August 24, 2012 
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The final morning lecture of the 2012 Season offered Chautauquans a preview of the upcoming presidential election from two veteran journalists.
Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, editors at Time magazine, inspired the Week Nine morning lecture theme of “The Presidents Club,” with their book of the same name.
The Time editors’ casual discussion covered everything from Mitt Romney’s wealth to the relationship between Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama.
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August 23, 2012 0 Comments
In the waning days of his presidency, a 70-year-old Dwight D. Eisenhower fled Washington with his wife, Mamie, to their farm in Gettysburg. He was facing the impending reality of life after the Oval Office, a time marked by uncertainty.
Presidential historian Richard Norton Smith offered a peek behind the curtain at those private lives during Thursday’s morning lecture, titled “Hail and Farewell: An Exclusive Trade Union.” Smith’s talk was the penultimate lecture for Week Nine, themed “The Presidents Club.”
“Ike faced the conundrum of a retirement for which there was no retirement policy,” Smith said. “To guide him, Eisenhower had only his own instincts and the often dispiriting examples of those who had gone before.”
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August 22, 2012 0 Comments
Most people can relate to a teenager’s difficulty dealing with homework, school dances and friends while growing up.
But only a few people understand what it’s like to deal with those things under the white-hot spotlight of being a presidential child.
Lynda Johnson Robb and Susan Ford Bales shared their stories with journalist John Avlon during Wednesday’s morning lecture in congruence with the Week Nine lecture theme, “The Presidents Club.”
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August 22, 2012 0 Comments
“The wooden structures were closely packed, quite numerous, you may be aware of housing in Japan, the interior walls made of paper so they burn very, very well. Temperatures in the city reached upwards of 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. Vehicle frames were melted; canals and ponds were brought to the boiling point. The air contained drops of liquid glass drifting in the wind. Citizens running for their lives spontaneously combusted; many were found charred beyond recognition or dead from heat or suffocation. Over a quarter of a million buildings were destroyed, 16 square miles, almost one-quarter of the city, were laid to complete waste — up to 100,000 people died in that raid,” said Philip Nash, an associate professor of history at Penn State University at the start of his Tuesday Interfaith Lecture.
Nash is the author of The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1957–1963.
“What I just described is the conventional bombing raid — B-29 bombers on the night March 9 to 10, 1945 — that was not a description of Hiroshima or Nagasaki,” he said.
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August 21, 2012 2 Comments
Timothy J. Naftali summed up Dwight D. Eisenhower’s feelings of John F. Kennedy in one sentence: “Eisenhower didn’t like the man, but he revered the office.”
Along with being the first director of the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Calif., Naftali’s career as a presidential historian includes directing the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia.
Naftali’s lecture, “The Peacock and the Bald Eagle: The Remarkable Relationship Between JFK and Eisenhower,” examined public and private comments the two presidents made about each other’s views on foreign policy, military strategy and social issues.
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August 20, 2012 0 Comments
No one understands what it is like to be president, except those who have held the position.
There is no other role like it.
“The presidency, in their mind, is something of a collective that they all remain part of,” said Nancy Gibbs, co-author of The Presidents Club, during Monday’s morning lecture in the Amphitheater.
The former presidents have all offered one another their support. When Franklin D. Roosevelt died, Herbert Hoover told Harry Truman he had the right to call for any service Hoover could offer to the country. Dwight Eisenhower told Lyndon Johnson he would be there for him any time Johnson needed him. Richard Nixon told Ronald Reagan, “I am yours to command.”
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August 17, 2012 0 Comments
What was meant to be an interview with a Taliban commander became a seven-month kidnapping.
To keep up with the competition in journalism, David Rohde wanted to interview a Taliban commander for a book. His opportunity came Nov. 10, 2008.
But when he, Afghan journalist Tahir Ludin and their driver Asadullah “Asad” Mangal arrived at the Logar province for the meeting, the Taliban commander told them he changed the location farther down the road.
A black car was blocking the road ahead. Then two gunmen with Kalashnikov rifles ran toward their car from both sides. Ludin and Mangal moved to the back seat with Rohde, and the gunmen got in the car and continued driving.
“My head was spinning,” Rohde said during Friday’s morning lecture. “I hoped that this was all some kind of mistake — that they had maybe seen me in the back seat and saw a Westerner.”
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August 16, 2012 0 Comments
Characters that perform extreme actions fascinate novelists, much like they do the secret service.
The secret service within a democracy becomes involved in situations when radicals attempt to cause change by violence that threatens the security of the state. Novelists observe and analyze those actions and put them together in readable ways.
Stella Rimington, former director general of MI5, used her own experiences and books to explore radicalism as a security threat and in novel writing during Thursday’s morning lecture in the Amphitheater for Week Eight, themed “Radicalism.”
Rimington’s lecture focused on three radical extremists encountered in both reality and in novels: spies, radical protesters, and political and religious terrorists.
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Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. Over the course of nine weeks, more than 170,000 visitors will participate in programs, classes and community events for all ages—all within the beautiful setting of a historic lakeside village. Learn more →
