke in a very interesting New Straits Times story by Samantha Joseph, here. This was the second weekend in which something I'd said in one place was discovered (by Serena Agusto Cox) elsewhere. A week ago, the LA Times quoted me here, in this piece about Gina Frangello.

I received a gorgeous, handwritten (!) letter from Amy Gigi Alexander, a letter written while Amy sat in a cafe in the Petit Square of Tangiers. Amy, I could not be more honored by your words there. Treasured words, which will sit among treasured things.

And finally, but never ever ever finally, Bill and I spent yesterday afternoon with our beloved friends, John and Andra. John Bell was both conducting and directing Meredith Wilson's "The Music Man" at the Labuda Center for the Performing Arts at DeSales University, where John chairs the Performing and Fine Arts Department. It was a rich and wonderful performance. It was a perfect time with two very dear friends.

Today I sit preparing for the launch of Going Over at the Radnor Memorial Library, this coming Wednesday evening, 7:30. I hope you will join us.

Tomorrow I say goodbye to my students. That, my friends, is one of the hardest things I do.

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Lore Kephart Honored by Artist Niko Chocheli at Villanova University

Years ago, my mother met a young artist from the Republic of Georgia and soon believed in—and wholly supported—his dream of becoming a U.S. citizen. That painter, muralist, illustrator, iconographer, and etcher—Niko Chocheli—has since become internationally renowned and his work is now on display in the Villanova University Art Gallery, in an exhibit dedicated to my mother.

The words above tell the story. Chocheli's art has been compared to that of DaVinci, Michelangelo, and Rubens.

It was an honor to go to the opening exhibit this evening with my father, where some of my mother's friends had also gathered.

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The week that was, the events that will be, an A.S. King road trip, and thank you, Library Matters (and Serena)

It has been a remarkable week of sun, then clouds, now storm. In the midst of it all I traveled to Rosemont College to meet with Anne Willkomm's class to talk about the making of Dangerous Neighbors, my centennial Philadelphia novel. (Bonus: I got to see the program's fearless leader, Carla Spataro.)

On Tuesday evening I was at Villanova University, at a program honoring the memory of my mother. (Bonus, Colum McCann was in the house.)

Yesterday morning, I had the great privilege and fun of joining my dear friend Elizabeth Mosier in her Bryn Mawr College classroom to talk about both Dangerous Neighbors and Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent. (Bonus: Any time spent with Elizabeth Mosier is a bonus.)

Yesterday, I was also featured on Book Country, in a discussion about researching memoir.

Tomorrow I'll be at Rosemont College for the Push to Publish event, joining friends on a memoir panel. We encourage you to join us.

Next weekend, two great things are happening: On Saturday, October 19, I'm reading with Liz Rosenberg at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore, in Mount Airy, PA. The event begins at 5 PM. All thanks to Minter Krozer for making that possible. Liz will read from The Laws of Gravity. I will read from—well, I'm still figuring that out. But Handling the Truth will definitely be part of my story. I may debut Going Over, my Berlin novel, just for the fun of it as well.

On Sunday, October, 20, I'm participating in the Memoir Summit at Rosemont College with Linda Joy Meyers, Robert Waxler, and Jerry Waxler. This event, featuring four free workshops, is free and open to the public, and according to Fearless Carla Spataro, registrations are coming in from all up and down the east coast.

Finally, on Monday, October 21, the amazing A.S. King and I are taking a road trip to western Pennsylvania, where we will have a chance to meet with the wonderful librarians of Pennsylvania. Amy won the Carolyn W. Field Award for her fantastic Ask the Passengers. My Small Damages was named an Honor Award recipient.

There's a client trip in the middle of all this—a chance to learn about a part of the world I've never seen. Think of my hair blowing in the wind.

Finally, today, I am heartened by these words in the Library Matters, in the Greene County Record, about Handling the Truth. Serena Agusto-Cox let me know. What a fine friend she is.

If you’ve ever thought of telling your life story but aren’t sure where to start, pick up a copy of Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, by noted author Beth Kephart.

