Eventos en la Biblioteca Nixon

Author of “Home Front to Battlefront: An Ohio Teenage in World War II”

7PM Lecture, Audience Q&A and Book Signing

“Home Front to Battlefront” is a World War II history told through the story of combat infantryman Carl Lavin, based on official military histories, conventional history sources, personal letters of the time and taped recollections.

Carl’s story begins as a high school senior on Pearl Harbor Day. It is a world of a small city in the Midwest, where life is still in the middle of the Great Depression, and filled with weekend pickup football games, community dances, and the occasional date. Carl signs up when he turns 18 and has assignments across the U.S. and the U.K. The core of the book is combat in the Battle of the Bulge, the Battle of the Roer, and the Battle of the Rhine. The final chapters are about the occupation in Germany and the return home to the United States.

It is the story of ordinary Americans, thrust into a harsh and dangerous world, where G.I.’s grapple with the horrors of combat, the idiocies of bureaucracy, and the oddities of life back home – all in the same day. It displays the best and the lowest of the human experience, including examples of heroism, compassion, and sacrifice along with cowardice, pettiness, and plain foolishness. It is the war-time juxtaposition of the trite and horrific; the banal and bizarre that gives this narrative emotional impact.

Frank Lavin is the CEO and founder of Export Now, a U.S. firm that operates e-commerce stores in China for international brands. He served as under secretary for international trade at the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Singapore, director of White House Political Affairs, and in positions at the Department of Commerce, Department of State, and the National Security Council. In the private sector, Lavin served in senior finance and management positions in Hong Kong and Singapore with Edelman, Bank of America and Citibank. He is a columnist for Forbes.com, and co-author of “Export Now: Five Keys to Entering New Markets.”

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President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Advisor Comments on the State of the World

12PM Lecture and Audience Q&A

Join Robert “Bud” McFarlane, former National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan for a geopolitical tour d’horizon, as he offers commentary on the several challenges to our national security. Topics include a resurgent Russia, the economic and military challenges of an Imperial China, nuclear North Korea and Iran, and the immigration challenges posed for Europe by the Syrian civil war.

Mr. McFarlane has a distinguished record of public service including ten years in the White House and State Department serving variously as counselor to the Department of State, national security advisor to President Reagan, and military advisor to Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft.

In the Reagan years, he was the architect of U.S. policies which so stressed the Soviet economy as to bring it down, and in the process accelerated the collapse of Marxism in the former Soviet Union and the first reduction of nuclear weapons in history. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, served for 20 years as a Marine officer, was selected as an Olmsted Scholar, holds a Master of Science (License) from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, and was selected as a White House Fellow.

In recent years, Mr. McFarlane has focused on organizing investment in developing countries, brokering reconciliation between rival Sunni and Shia sects in Iraq, coaching the tribal leaders of Darfur, and leading the United States Energy Security Council, a bipartisan panel of former cabinet officers, senior retired military officers, and senior corporate executives devoted to forging a more coherent national energy policy. Currently he is focused, again with retired four-star military officers and distinguished American diplomats, on the prevention of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

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Author of “Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century”

7PM Lecture, Audience Q&A and Book Signing

The idea that a Senator—Republican or Democrat—would put the greater good of the country ahead of party seems nearly impossible to imagine in our current climate of gridlock and divisiveness. But this hasn’t always been the case. Arthur H. Vandenberg (1884–1951), Republican from Grand Rapids, Michigan, was the model of a consensus builder, and the coalitions he spearheaded continue to form the foundation of American foreign and domestic policy today. Edward R. Murrow called him “the central pivot of the entire era,” yet, despite his significance, Vandenberg has never received the full public attention he is due—until now. With this authoritative biography, Hendrik Meijer reveals how Vandenberg built and nurtured the bipartisan consensus that created the American Century.

Hendrik Meijer worked as a reporter and editor before joining Meijer, Inc., where he is executive chairman. He is the author of a biography of his grandfather, “Thrifty Years: The Life of Hendrik Meijer” and is the executive producer of the documentary, “America’s Senator: The Unexpected Odyssey of Arthur Vandenberg.”

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Author of “Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution”

7PM Lecture, Audience Q&A and Book Signing

A revelatory portrait of the creative partnership that transformed musical theater and provided the soundtrack to the American Century.

They stand at the apex of the great age of songwriting, the creators of the classic Broadway musicals “Oklahoma!”, “Carousel”, “South Pacific”, “The King and I”, and “The Sound of Music”, whose songs have never lost their popularity or emotional power. Even before they joined forces, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had written dozens of Broadway shows, but together they pioneered a new art form: the serious musical play. Their songs and dance numbers served to advance the drama and reveal character, a sharp break from the past and the template on which all future musicals would be built.

Though different in personality and often emotionally distant from each other, Rodgers and Hammerstein presented an unbroken front to the world and forged much more than a songwriting team; their partnership was also one of the most profitable and powerful entertainment businesses of their era. They were cultural powerhouses whose work came to define postwar America on stage, screen, television, and radio. But they also had their failures and flops, and more than once they feared they had lost their touch.

Todd S. Purdum is the author of “An Idea Whose Time Has Come” and “A Time of Our Choosing.” He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a senior writer at Politico, having previously worked at The New York Times for more than twenty years, where he served as White House correspondent, diplomatic correspondent, and Los Angeles bureau chief. A graduate of Princeton University, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Dee Dee Myers, and their two children, Kate and Stephen.

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