Maine Historical Society - Programs Podcast

Speaker: Jared Peatman; Recorded November 14, 2014 - Historian Jared Peatman, author of The Long Shadow of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (2013), spoke at the opening reception of the traveling exhibition, Lincoln: The Constitution & the Civil War . His talk revealed the interconnected history between the United States Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and constitutional theory around the world.

Earle Shettleworth, Vin Verioneau; Recorded September 30, 2014 - Each year MHS recognizes an individual in Maine who has made significant contributions to the community through the Maine History Maker Award . This award honors contemporary citizens who are shaping Maine today. In 2014 we honored Vin Veroneau of J.B. Brown & Sons. Listen to the presentation and the history of the Brown family in Po...

Speaker: Nicholson Baker, Author; Recorded March 15, 2012 - In 2001, writer Nicholson Baker published Double Fold , a book about libraries, paper science, and lost history. In it he documented his efforts to save a large collection of beautiful and exceptionally rare newspaper volumes, which were being scrapped in favor of microfilmed replacements. Baker's forceful case served as a seeming coda to...

Speaker: Nicholas Bunker; Recorded October 2, 2014 - Written from a strikingly fresh perspective, this account of the Boston Tea Party and the origins of the American Revolution shows how a lethal blend of politics, personalities, and economics led to a war that few people welcomed but nobody could prevent. Publishers Weekly says, “A nuanced global analysis of Britain’s failure to hold onto its Am...

Speaker: Kathleen M. Brown, Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania; Recorded September 18, 2014 - The author of Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America imagined what body care and hygiene may have been like in the Wadsworth-Longfellow House. Nineteenth century Americans were not the first people to read the body for telltale signs of virtue or moral weakness, but they came to these jud...

Speaker: James Witherell; Recorded September 16, 2014 - The arc of Edmund "Ed" Muskie's life from modest beginnings 100 hundred years ago to future greatness was singular and unpredictable-an American story that looks plausible only in hindsight. Author James L. Witherell's biography of Muskie traces the son of an immigrant tailor through his two terms as Maine's governor. Witherell is also the au...

Speaker: Anna Eleanor Roosevelt; Recorded September 4, 2014 - During this Special Evening with Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, the granddaughter of Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt shared anecdotes, talked about Ken Burns's PBS series "The Roosevelts," and discussed family legacy.

Speaker: Allan M. Levinsky; Recorded September 2, 2014 - Retired Maine Historical Society Visitor Service Coordinator Allan Levinsky is also an accomplished historian with several books under his belt. In this book talk, he shares the first-person stories and dramatic events surrounding the infamous Portland fire of 1866.

Speaker: Morgan Rielly; Recorded August 19, 2014 - Westbrook High School graduate Morgan Rielly's lifelong passion for history and stories motivated him to interview and record the personal histories of local World War II veterans. Throughout his four years in high school, Morgan researched, tracked down, and talked at length to numerous men and women, many of whose experiences and memories are co...

Speaker: Kate McCarty; Recorded July 24, 2014 - Portland's vibrant food scene boasts more than 300 restaurants, as well as specialty food businesses, farmers' markets, pop-up dinners, and food trucks. How did it evolve over the past several decades into the city that regularly makes national "best of" lists today for its foodie culture? Dig into Portland's bounty, and its historical rise to food p...

Speaker: Wallace Scot McFarlane; Recorded July 22, 2014 - Based on original research from an honors project completed at Bowdoin College in 2009 and a subsequent article published in Environmental History , Scot McFarlane explores the birth of the environmental movement in Maine by focusing on the heavily polluted Androscoggin River. Scot McFarlane’s honors thesis was a co-winner of the 2009 Bowdo...

Speaker: Chandra Manning, Associate Professor of History, Georgetown University; Recorded May 8, 2014 - How did the relationship between former slaves and the United States government change during and after the Civil War? Georgetown University Associate Professor of History Chandra Manning shares her research on this complex and evolving relationship, and how it affected the relationship between...

Speaker: Jane Schultz, Professor of English and the Medical Humanities, and Director of Literature, at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis; Recorded April 24, 2014 - Maine state relief workers like Harriet Eaton and Isabella Fogg were less certain than Frederick Law Olmsted—who, thanks to his administrative skill overseeing the creation of Central Park, was asked to head the U.S. San...