This beautifully written volume offers advice on finding your voice, framing your story and developing themes. Kephart, a National Book Award finalist for her first memoir ... and a teacher in the University of Pennsylvania’s creative writing program, is a capable guide on the challenging path to finding your truth.

 

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Honoring my mother at Villanova, and how I came to own three copies of Colum McCann's novel, Transatlantic

We honored my mother last evening at Villanova University—the Lore Kephart '86 Distinguished Historians Lecture Series being one of my father's lasting gifts in her memory. Ray Takeyh, PhD, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, spoke brilliantly (and with appreciated sparks of humor) on "Iran in Transition." An early meal with Paul Rosier, who chairs Villanova University's History Department, Paul Steege, who helped identify Dr. Takeyh as a speaker, the wonderful Reverend Kail Ellis, and so many special Villanovans got the evening off to a fabulous start. My sister came with her dear daughter Claire. My blue-eyed brother arrived and entertained. My father wore one of his many beautiful ties and was the elegant man that he is.

And then there was the moment, early on, when Father Peter M. Donohue, the charismatic president of Villanova, mentioned that there was a certain writer also in the house last evening at Connelly Center. An Irishman, he said.

Not Colum McCann, I said.

Yes. Colum McCann, he said.

A raised eyebrow. A rapidly beating heart. A blurt: Colum McCann is my third favorite writer, I said.

Which would sound like a compliment to anyone who has seen the hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of books in my house. There's a lot of competition. Only Michael Ondaatje and Alice McDermott stand above.

I had read McCann's newest, Transatlantic, the week it came out, and had written of it here. That didn't matter. A young man named Daniel disappeared and returned with a copy of the novel, signed Colum McCann. Later, Father Peter himself greeted me with a second copy of the book, this time signed specifically to me.

I told him he is your third favorite writer, Father Pete said.

You didn't, I said.

Oh yes I did.

A good man never lies. A good reader should never rank.

Thank you to Villanova University, Father Pete, Reverend Ellis, Paul Rosier, Paul Steege, Diane Brocchi, Ray Takeyh, and everyone else who made last night a success. Thank you to my father for having this idea in the first place.

And special thanks to Elizabeth Mosier, Chris Mills, and Nazie Dana, who made the night even more glorious.

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Jill Lepore: The Prodigal Daughter

Each year, for the Lore Kephart '86 Distinguished Historians Lecture Series, a group of faithful Villanova University scholars (including my good friend Paul Steege) work with my father to choose a speaker who will engage the Villanova students, faculty, and greater community. In 2011, that speaker was Jill Lepore, whose work I have always admired and whose presentation on Jane Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's sister, was exquisite. Jill was working on a book, she'd told us. What a great a book we knew it would be.

In this week's New Yorker, Jill Lepore contributes an essay titled "The Prodigal Daughter" that interleaves her research on Jane Franklin with her own growing up with a mother who was primed for beauty and who insisted that Jill go out and embrace the world. It is the most personal essay I've ever read by Lepore—and, by far, the most wrenching. It bears reading by any writer seeking proof of how the personal can elevate the historical, and how history bears on the present day. The final paragraph of Lepore's essay made me weep, literally. But let me share here the place where it all begins:

In the trunk of her car, my mother used to keep a collapsible easel, a clutch of brushes, a little wooden case stocked with tubes of paint, and, tucked into the spare-tire well, one of my father's old, tobacco-stained shirts, for a smock. She'd be out running errands, see something wonderful, pull over, and pop the trunk. I never knew anyone better prepared to meet with beauty.

And later—a passage I remember well from Lepore's 2011 talk:

He ran away in 1723, when he was seventeen and she was eleven. The day he turned twenty-one, he wrote her a letter—she was fourteen—beginning a correspondence that would last until his death. (He wrote more letters to her than he wrote to anyone else.) He became a printer, a philosopher, and a statesman. She became a wife, a mother, and a widow. He signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and the Constitution. She strained to form the letters of her name.

Lepore's new volume, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, is set for publication in October. My mother would have loved Jill Lepore. If you don't already love her,  you will after reading "The Prodigal Daughter."

