These videos are produced by The Kansas City Public Library.
Nelson-Atkins conservator Paul Benson delves into the story behind some of Kansas City’s most popular fountains. The event is part of the Kansas City Symphony’s City of Fountains Celebration, which has commissioned several new works inspired by the city’s fountains. Daniel Kellogg speaks about his new work, "Water Music."
Harvard legal scholar Noah Feldman examines how Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert Jackson overcame rivalries, personality clashes, and individual approaches to constitutional thought.
Attica Locke discusses her novel Black Water Rising, about a Houston lawyer who saves a drowning woman and opens a Pandora’s Box of secrets that threaten the city’s power brokers.
Historian James N. Giglio reveals the latest research on Kennedy’s Presidency, from his deft handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis to his health problems and destructive sexual obsessions.
University of Kansas historian Shawn Leigh Alexander looks at the forgotten men and women who in the late 19th century took up the cause of civil rights for African Americans.
Rebecca Solnit offers a guided tour of the Bay Area through her latest book, Infinite City, which reinvents the traditional atlas, expanding it from a mere collection of maps to a vibrant depiction of a city’s inner life.
Historian Amity Shlaes finds hopeful lessons in the presidency of Calvin Coolidge, who left office with a smaller federal budget than when he came in.
Historian Bud Bowie looks at how Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ miscalculations doomed the South economically even as it was winning on the battlefield.
Kansas City Star sports reporter Blair Kerkhoff discusses the history of the NAIA basketball tournament in Kansas City and explains why it was instrumental in the demolition of racial barriers in college athletics.
In his new memoir playwright/novelist/poet Zakes Mda recalls his coming of age under South African apartheid and his love of jazz, comic books, political discourse and writing.