Page 15 - Program 2018

Hamilton v. Burr What If You Had to Spend the Rest of Your Life in a
H.W. Brands, Elizabeth Luxury Hotel?
Cobbs and Nancy Isenberg Amor Towles
Wednesday 1–1:45 pm Wednesday 1–1:45 pm
Walt Disney Room Joan Didion Room

The duel between former Secretary In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a
of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel
and Vice President Aaron Burr is across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and
the most famous duel in American wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while
history. On July 11, 1804, the two some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside
political rivals met on a dueling the hotel’s doors. Join Amor Towles, author of the best-selling novel A Gentleman
ground in Weehawken, New Jersey. in Moscow, as he shares his inspiration for Count Rostov’s extraordinary story.
The rest, as they say, is history. Our
esteemed panelists H.W. Brands,
Elizabeth Cobbs and Nancy
Isenberg will revisit that infamous
day in our nation’s young history and
take a closer look at that event from
a 21st century historian’s perspective.

I’m Down
Mishna Wolff
Wednesday 1–1:45 pm
Anne Rice Room

Mishna Wolff grew up in a poor black
neighborhood with her single father, a white
man who truly believed he was black. “He
strutted around with a short perm, gold
chains and a Kangol—telling jokes like Redd
Fox, and giving advice like Jesse Jackson. You “Fate would not have
couldn’t tell my father he was white. Believe the reputation it has if it
me, I tried,” writes Wolff. And so from early simply did what it seemed
childhood on, her father began his crusade
to make his white daughter down. Wolff’s it would do.”
story is both hysterical and poignant. It — Amor Towles,
will have you howling with laughter, and A Gentleman in Moscow
questioning what it means to be black and
white in America.
14