Charleston Library Society

Charleston Mercury Presents: Shay McNeal
2018-12-03 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | SC
The Charleston Mercury presents author Shay McNeal as she speaks about her recent book, The Road to Trump. To RSVP, please call 843-723-9912 or email dreutter@charlestonlibrarysociety.org
A country divided will fall into the abyss it creates.
The Road to Trump chronicles the most pressing issues the United States faced over the last five years in an effort to illuminate the prevailing political landscape. McNeal’s columns, Meet You in the Middle, published in the Charleston Mercury, in Charleston, S.C., reveal the raw nature of the state of our nation. The Road to Trump also places on the record McNeal’s insightful analysis of China and Russia as they challenge the United States on the world stage. Moreover, The Road to Trump clearly illustrates how failure to meet in the middle fueled the successful election of the outsider, Donald Trump, and contributed to the resurgence of China and Russia.
In January 2016, her column titled Mourning in America was one of the first analyses indicating that Trump would go the distance. Moreover, she was the rare columnist at the time who was prescient regarding the 2016 election and called it right, even before candidate Trump became the Republican Party nominee.
Shay McNeal is a past political consultant, past president of an advertising and marketing firm as well as an executive in the fashion and retail business where she began her business career. She has been a guest numerous times on the BBC, CNN, and radio shows in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Shay’s last book, The Secret Plot to Rescue the Tsar, garnered a full-page review in the Sunday Times (London). Vogue (UK), BookPage and Publishers Weekly, among others, weighed in as well. She is an indefatigable researcher who is fearless when it comes to placing valid yet controversial findings on the record.

CLS Holiday Bazaar
2018-12-04 17:30 - 19:30
Join us on the evening of December 4th for a unique shopping experience created by your Charleston Library Society. Our first ever Holiday Bazaar will showcase Charleston-based vendors to sell their wares to Library members and guests. Step into our Main Reading Room and be transported to a magical European marketplace where you can find one-of-a-kind gifts for everyone in your family. Sip a speciality cocktail and enjoy a tasty treat with your friends while grooving to holiday tunes as you browse hand-crafted goods and custom-made items in our one-stop holiday shop.
Some of the vendors:
Vieuxtemps, Arcadia Publishing, Brackish Ties, Callie’s Biscuits, Candy Shop Vintage, Cannonborough Sodas, Counter Cheese Caves, Graft, Hart Earrings, Holy Smoke Olive Oil, IBU, Jack Rudy, Red Clay Hot Sauce, Rose Wirtz Hooked Rugs, Second State Coffee, Carolina Millinery Company: Handmade Hats, Show Allegiance, Norton and Hodges, Hook N Hide, Rhett’s Imports, and more!
www.vieuxtemps.net
https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Home
https://www.brackishbowties.com/
https://calliesbiscuits.com/
https://www.candyshopvintage.com/
http://www.cannonbevco.com/
https://www.countercheesecaves.com/
https://www.graftchs.com/
https://harthagerty.com/
https://www.holysmokeoliveoil.com/
http://www.ibumovement.com/
https://jackrudycocktailco.com/
https://redclayhotsauce.com/
https://secondstatecoffee.com/
https://carolinamillinery.com/
https://www.showallegiance.com/
www.NortonandHodges.com
https://www.hooknhide.com/
http://www.rhettsimports.com/

Coastal Conservation League Book Launch: Virginia & Dana Beach
2018-12-11 18:00 - 19:00
Join the Library Society and the Coastal Conservation League as they celebrate the release of A WHOLLY ADMIRABLE THING: Defending Nature and Community on the South Carolina Coast by Virginia and Dana Beach. This event is free and open to the public. To RSVP, call 843-723-9912 or email dreutter@charlestonlibrarysociety.org
A few weeks before Hurricane Hugo made landfall in September of 1989, the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League opened shop in a one-room office in downtown Charleston. Armed with founder Dana Beach’s personal desktop computer and the local phone book, the three-person staff sent out its first membership mailing, rushing to the post office each day to check for responses. The organization grew from a hundred members that first fall to a thousand the following year and several thousand by the end of the first decade.
Prior to Hurricane Hugo, the 1960s, 70s and 80s had seen a surge of resort and residential growth in the South Carolina Lowcountry, displacing whole communities of people and wildlife along the coast, overtaking what had traditionally been a resourced-based economy. The storm triggered a pause, a reset, which the Conservation League seized upon. Lawsuits, back-room deals and corruption in high places conspired against the public trust at every turn. Nevertheless, a deep-rooted love of the Lowcountry, combined with practical opportunism and longstanding friendships cultivated across the generations, unified and empowered South Carolina conservationists to prevail.
The stories in A WHOLLY ADMIRABLE THING chronicle these transformational successes and failures over three decades of community activism, led by one of the country’s most innovative, persistent and controversial conservation groups. The book highlights the Coastal Conservation League’s founding principles and culture, institutional evolution, dogged work ethic, fearless advocacy, pragmatic politicking, and mastery of communication and community organizing. It also features the voices of countless citizens and activists on the front lines—through a mix of narrative, personal interview and first-person memoir and reflection.
Finally, the book reveals the critical importance of place—the biological, historical, political and social backdrop of an ancient and troubled region—in shaping a conservation ethic and agenda for the present day. The history of the Conservation League and its diverse collaborators spotlights a region in the throes of wrenching change: staggering out of the hazy mist of an insular, pre-modern world of planters, yeomen farmers and Gullah slave descendants, into an era dominated by global economic forces and instantaneous communication. The struggle continues today. It is a never-ending tale of a formidable alliance of courageous citizens, standing up for wild species and human communities so that all can thrive and endure.

