Events
Hearth & Home Lecture with Michael Steinberger
Wednesday, May 22nd 2013 (7:00 PM)
Reading Room
$15 members; $20 others
In 2013 the Hearth & Home series turns its focus to the grape with a lively lecture by wine writer Michael Steinberger and a fabulous wine tasting event on May 29th.
“Wine, Americanized” A Spirited Look at America’s Wine Revolution, Its Impact on the Broader Wine World, and the Unexpected Twist That it Has Now Taken
Michael Steinberger is a tastemaker whose opinionsreverberate on both sides of the Atlantic. But neither his expertise nor his influence is limited to the rarified worldof the wine connoisseur. Michael is a journalist and astute cultural observeras well. In his first book, Au Revoir To All That, he has taken on the formerly-hallowed French foodculture, charting its rise, fall, and possible future, allset against the backdrop of that nation’s diminishedfortunes as a world power. Michael blogs about wine at www.winediarist.com, offering an insider perspective and a satirist’s eye on wineculture. He also tweets on the subject @WineDiarist. He has contributed to numerous publications includingThe New York Times, Saveur, Financial Times, The Economist, Food & Wine, New York Magazine, WineSpectator, The World of Fine Wine, and Sommelier Journal. He has previously worked as a Hong Kongcorrespondent for Maclean’s and as the wine columnist for Slate.com.
Hearth & Home Wine Tasting
Wednesday, May 29th 2013 (6:00 PM)
Reading Room
$15 for members;$20 for nonmembers
" A Tour of the Old World "
A wine tasting with selections by sommelier Kevin Hart of wineCraft.
SPONSOR: CORK 'N BOTTLE
First Wednesday Book Discussion
Wednesday, June 5th 2013 (12:00 PM)
12th Floor Lecture Room
Reservations requested. No charge for members; $5 for nonmembers. A box lunch is available by advance reservation for $8.
Book for discussion: The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan.
Discussion leader: Mark Jones
By the Book: Trey Devey
Thursday, June 6th 2013 (12:00 PM)
Reading Room
Reservations requested. $10 per members: $15 for others. Price includes lunch
Our popular By The Book series returns with another outstanding local leader, Trey Devey, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra President, reflecting on books that have informed, inspired, and influenced his life and career. You are invited to learn from the city’s great success stories about the books that have brought insight and balance to their careers.
Trey Devey was named President of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 2009. As CSO President, Devey works in close collaboration with the CSO Board of Diretors and artistc leadership. Prior to coming to the CSO, Devey was a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and was a past president and executive director of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, and the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra. He also worked in the Development departments of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.
He holds an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania where he achieved the highest honor as a Palmer Scholar, graduating in the top 5 percent of his class. He graduated summa cum laude from Northern Illinois University with a Bachelor of Music.
SPONSORS: Mark and Rosemary Schlachter
MEDIA SPONSOR: BUSINESS COURIER
Harriet Beecher Stowe Lecture with Dr. Robert Bullard
Tuesday, June 11th 2013 (7:00 PM)
Reading Room
$20 for members;$25 for others. Reservations requested.
Writing to Change the World
ROBERT D. BULLARD is the Dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. He is often described as the father of environmental justice. Professor Bullard received his Ph.D. degree from Iowa State University. He is the author of seventeen books that address sustainable development, environmental racism, urban land use, industrial facility siting, community reinvestment, housing, transportation, climate justice, emergency response, smart growth, and regional equity. Professor Bullard was featured in the July 2007 CNN People You Should Know, "Bullard: Green Issue is Black and White". In 2008, Newsweek named him one of 13 Environmental Leaders of the Century. In 2010, Planet Harmony named him one of "Ten African American Green Heroes”
His book, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality (Westview Press, 2000), is a standard text in the environmental justice field. His most recent books include Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World (MIT Press, 2003), Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity (South End Press, 2004), The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution (Sierra Club Books, 2005), Growing Smarter: Achieving Livable Communities, Environmental Justice, and Regional Equity (MIT Press, 2007), and The Black Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century: Race, Power, and the Politics of Place (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).
