Search the Signature Event Archive to discover past Library events. Watch videos, hear speaker interviews, and listen to audio recordings of previous presentations. Search by keyword (event title, subject, or presenter name), location or by date range.
In the latest installment of the Library’s Turning Points series in partnership with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, military historian Shawn Faulkner examines the uniqueness of the horrific slog of attrition that was World War I. Until its final months in 1918, the victor of this first truly global conflict remained very much in doubt.
Tapping new resources and research tools, local historian Michael Sweeney has produced the first new historical assessment in 20 years of the undisputed father of Kansas City’s barbecue tradition, Henry Perry. Sweeney shares his findings, including new insights into the life and career of the man to whom both Arthur Bryant’s and Gates Bar-B-Q trace their roots.
Not far from 18th and Vine streets, some of the most notable chapters in Kansas City’s Black history sprang from a single city block on Montgall Avenue. Author Margie Carr recalls this enclave and the influencers who lived there in the first half of the 20th century in a discussion of her new book Kansas City's Montgall Avenue: Black Leaders and the Street They Called Home.
Valerie Lemmie, director of exploratory research for the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio, discusses today’s national and local threats to democracy and offers strategies for tackling them: ways a community can hold onto what it values, how to be better citizens, and creating and building trust.
Military historian and Civil War authority Angela M. Riotto looks back on the pivotal Union victory at Vicksburg in 1863 – finally achieved after several failed attempts by Ulysses S. Grant and his troops – and the important lessons it brought. Her presentation is part of the Library’s Turning Points series in partnership with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
Andrew McCarthy may be best known for his membership in Hollywood’s Brat Pack and roles in classic films including St. Elmo's Fire, Pretty in Pink, and Weekend at Bernie’s. Also a writer and author, he discusses his latest book, Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain, recounting a five-week, relationship-altering pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago with his young adult son Sam.
West Bottoms Whiskey Co. founder Alex Lindsey examines a captivating element in the rich history of Kansas City’s West Bottoms: the distillation, distribution, and consumption of liquor. A master distiller, he discusses the pre-Prohibition era that influences and inspires his own whiskey making.
Jackie Nguyen, founder of Café Cà Phê, highlights the second installment of the Library’s four-part series on how to make entrepreneurship in Kansas City more inclusive, diverse, equitable, accessible, and liberating – more IDEAL for all.
In the latest installment of the Library’s Conflict and Crisis series, a panel of military historians and experts from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College examines the biggest and most dangerous concern in Sino-American relations today: Taiwan and the threat of forced reunification with its neighboring giant, China.
In the latest installment of the Library’s Making a Great City series, University of Virginia transit historian Peter Norton examines the need to revise our concept of city streets. They’re now so car- and speed-centric that they deter walking even where it would be a practical (and more affordable and sustainable) mode of everyday mobility.
Sunday, October 1, 2023Central Library
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