Presidential Historian Michael Beschloss and CBS Correspondent Mo Rocca Featured in a Conversation at Annual Brendan Gill Lecture, April 13

By Ellen de Saint Phalle, Member, Board of Directors, The Bronxville Historical Conservancy

Mar. 28, 2018:  Presidential historian, NBC News and PBS NewsHour correspondent, New York Times columnist, and best-selling author Michael Beshloss will present the Annual Brendan Gill Lecture on Friday, April 13, at 8:00 pm in Sarah Lawrence College’s Reisinger Auditorium.

This free lecture is open to the public and is presented each year by The Bronxville Historical Conservancy as a gift to the community. Register at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 914-961-6790.

Beschloss joins an illustrious roster of previous Gill speakers, including Mo Rocca, Stacy Schiff, Cokie Roberts, Jon Meacham, and Theodore Sorensen. In this special twentieth-anniversary year, CBS correspondent Mo Rocca returns for a conversation with Beschloss titled "Leadership, the Presidency, and What Have We Learned."

The New York Times Book Review has called Beschloss “easily the most widely recognized presidential historian in the United States.” Newsweek called him “the nation’s leading presidential historian.” Albert Hunt of Bloomberg News has called him "a national treasure." The Charlotte Observer has said, "Michael Beschloss knows more about America's 44 presidents than perhaps anyone on earth." 

Beschloss is the author of nine books on presidential history, including the New York Times bestsellers Presidential Courage and The Conquerors, and he is co-author with Caroline Kennedy of the bestseller Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy. His most recent book, Presidents of War, a major history of American presidents and wars from 1812 to the present, will be published in the fall of 2018.

Unlike most academics, Beschloss has embraced social media. His Twitter account offers information about historical figures, transmitting historical-recording snippets, quotes, documents, and era-specific photographs to more than 110,000 followers, earning Beschloss a place on TIME magazine’s list of the world’s top Twitter feeds. MSNBC anchor Brian Williams proclaimed that following Beschloss on Twitter “is the patriotic thing to do.” 

A graduate of Williams College and Harvard Business School, Beschloss holds honorary doctorates from Williams College, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Lafayette College, St. Peter's College, and Governors State University. He has also been awarded the State of Illinois’s Order of Lincoln, the Ambassador Book Prize, the Harry S. Truman Public Service Award, the Founders Award of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the New York State Archives Award, and the Rutgers University Living History Award. 

Beschloss won an Emmy for his role in creating the Discovery Channel series Decisions that Shook the World, of which he was the host. He has been a historian on the staff of the Smithsonian Institution, a senior associate member at Oxford University, and a senior fellow of the Annenberg Foundation in Washington, D.C. He is also a trustee of the White House Historical Association, the National Archives Foundation, and the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Pictured here:  Michael Beschloss (L) and Mo Rocca.  

Photo courtesy Ellen de Saint Phalle, Member, Board of Directors, The Bronxville Historical Conservancy

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