SPONSORS: CHARLIE AND CHRISTINE SCHIFF
By the Book: Willie F. Carden
Wednesday, July 10th 2013 (12:00 PM)
Reading Room
Reservations requested. $10 for members: $15 for nonmembers (Price includes lunch)
The best leaders never stop learning. There is always a book by the bedside or in the briefcase, and those books are often surprising. Our popular By The Book series returns with another outstanding local leader, Willie Carden, reflecting on books that have informed, inspired, and influenced his life and career. You are invited to learn from the city’s great success stories about the books that have brought insight and balance to their careers.
WILLIE CARDEN is Director of the City of Cincinnati’s Parks system. Employed by the city for the past 27 years, he has served as the Director since July 2000. He is responsible for the management of over 5,000 acres of the city’s public green space, as well as infrastructure management of 121 facilities and structures, play areas, public trails, two international parks; Munich, Germany and Liuzhou, China, and the Krohn Conservatory. Carden also serves as the Executive Director of the Cincinnati Parks Foundation. He is a native Cincinnatian and graduate of the University of Cincinnati with a BA in Finance/Economics.
SPONSOR: RIVERPOINT CAPITAL MANAGEMENT
MEDIA SPONSOR: BUSINESS COURIER
Grandparents Day: A Program For Children
Saturday, September 7th 2013 (11:30 AM)
Reading Room
Reservations Required. $10 per Member adult/ $5 per accompanying child; $12 per Nonmember adult/ $8 for accompanying child.
Join us for a one-of-a kind marionette production of Aladin. This marionette play will delight, entertain, and enchant young and old. Artful staging, clever effects, and music bring this classic to life! Recommended for children and grandparents (and parents) of all ages.
Lunch and Library tour will follow the show. Bring your grandchildren or children for a morning of fun!
Stevens Puppets are in their 79th year of producing unforgettable and one-of-a-kind marionette productions for children of all ages specializing in classic children’s literature and fairy tales. The hand-carved marionettes were authentically created in the traditional old world style .
2013 Grandparents Day at the Mercantile Library is supported by a loving grandmother.
The Modern Novel Lecture with Colum McCann
Tuesday, September 17th 2013 (7:00 PM)
Reading Room
$15 for members;$20 for nonmembers
Colum McCann is the award-winning author of five novels and two collections of short stories. His most recent novel, Let the Great World Spin, won worldwide acclaim, including The 2009 National Book Award in the U.S, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China, the International Impac Award 2011, a literary award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and several other major literary prizes.
His newest novel, Transatlantic, will be published in late 2013.
McCann’s fiction has been published in over 30 languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Paris Review, Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Bomb and other places. He has written for numerous publications including The New York Times, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, Die Zeit, La Republicca, Paris Match, the Guardian, the Times and the Independent.
Born in Ireland, McCann has travelled extensively around the world. He currently lives in New York City, where he holds dual Irish and American citizenship. The territory of McCann’s work is international in scope and geography – his topics have ranged from homeless people in the subway tunnels of New York, to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, to the effects of 9/11, to a poetic examination of the life and culture of the Roma in Europe. He is known as a writer of style and substance, hailed by critics and readers alike. Among his major influences are Michael Ondaatje, John Berger, Don DeLillo, E.L Doctorow, Toni Morrison, Edna O’Brien and the Irish novelist Benedict Kiely. McCann is known a “poetic realist,” a writer who is known to tackle the dark in order to get through to the light – “any sort of light, however compromised” – on the far side.
The film rights for Let the Great World Spin were bought by J.J Abrams, the highly acclaimed director and creator of “Lost.” McCann is currently adapting the screenplay along with Abrams. It is not McCann’s first foray into film -- his short film "Everything in this Country Must," directed by Gary McKendry, was nominated for an Academy Award Oscar in 2005.
In 2003 Colum was named Esquire magazine's Writer of the Year for their “Best and Brightest” issue. Other awards and honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Rooney Prize, the Hennessy Award for Irish Literature, the Irish Independent Hughes and Hughes/Sunday Independent Novel of the Year 2003, and the inaugural 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award.
McCann was born in Dublin in 1965 and began his career as a journalist in The Irish Press. In the early 1980's he took a bicycle across North America and then worked as a wilderness guide in a program for juvenile delinquents in Texas. After a year and a half in Japan, he and his wife Allison moved to New York where they currently live with their three children, Isabella, John Michael and Christian.