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Jill Lepore and the electrifying evening

I'd like to use the word "electrifying" in the following post.  I'd like to use it several times.

Because that's the word that kept coming to mind throughout our time with Jill Lepore, who last evening graced Villanova University as the third speaker in The Lore Kephart '86 Distinguished Historians Lecture Series.  If I had allowed myself to wonder, theoretically, how one young woman could have already achieved so much in life—she's a professor of American History at Harvard and one of my very favorite writers at The New Yorker; she's published books on topics ranging from the Tea Party to the origins of American identity; she's gone to Dickens camp and read 38 volumes of original Ben Franklin; her work has won the Bancroft Prize and been a finalist for the Pulitzer; she's even co-authored a novel—I stopped wondering two minutes after she walked into the room.  The answer is pretty basic, pretty simple:  Jill Lepore doesn't waste an ounce of her intellect on posturing or presumption.  Her enthusiasm is equal to her intelligence.  Her facility with language, structure, theme is all in rather happy accordance with her capacity to sleuth her way toward truth.

She was extraordinary last night.  She was—here it comes—electrifying as she spoke about Jane Franklin, Ben Franklin's sister and truest correspondent (for more on the topic, please click here).  My mother would have loved Jill Lepore.  She would have sat there as I sat there, on the edge of a seat in a crowded room, happy to be in the company of one that exhilarating, that engaged. 

There are so many who make an event like this happen.  I'm particularly grateful to my friend Paul Steege, a Villanova University associate professor of history who sits on the speaker selection committee, to Diane Brocchi, to Father Kail Ellis, to Marc Gallicchio, and to Adele Lindenmeyr.  And of course, none of this would be possible without my father, Horace Kephart, who had the foresight to create this lecture series in memory of the woman he loved. 

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Am I a Narcissist?

I'll be headed to London in a few days for a very quick trip and so, in typical Beth style, I am trying to complete every single task on every single list before I get on that plane.  Stupid, I know.

That means that the last few days have been consumed with the writing of the second draft of a commemorative book for a client, the back-and-forthing with an insurance agent, the prepping for a school visit at the Eighth Grade Center @ Springford, the watching of a documentary about graffiti, the blogging about Ismet Prcic's debut novel Shards, the writing of stories for a client news magazine, the neglect of a few emails I still have to write, the repolishing of my nails, the development of a plan to put my William novel into the world, the forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning, the thinking through of my spring Penn course, the preparation for the upcoming Jill Lepore lecture at Villanova University (wait, how does one prepare?), the reading of the first two chapters of The Art of Fielding because it is about time, the cooking of a dinner that could have been better, the reading of a friend's forthcoming novel, the writing of verse for our holiday card, the realization that the roof is leaking again, and the completion of an adult novel that has been in the works for years.  I also purchased a few early holiday gifts and made the decision—an emphatic one—that I do not like shopping.  No, I do not.

{For those, who, understandably, plan to read no further, please note (see below) that this tongue-in-cheekish list was produced to make a larger point.}

In the midst of all of this, I paged through (lightning speed) the December 5 issue of Newsweek.  (Frankly, I still have a lot of questions about this new iteration of Newsweek, but those questions are for another day.)  I stopped at page 61, the Omnivore page, where Diablo Cody and Charlize Theron look out upon the reader.  The story is called "The Narcissist Decade," and it's an essay Cody has penned in anticipation of the December 9 release of her film "Young Adult."

"Young Adult," as it turns out, is about a not-very-nice seeming young adult author.  Cody tells us:  "Mavis's humble peers possess something that eludes her more each year:  growth.  They've matured into seasoned adults with perspective and humility, while Mavis continues to flail in a self-created hell of reality TV, fashion magazines, blind dates, and booze."

(I sincerely hope that Mavis is not meant as a stand-in for all YA authors.  I sincerely hope that.  I do.)

In any case, later on in the essay, Cody, whose husband has told her that she shares a number of traits with Mavis (an assertion Cody at first denies), goes on to suggest that perhaps we are all narcissists.

