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This program transports us to the 1963 centennial celebration of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation to explore how Americans made sense of the suffering, loss and liberation that had wracked the United States a century earlier. David W. Blight and Drew Gilpin Faust discuss how four of America’s most incisive writers—including Robert Penn Warren, a white southerner who recanted his support for segregation, and James Baldwin, the searing African-American essayist and activist—explored the gulf between remembrance and reality.

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In commemoration of the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Civil War, the Bryant Park Reading Room presents a lecture series by eminent scholars discussing their most recent works on the Civil War. In this program, author Randall Fuller will discuss From Battlefields Rising, his new book examining the profound impact of the war on 19th-century writers including Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederick Douglass, among others. This series is produced in partnership with the Bryant Park Reading Room and Oxford University Press.

In commemoration of the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Civil War, the Bryant Park Reading Room presents a lecture series by eminent scholars discussing their most recent works on the Civil War. In this program, Jane E. Schultz, a leading expert on Civil War nursing, will discuss her book This Birth Place of Souls and examine one woman’s critical role on the battlefields of Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. This series is produced in partnership with the Bryant Park Reading Room and Oxford University Press.

In commemoration of the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Civil War, the Bryant Park Reading Room presents a lecture series by eminent scholars discussing their most recent works on the Civil War. In this program, author David W. Blight will discuss his newest book, American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era, and the ever-changing nature of the Civil War in American memory. This series is produced in partnership with the Bryant Park Reading Room and Oxford University Press.

In commemoration of the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Civil War, the Bryant Park Reading Room presents a lecture series by eminent scholars discussing their most recent works on the Civil War. In this program, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson will discuss his book, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief, a riveting account of how Lincoln won the Civil War and invented the role of commander-in-chief as we know it. This series is produced in partnership with the Bryant Park Reading Room and Oxford University Press.

In commemoration of the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Civil War, the Bryant Park Reading Room presents a lecture series by eminent scholars discussing their most recent books on the Civil War. In this program, distinguished scholar Harold Holzer will discuss a new compilation of original, first-hand reportage that appeared in The New York Times during the Civil War. This series is produced in partnership with the Bryant Park Reading Room and Oxford University Press. For more information, please visit www.bryantpark.org.

In commemoration of the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Civil War, the Bryant Park Reading Room presents a lecture series by eminent scholars discussing their most recent books on the Civil War. In this program, author David S. Reynolds will examine 19th-century America through the works of two pivotal writers: Harriet Beecher Stowe and Walt Whitman. This series is produced in partnership with the Bryant Park Reading Room and Oxford University Press. For more information, please visit www.bryantpark.org.

Lincoln's anti-slavery speech at Cooper Union made him a national figure and propelled him to the Presidency. During the course of this walk, we'll explore this pivotal speech, Henry Ward Beecher, and the making of the image of Lincoln. Starting with Lincoln's statue at Union Square, we'll walk to Cooper Union, then take the subway to Brooklyn to see other sites, such as the little-known Lincoln bas-relief at Beecher's Pilgrim Church. Walking Tours are limited to 35 guests per tour. Please buy tickets in advance.

In July 1863, several months after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and signed the nation's first federal draft law, New York City was nearly destroyed in a four-day cataclysm of arson, looting, and lynching. Join historian Barnet Schecter for an in-depth look at the festering racial and class conflicts that produced the deadliest riots in American history.