Speaker: Penelope Niven; Recorded April 10, 2014 - Although Our Town , which turned 75 in 2013, was set in a small New Hampshire village and written in 1938, its universality has made it a favorite of theater companies and schools for decades. Wilder biographer Penelope Niven shares the story of his life (and his Maine ancestry), how Wilder came to write the play, and the special appeal of its the...

Speaker: Gary Libby; Recorded March 4, 2014 - Attorney, amateur historian, author, and former MHS trustee, Gary Libby, talks about his long history of researching and publishing on Maine's Chinese community, as part of special programming relating to Maine Restaurant Week . Gary shares history and collection highlights from the variety of Chinese restaurants that have existed in Portland over the...

Speaker: Matthew Jude Barker; Recorded February 11, 2014 - The Irish have influenced the city of Portland since it was first established in the 17th century. Today's vibrant Catholic community owes its origins to Irish immigrants in Portland's earliest days, when beloved leaders like Father French provided solace to souls far from home. Portland resident Matthew Jude Barker, genealogist and histor...

Speaker: David Sanderson; Recorded January 14, 2014 - As a complement to the MHS Shettleworth Lecture Hall exhibit "Dear Old Maine I'm Coming Back:" Home & Hearth Reflected in the MHS Sheet Music Collection traditional music enthusiast and fiddler David Sanderson offers an account of the life and musical career of Norway Maine fiddler Mellie Dunham. Mellie Dunham was among the most famous figures...

Speaker: Lincoln Paine; Recorded December 12, 2013 - Portland resident Lincoln Paine takes us on a monumental tour of human history through the lens of the sea. The 2013 book reveals in depth how people first came into contact with one another by ocean and river, and how goods, languages, religions, and entire cultures spread across and along the world's waterways. Lincoln Paine is the author of f...

Speaker: Christoph Irmscher; Recorded November 7, 2013 - Indiana University-Bloomington Professor of English Christoph Irmscher speaks about his most recent book, Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science . A Longfellow contemporary, Agassiz bridged the gap between specialist and amateur in 19th century America, changing ordinary people's relationship with science forever. But he also racist view...

Speaker: Andrew Barton; Recorded October 22, 2013 - Using a diverse range of historical and ecological evidence, University of Maine at Farmington Professor of Biology Drew Barton discusses the past, present, and future of the Maine Woods. Drew reads narrative selections from his recent book, The Changing Nature of the Maine Woods , and discusses the natural and human-caused changes over the past...

Speaker: Joseph Conforti; Recorded October 17, 2013 - Joe Conforti, Distinguished Professor of American and New England Studies Emeritus at the University of Southern Maine, gives his first talk in Maine about his memoir, Another City Upon a Hill . The book is both a personal story and a portrait of a distinctive New England place--Fall River, Massachusetts, once the cotton cloth capital of Americ...

Speaker: Elizabeth Bischof, Associate Professor of History, University of Southern Maine; Recorded October 10, 2013 - Photography was still in its infancy during the Civil War, but it was artfully employed as a new and powerful tool to tell the story of the battlefields and beyond. University of Southern Maine history professor Libby Bischof delivers a presentation about the impact of this new tec...

Speaker: Richard Rubin; Recorded September 19, 2013 - Maine author Richard Rubin, gives a talk on his acclaimed 2013 book, The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World . The Boston Globe calls the book, "engaging . . . memorable . . . The book succeeds by creating degrees of connection, even as it reshapes our consciousness." Rubin shares his decade-long journey to...

Speaker: Ian Saxine, Ph. D. Candidate, Northwestern University; Recorded July 23, 2013 - In 2012, thanks to a Graduate Research Grant from Northwestern University, Ph. D. candidate Ian Saxine spent six months at the MHS library researching how different ideas about land ownership between Indians and colonists led to decades of violence in frontier Maine. In this "Student Spotlight" presentation, I...

Speaker: Carter Stevens, 2013 Colby College Graduate; Recorded July 9, 2013 - Recent Colby College graduate Carter Stevens presents a talk based on his thesis about the 1863 Confederate raid on the city of Portland. While the maritime battle ended with the Confederates surrendering, a U.S. Revenue Cutter was sunk. Stevens's research covers the details of the battle, how it was reported in local an...