Before you get as offended as I did, allow me to explain.  Sure, we're not all deranged homewreckers in pursuit of past glory.  But if the era of Facebook and Twitter has fed any monsters, it's those of vanity, self-obsession, and immaturity.  Who among us hasn't Googled an ex, or measured our own online social circle against that of a perceived rival, or snapped multiple "profile photos" in an attempt to find the best angle?  Who hasn't caught herself watching an episode of "Jersey Shore" and thought, "I'm a grown-up. Why am I concerned with these people and their sex lives?

I haven't actually ever done any of those things (helped in part by the fact that I never had an ex and that I'm too uncool to know what channel "Jersey Shore" is on).  But I suspect that anyone could look upon a blogger who enumerates her week's activities as a narcissist (for the record, I was just trying to make a point up there).  Any memoirist (and heck, I've written five and am halfway through a sixth) could also be called one of those—you know—those.  Any Facebooker who has ever logged a single status update could also get slammed with the term.

But here's what I'm going to suggest, a modest proposal:

It's how we live our whole life (lives?) that counts.

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Jill Lepore, Ben Franklin and his Sister, and an Invitation to an Evening at Villanova University

On December 6, 2011, starting at 7 PM, Jill Lepore will join hundreds of students, faculty members, and university neighbors in the Villanova Room of the Connelly Center. I'm extremely proud that Dr. Lepore represents the third speaker in The Lore Kephart '86 Distinguished Historians Lecture Series, an annual event that my father created in memory of my mother, who graduated in the top of her Villanova University class following a college career that was not initiated until she had raised her three children.

Dr. Lepore's talk is titled "Poor Jane's Almanac: The Life and Opinions of Benjamin Franklin's Sister," with the further subtitle: "an 18th century tale of two Americas."  We get some hint of the fascinating content to come in this New York Times op-ed piece, which appeared on April 23, 2011.  I am excerpting at length, and I hope to be forgiven:

Franklin, who’s on the $100 bill, was the youngest of 10 sons. Nowhere on any legal tender is his sister Jane, the youngest of seven daughters; she never traveled the way to wealth. He was born in 1706, she in 1712. Their father was a Boston candle-maker, scraping by. Massachusetts’ Poor Law required teaching boys to write; the mandate for girls ended at reading. Benny went to school for just two years; Jenny never went at all.

Their lives tell an 18th-century tale of two Americas. Against poverty and ignorance, Franklin prevailed; his sister did not.

At 17, he ran away from home. At 15, she married: she was probably pregnant, as were, at the time, a third of all brides. She and her brother wrote to each other all their lives: they were each other’s dearest friends. (He wrote more letters to her than to anyone.) His letters are learned, warm, funny, delightful; hers are misspelled, fretful and full of sorrow. “Nothing but troble can you her from me,” she warned. It’s extraordinary that she could write at all.

“I have such a Poor Fackulty at making Leters,” she confessed.

He would have none of it. “Is there not a little Affectation in your Apology for the Incorrectness of your Writing?” he teased. “Perhaps it is rather fishing for commendation. You write better, in my Opinion, than most American Women.” He was, sadly, right.

She had one child after another; her husband, a saddler named Edward Mecom, grew ill, and may have lost his mind, as, most certainly, did two of her sons. She struggled, and failed, to keep them out of debtors’ prison, the almshouse, asylums. She took in boarders; she sewed bonnets. She had not a moment’s rest.

And still, she thirsted for knowledge. “I Read as much as I Dare,” she confided to her brother. She once asked him for a copy of “all the Political pieces” he had ever written. “I could as easily make a collection for you of all the past parings of my nails,” he joked. He sent her what he could; she read it all. But there was no way out. 

Dr. Lepore, whose work in The New Yorker always thrills me and whose mind seems to track one curiosity after the other—Charles Dickens, Planned Parenthood, the Tea Party, Stuart Little, (she's even got a co-authored novel to her name)—is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American history at Harvard University.  She follows Pulitzer Prize winning James McPherson and the utterly engaging Andrew Bacevich as a Distinguished speaker in the series.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is recommended, given the large turnout we are blessed with each year.  Here, again, are the facts:

Jill Lepore, PhD

Poor Jane's Almanac: The Life and Opinions of Benjamin Franklin's Sister

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

7 PM

Villanova Room, Connelly Center

http://www.villanova.edu/events/lectures/kephartseries/

I hope to see you there.  I'll be in the front along with family and friends.

