Political Consultants for Clinton, Bush Kick Off Lecture Series

James Carville and Mary Matalin, campaign strategists for Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, will be the first authors scheduled in the Atlanta History Center's winter/spring lecture line-up.

The Atlanta History Center offers lectures on a wide variety of topics, from presidential history and gardens to social history and non-fiction adventures. Each lecture program is designed to join authors and audiences in an intimate setting complete with author presentation, audience discussions, and book signings.

Carville and Matalin discuss their new book "Love and War: Twenty Years , Three Presidents and One Louisiana Home" to kick off the lecture series on Jan. 14 at the Atlanta History Center in Buckhead. It continues on through June featuring authors such as, James McPherson , Erskine Clarke , Karen Russell, Amy Greene and star of “The Office” B.J. Novak, who will be preforming short stories from his debut work of fiction "One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories."

Lectures are held at either the Atlanta History Center in Buckhead or at the Margaret Mitchell House in Midtown. At each lecture, guests receive a 25 percent discount on the featured author’s book. Admission to all lectures is $5 for members, $10 for nonmembers, and free to AHC Insiders unless noted otherwise. Reservations are required; call 404.814.4150 or purchase advance tickets online.

January Lectures

Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2014, 8 p.m.

James Carville and Mary Matalin, "Love and War: Twenty Years, Three Presidents, Two Daughters and One Louisiana Home"

Atlanta History Center

Love and War traces the Carville and Matalin story from the end of the 1992 presidential campaign—where James managed Bill Clinton’s electoral triumph while Mary suffered defeat as George H. W. Bush’s key strategist—until now.

The new book is written in two alternating and distinct voices and describes the personal and public histories of the last twenty years. Matalin’s focus is on the interwoven personal and political events of a transformational age; issues and insights from her kitchen table to the White House Cabinet room on family, faith, friends, and foreign enemies. Carville’s concentration is politics—the triumphant and troubled Clinton-era, George Bush’s complicated presidency, the election of Barack Obama, and the rise of the corrosive partisanship that dominates political life in Washington today. Both of them reflect on raising young girls in the pressure cooker of the nation’s capital and the family’s move to New Orleans, post-Katrina, where their efforts to rebuild and promote the city has become a central part of their lives—and a poignant metaphor for moving America forward.

James Carville is an American political consultant, commentator, educator, actor, attorney, media personality, and prominent liberal pundit. Carville currently teaches political science at Tulane University.  Mary Matalin is an American political consultant well-known for her work with the Republican Party, and can be heard weekly co-hosting the nationally-syndicated “Both Sides Now” radio program with Arianna Huffington. Matalin and Carville have two daughthers.

This program is sponsored by McKenna Long and Aldridge LLP

 Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2014, 8 p.m.

Aiken Lecture: Erskine Clarke, "By the Rivers of Water: A Nineteenth Century Atlantic Odyssey"

Atlanta History Center

In his new book, "By the Rivers of Water: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey," award-winning historian and religious scholar Erskine Clarke traces the path of John Leighton Wilson and his wife Jane, a passionate, hopeful missionary couple who left all the privileges and comforts of their Southern home to spread the gospel in West Africa. Educated Protestants who came from well-established, slaveholding families, Leighton and Jane’s story embodies the tensions of pre-Civil War America that eventually led to one of the bloodiest conflicts in our nation’s history. Their journey from Northern and Southern high society to the shores of Cape Palmas is one of deep contradiction, good intentions and bitter consequences.

Erskine Clarke is Professor Emeritus of American Religious History at Columbia Theological Seminary and author of Dwelling Place , Wrestlin’ Jacob , and Our Southern Zion . The recipient of Columbia University’s Bancroft Prize for Dwelling Place , as well as many other awards, he has served as a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall College and University of Cambridge. He lives in Montreat, North Carolina.

The Aiken Lecture Series is supported by Lucy Rucker Aiken Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Georgia Genealogical Society and the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, Metro Atlanta Chapter.

Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2014, 7 p.m.

Deborah Johnson, "The Secret of Magic"

Margaret Mitchell House

Like millions of returning World War II veterans, Lt. Joe Howard Wilson wants just one thing: to get back to his hometown as quickly as possible.  But as a black man, he is a second-class citizen in the country he nearly died defending.  In the South, that means he can be pulled off a bus for refusing to give up his seat and beaten to death by white men, with no consequences for the killers.  Until, that is, a young, female, African-American lawyer takes on his case, determined to win justice for Joe Howard and those who love him. In "The Secret of Magic" prize-winning author Deborah Johnson tells an enthralling, inspiring, and important story of the postwar American South.

Deborah Johnson’s first novel, The Air Between Us , received the Mississippi Library Association Award for fiction. She lived for nearly two decades in Rome, Italy, where she worked as a translator and an editor, as well as at Vatican Radio.  After returning to the United States, she became executive director of a small charitable foundation in the South.  She now lives and writes in Columbus, Mississippi.