2022
Walter Isaacson is the 2022 Mary S. Stern Lecture speaker, which will take place at the Aronoff Center for the Arts this Fall.
Acclaimed historian, journalist, and biographer Walter Isaacson recounts with signature insight the gripping medical revolution led by Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna. Isaacson expertly examines the minds and lives of political, cultural, and medical icons and how their legacies can provide insight in modern times.
Walter Isaacson is a Professor of History at Tulane and an advisory partner at Perella Weinberg, a financial services firm based in New York City. He is the past CEO of the Aspen Institute, where he is now a Distinguished Fellow, and has been the chairman of CNN and the editor of TIME magazine. Isaacson’s most recent biography, The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race (2021) offers a gripping account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies.
He is also the author of Leonardo da Vinci (2017), The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014), Steve Jobs (2011), Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003), and Kissinger: A Biography (1992), and coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986). He is a host of the show “Amanpour and Company” on PBS and CNN, a contributor to CNBC, and host of the podcast “Trailblazers, from Dell Technologies.”
2021
Doris Kearns Goodwin spoke on October 5, 2021, at the Aronoff Center for the Arts.
Goodwin is a presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. She brings history alive with an uncanny sense for detail and a master storyteller’s grasp of drama and depth as she examines the leadership triumphs, trials and tribulations of the men and women who have shaped this nation, culled from her lifetime examination of the U.S. presidency.
In advance of this year’s lecture and through December 30, 2021, the Library is exhibiting its collection of Lincoln letters and memorabilia in the Cincinnati Room. The Library is also offering several book clubs and community forums focusing around the central themes of leadership found in Leadership in Turbulent Times.
2019
Our inaugural Mary S. Stern lecturer was Bryan Stevenson (2019), author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.
Stevenson is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. His work fighting poverty and challenging racial discrimination in the criminal justice system has won him numerous awards including the prestigious MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Prize. Stevenson has received 29 honorary doctoral degrees including degrees from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Oxford University. His critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller Just Mercy, has been awarded several honors including the Carnegie Medal by the American Library Association for the best nonfiction book of 2014 and a 2015 NAACP Image Award.
About the Mary S. Stern Lecture Series
The Library Foundation is the grateful beneficiary of an endowed fund from the late Mary S. Stern to be used for an annual lecture series for the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library. The series will bring internationally renowned thought leaders to the Cincinnati community. Formed in 2018, the Mary S. Stern Lecture Committee selects the lecture topic and presenter who can honor her legacy by advancing the Library’s mission to connect our community with a world of ideas and information. The committee is committed to making the topic and speaker accessible to the community physically and financially.
The Mary S. Stern Lecture Committee members are Sandy and Peter Stern, Betsy Sittenfeld, Tony Covatta, and Vicky and Rick Reynolds.