(The photo, by the way, is in honor of the fact that Benjamin Franklin was key among those early environmentalists who fought to preserve the Schuylkill and her drinking water.)

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Jill Lepore to Headline the Third Annual Lore Kephart Distinguished Historians Lecture

A week or so ago, when my husband and I were powerless, my father called and invited us to dinner at his home, where my mother's orchids still grow, the figurines still shine, and the sun yet goldens the rooms.  Glimmers of my mother, all.  We were almost finished with this delightful repast (cloth napkins! dimmed lights! smart vegetables! organic cookies!) when my father mentioned that the Villanova University committee entrusted with the selection of a scholar for the Lore Kephart Distinguished Historians Lecture Series had made its decision, and that Jill Lepore was slated to come.  She follows Pulitzer Prize winning James McPherson and the utterly engaging Andrew Bacevich  in this role, and she will appear at the university on the evening of December 6th, details to come.

Jill Lepore happens to be one of my idols. She's not just the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer for The New Yorker.  She's a woman who smiles warmly back at you from her portrait photos, despite the fact that her head is preposterously full of stuff about Charles Dickens and the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin's youngest sister and the Tea Party, eighteenth-century Manhattan and the King Philip's War (she has written or is writing books about it all).  For an apparent change of pace, she's even co-authored a widely acclaimed novel called Blindspot.  And once she wrote a New Yorker piece called "The Lion and the Mouse" (about E.B. White, Stuart Little, and the sometimes ridiculously short-sighted nature of critics and publishing houses) that was so letter perfect I didn't just blog about it here.  I wrote Ms. Lepore a gushing fan letter.  Miraculously, Ms. Lepore wrote back. 

Jill Lepore will be talking about the Tea Party and the Constitution in December.  I'll be providing more details as I can.  For now I'm simply expressing my excitement that my mother and father are working together once again to bring all of us something grander than grand.

My thanks to Paul Steege, a good friend, fine teacher, smart writer, and great soul, who remains a key member of this selection committee.

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An evening with Andrew Bacevich at Villanova University

Yesterday was another day of privileges—a morning spent in a visionary's office reflecting on the fate and future of our city, an evening spent in the company of Villanova University leaders and political commentator/New York Times bestseller Andrew Bacevich (The Limits of Power, Washington Rules) on the occasion of the second Lore Kephart '86 Distinguished Historians Lecture series. 

My father created the series with the hope of generating a sustaining conversation around important issues in our community.  He created the series to honor the memory of my mother.  Last night, again, hundreds of people turned out for the occasion—hundreds—students, faculty, neighboring residents, and long-time family friends.  A year of planning goes into a night like that one, and we Kepharts have a tremendous community at Villanova to thank—a president, Rev. Peter M. Donohue, and a dean, Father Kail Ellis, who spend the evening with us, who charm us; a committee of esteemed historians, including my friend, Paul Steege, who help identify the right lecturer (last year they chose Pulitzer Prize winner Dr. James McPherson); and a staff of individuals who make the evening seamless.

Toward the end of the evening, following a remarkable lecture and passionate Q and A, I received a text message from my son, who is off at school.  His thoughts, he said, were with my mother.  He imagined her looking down in peace.  I did, too.

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Andrew J. Bacevich to speak on behalf of The Lore Kephart '86 Distinguished Historians Lecture Series

On Monday, September 27, 2010, (7 PM, Connelly Center, Villanova University), Andrew J. Bacevich, PhD, a professor of International Relations and History at Boston University, will speak at the second annual Lore Kephart '86 Distinguished Historians Lecture Series. A graduate of West Point with a PhD in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University, Dr. Bacevich is a "Catholic conservative" and the author of the much-discussed The Limits of Power.  He is also a father who lost his own son, a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army, in action Iraq.

