Hear Tony Horwitz in the Public Plenary on Saturday

Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist and author Tony Horwitz's appearance at NCPH's Public Plenary session on Saturday, April 9 will be one of the highlights of the conference. A history major at Brown University, Horwitz has shown in his writing career how investigative journalism and a fascination with history can produce rigorous and widely popular books, perhaps most notably 1998's Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. He has also written about the Middle East, Captain Cook, and the early Contact Period in what would become America.

For his plenary address, Horwitz will focus on his latest project, a study of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, which he has called "the 9/11 of 1859." This new book is in dialogue with both the sesquicentennial of the Civil War and the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, both of which will be featured in other conference sessions (follow the links for more info on those). In linking the two anniversaries, Horwitz pushes us to confront many difficult questions about America's wars, including its current involvement in Afghanistan, and shows us the value of historical thinking in contemporary civic life.

Public Plenary
Saturday, April 9, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Pensacola Little Theater
A shuttle will run between the Crowne Plaza, the Solé Inn, the Village, and the Pensacola Little Theatre for the event, which is free and open to the public.