Four former Kansas City mayors gather for the first time in an extraordinary forum co-presented by the Citizens Association of Kansas City and Kansas City PBS. They take stock of our city today while looking back at what their administrations were able to achieve, what they’d hoped to accomplish but couldn’t, and why some perennially promised things are so hard to deliver.

Four acclaimed Kansas City-area performers join a special musical celebration of Venice, Italy, and all who’ve fallen into its incurable thrall over the centuries. The 70-minute program spotlights the works of classical composers and popular songwriters who lived, worked, and played in Venice – from Giuseppe Verdi and Gioachino Rossini to Cole Porter and Noel Coward.

In the launch of a new series, Turning Points, in partnership with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, military historian David W. Mills looks at America’s decision to provide desperately needed food relief to vanquished Germans at the end of World War II. It eventually turned Germany into a close ally, which it remains to this day.

Military historian Christopher Johnson assesses the 2003 film The Last Samurai – starring Tom Cruise – and its depiction of social, political, and military transition in Japan in the 1870s in the latest installment of the Library’s Hollywood vs. History series in partnership with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.