Having titled his talk "Whose Army?" Dr. Bacevich will reflect on civil and military relations in the U.S. since World War II, a talk that will inevitably move Dr. Bacevich toward a question he has recently asked in the press:  "Who is more deserving of contempt? The commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause, however misguided, in which he sincerely believes? Or the commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause in which he manifestly does not believe and yet refuses to forsake?"

My mother, in whose memory my father created this lecture series, would have loved the intellectual rigor that Dr. Bacevich will no doubt bring to this talk.  She would have loved knowing that her love of knowing was again bringing so many together.  This morning, in moving through my files in search of an elusive contract, I found instead an essay my mother had written while she was herself a student at Villanova.  Mom received her college degree late in life, but when she set down to academic business, she soared, earning top recognition as a scholar.  "Books are, have been, and always will be jewels of contentment for me," she wrote in the essay I was lucky enough to rediscover this morning.

A legacy passed on, in so many ways.

Please join us for this lecture, which is open to the public.

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The Lore Kephart Distinguished Historians Lecture Series

My mother went to college after she had raised the three of us—choosing Villanova as her academic home and remaining an essential fixture on the campus long after she had graduated in the top of her class. She and my father sponsored aspiring historians and contributed to funds. They befriended Villanova scholars and dreams.

Shortly after my mother passed away, my father decided to make her presence at Villanova a permanent one by creating and endowing The Lore Kephart, '86, Distinguished Historians Lecture Series. Working with a team of historians and administrators (including my own dear friend Paul Steege), he has, in her honor, launched what will be an extraordinary yearly lecture, open to the entire community.

Pulitzer Prize winner James McPherson, Ph.D. will give the inaugural lecture—"Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief"—on September 30, 7 PM, in the Villanova Room of the Connelly Center. The George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History, Emeritus, at Princeton, Dr. McPherson won his Pulitzer for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, a book that went on to sell some 600,000 copies and precipitated a renewed interest in the Civil War. In 1998, Dr. McPherson won the Lincoln Prize for his book, For Cause and Comrades: When Men Fought in the Civil War.

My father, I, and all of the Kepharts hope those of you who live near enough will join us for this evening of celebration and learning. Registration for the free event happens here.

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Black Market, Cold War/Paul Steege: A Book Review

Paul Steege is a friend. A Princeton graduate who reminds me, often, of my own brother, another Princeton alum. A broad-thinking, socially responsible, inventive soul with whom I loved serving on our church outreach committee. An associate professor of history at Villanova University, who was in attendance this past Friday evening at a dinner honoring the Distinguished Historians Lecture Series my father has bestowed there in memory of my mother. A man with whom I can talk at length about readerly/writerly things.

Paul Steege is all of that (oh, yes, and also: Paul played goalie for Princeton's soccer team), and he is as well the author of Black Market, Cold War: Everyday Life in Berlin, 1946-1949, a book that I have just this morning finished reading. I knew Paul through some of the years that he spent working on this book—would see him at the local coffee shop pounding away on his laptop. We'd talk about its contents, but not until I read would I actually see just how smart Paul is on the page, how evocatively he brings to life the black market terrors, compromises, and small, lit-up salvations of a Berlin ransacked by divisions and impossible politics. This book is fresh; the past is parsed. What happened is here, but more to the point is how Paul discovers, for us, what the past means, how he challenges "all ordinary people," in his words, "to consider their complicty in the making of their worlds, but also their potential to transform them."

The years 1946-1949 were brutal and harrowing in Berlin: buildings were shorn, winters were fierce, women were so frequently raped that rape became the commonplace of conversation, and even for the most ethical-minded, the black market was the essential salve. Within this unambiguous context of suffering, there were, still, grace notes of humanity—gestures Paul sets aside with Terrence des Pres-like care. This one, from Paul's book, will touch any reader deeply:

Even in the midst of the extreme cold, Berliners sought out opportunities to reassert their humanity and do more than just survive. Ruth Andreas-Freidrich described sitting in an apartment with friends bundled up in hats and coats and listening to one of them recite poems by Goethe. 'And when you think about it, they seem even more beautiful at twenty degrees below zero, without electricity or coal.'

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