Kumpuris Distinguished Lecture Series Featuring New York Times Best-selling Author Douglas Brinkley

New York Times best-selling author and acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley will speak on Monday, February 13 during a rescheduled Kumpuris Distinguished Lecture. Dr. Jay Barth, director of the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, will moderate the conversation.

The program will be held in person at the Clinton Center, as well as streamed live. Registration is required for both in-person and virtual viewing.

Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, presidential historian for the New York Historical Society, trustee of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He works in many capacities in the world of public history, including on boards, museums, colleges, and historical societies.

Brinkley’s latest book, “Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening,” chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties (1960-1973), telling a highly charged story of an indomitable generation that quite literally saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.

Copies of “Silent Spring Revolution” are available for purchase from the Clinton Museum Store, and a book signing will immediately follow the event. Click here to purchase your book.

In “Silent Spring Revolution,” Brinkley pays tribute to those who combated the mauling of the natural world in the Kennedy era, a group of environmental activists consisting of David Brower (Sierra Club), Stewart Udall (Secretary of the Interior), William O. Douglas (Supreme Court Justice), and others who fought for roadless public lands, wilderness preserves, and new national parks.

In a fast-evolving era when the nation is witnessing new types of environmental crises due to climate change and resource exhaustion, Brinkley’s meticulously researched and deftly written book is also a clarion call, reminding us of the passionate grassroots work that still needs to be done as the spirit of the Silent Spring Revolution continues well into the twenty-first century.

Brinkley’s recent book “Cronkite” won the Sperber Prize, while “The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast” received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

The Frank & Kula Kumpuris Distinguished Lecture Series is presented by the Clinton Foundation, Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas, Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, and AT&T.