Presidential biographers return to Dartmouth Feb. 24 for conclusion of "Power and the Presidency" series

Posted 02/21/00

Dartmouth College will present a panel discussion with four presidential biographers Feb. 24 in a grand finale of last year's Montgomery Endowment series "Power and the Presidency." The event is free and open to the public.

"During this primary election season, it's important for us to hear these experts discuss the use of power by presidents past and present, and especially how they predict future presidents will wield this power," said Barbara Gerstner, Assistant Provost and Executive Director of the Montgomery Endowment.

The panel discussion, scheduled for 4:30 p.m. in Cook Auditorium, will be moderated by Michael Beschloss, who has written biographies of both Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. More recently, he wrote the national bestseller Taking Charge, about Lyndon Johnson's secret audiotapes. He also is a regular commentator on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" and is working on a major history of Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

Other panelists in the final "Power and the Presidency" event include:

Edmund Morris - Last fall, Morris published the controversial biography Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan. His book The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt earned him a Pulitzer Prize.

Ben Bradlee - Author of That Special Grace, a tribute to John F. Kennedy, Bradlee is a vice president at the Washington Post. He previously was the executive editor at the Post who oversaw reporting of the Watergate scandal.

David Maraniss - A reporter at the Washington Post since 1977, Maraniss earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his coverage of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. He subsequently wrote the Clinton biography, First in his Class. His latest book is When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi.

The "Power and the Presidency" series was created on behalf of the Montgomery Endowment by alumnus Robert A. Wilson of Dallas, a communications consultant who put together a similar series, "Character Above All" (dealing with the impact of character on presidential leadership) in 1994 at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Montgomery Endowment brings to Dartmouth outstanding figures not only from the academic world but from non-academic spheres as well. It was established in 1977 by the late Chicago attorney Kenneth F. Montgomery '25 and his wife, Harle, to "provide for the advancement of the academic realm of the college. . . making possible new dimensions for, as well as extraordinary enrichments to, the educational experience" at Dartmouth.