McCann teaches in Hunter College in New York, in the Creative Writing program, with fellow novelists Peter Carey, Claire Messud and Nathan Englander. (photo by Brendan Bourke)
The Modern Novel Lecture is sponsored by The Chic.Lits and The Robert & Adele Schiff Family Foundation.
Niehoff Lecture XXVI with Robert Caro
Saturday, November 2nd 2013 (7:00 PM)
Presidential Ballroom, The Westin Hotel
$175 members; $200 nonmembers. RESERVATIONS REQUIRED
The Niehoff Lectures at the Mercantile Library were established at the suggestion of library benefactors Mr. and Mrs. H. C. Buck Niehoff who wished to enhance the library’s role as Cincinnati’s premier forum for distinguished men and women of letters. The Niehoffs have graciously underwritten the speaker’s appearance for each of the lectures. The Library is extremely indebted to Buck and Patti for their quarter-century of support.
The Mercantile Library is honored to welcome distinguished historian and biographer Robert A. Caro as its 26th Niehoff Lecturer.
For his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, twice won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year, and has also won virtually every other major literary honor, including the National Book Award, the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Francis Parkman Prize, awarded by the Society of American Historians to the book that best “exemplifies the union of the historian and the artist.” In 2010 he received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama.
To create his first book, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Caro spent seven years tracing and talking with hundreds of men and women who worked with, for, or against Robert Moses, including a score of his top aides. He examined mountains of files never opened to the public. Everywhere acclaimed as a modern classic, The Power Broker was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century. It is, according to David Halberstam, “Surely the greatest book ever written about a city.” And The New York Times Book Review said: “In the future, the scholar who writes the history of American cities in the twentieth century will doubtless begin with this extraordinary effort.”
To research The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Caro and his wife, Ina, moved from his native New York City to the Texas Hill Country and then to Washington, D.C., to live in the locales in which Johnson grew up and in which he built, while still young, his first political machine. He has spent years examining documents at the Johnson Library in Austin and interviewing men and women connected with Johnson’s life, many of whom had never before been interviewed. The first volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, The Path to Power, was cited by The Washington Post as “proof that we live in a great age of biography . . . [a book] of radiant excellence . . . Caro’s evocation of the Texas Hill Country, his elaboration of Johnson’s unsleeping ambition, his understanding of how politics actually work, are—let it be said flat out—at the summit of American historical writing.” Professor Henry F. Graff of Columbia University called the second volume, Means of Ascent, “brilliant. No brief review does justice to the drama of the story Caro is telling, which is nothing less than how present-day politics was born.” And the London Times hailed volume three, Master of the Senate, as “a masterpiece . . . Robert Caro has written one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age.”
“Caro has a unique place among American political biographers,” according to The Boston Globe. “He has become, in many ways, the standard by which his fellows are measured.” And Nicholas von Hoffman wrote: “Caro has changed the art of political biography.”
Caro graduated from Princeton University and later became a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He lives in New York City with his wife, Ina, an historian and writer.
Past Events
Spring Grove Walking Tour -SOLD OUT
Saturday, May 18th 2013
Bob Vitz's popular tour of Spring Grove Cemetery returns on Saturday May 18th. Space is limited. Reserve early!
Historian Robert C. Vitz will lead a walking tour of Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum on Saturday, May 18 which will highlight the burial sites and memorials of early Mercantile members, pointing out their significance to both the library association and the city.
Spring Grove was founded by members of the Cincinnati Horticultural Society. Inspired by contemporary rural cemeteries such as Père Lachaise in Paris and Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA., the cemetery was formally chartered on January 21, 1845. In 1855 renowned landscape architect Adolph Strauch was hired to renovate the grounds, and his vision of a "garden cemetery" made of lakes, trees, and shrubs is what visitors find today.
The tour will last approximately 2 hours with the moderately challenging route traversing Spring Grove’s rolling landscape. Tour size will be limited to 25. Parking is available at the Main Gate Entrance (Spring Grove Ave.) Group will leave promptly from the Gate House at 9 a.m. Rain or shine.
Literary Journeys: Crossing the Channel: Part II
Thursday, May 16th 2013
Book for discussion: Lost Illusions by Balzac
See INTEREST GROUPS for complete series listing.