Music at the Library: CSO Holiday Strings
2018-12-18 19:00 - 20:00
The holidays are a time to enjoy the classics mixed with the traditional. Join us as the Charleston Symphony Orchestra gets us in the spirit of the season. While the holiday tunes are being played patrons will enjoy the beautiful sights of our 10th Annual Christmas Book Tree.
Tickets for this holiday spectacular are available for sale through the Charleston Symphony Orchestra at 843-723-7528 or by clicking here
Tickets are $25 for adults and $10 for students.

Music at the Library: Beatles, Bach & Beer
2019-01-10 19:00 - 20:00
Thurs. Jan 10 | 7:00PM
Music at the Library: Beatles, Bach & Beer
$25 members, $35 guests
It seems like only Yesterday…Beatles and Bach returns for an evening of British Rock and Baroque hits! Don’t miss this special homecoming chamber concert with your favorite UNED!TED Rock and Bach Stars. To purchase tickets, call 843-723-9912 or click here

271st Annual Meeting Featuring Victoria Johnson
2019-01-15 17:00 - 18:30
271ST ANNUAL MEETING FEATURING VICTORIA JOHNSON
Join us for the 271st Annual Meeting of the Charleston Library Society. This year’s guest speaker will be author and educator Victoria Johnson, who will discusse her recent book, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic. The biography tells the story of Hamilton and Burr’s personal physician, whose dream to build the nation’s first botanical garden inspired the young republic. RSVP Necessary – SEATS ARE LIMITED. TO RSVP, CALL 843-723-9912 or EMAIL dreutter@charlestonlibrarysociety.org
ABOUT THE BOOK When Dr. David Hosack tilled the country’s first public botanical garden in the Manhattan soil more than two hundred years ago, he didn’t just dramatically alter the New York landscape; he left a monumental legacy of advocacy for public health and wide-ranging support for the sciences. A charismatic dreamer admired by the likes of Jefferson, Madison, and Humboldt, and intimate friends with both Hamilton and Burr, the Columbia professor devoted his life to inspiring Americans to pursue medicine and botany with a rigor to rival Europe’s. Though he was shoulder-to-shoulder with the founding fathers―and even present at the fatal duel that took Hamilton’s life―Hosack and his story remain unknown. Now, in melodic prose, historian Victoria Johnson eloquently chronicles Hosack’s tireless career to reveal the breadth of his impact. The result is a lush portrait of the man who gave voice to a new, deeply American understanding of the powers and perils of nature.
“From the first moment I learned of David Hosack and his lost botanical garden—today the site of Rockefeller Center—I’ve been working to reconstruct his dramatic and moving life story. I’ve followed him through a vanished New York City, up the Hudson to his beautiful estate at Hyde Park (now home to the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site), and across the Atlantic to England and Scotland, where he studied medicine and botany as a young man in the late eighteenth century. I’ve also followed Hosack through more than thirty archival collections in the US and Europe as I researched and wrote American Eden.” -Victoria Johnson
ABOUT VICTORIA JOHNSON
A former Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, Johnson currently is an associate professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College in New York City, teaching on the history of philanthropy, nonprofits, and New York City. She holds a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Yale.

Drayton Hall Presents: Curators Unhinged
2019-01-17 18:00 - 20:00
There is a lot they know that they haven’t told us.
Drayton Hall is pulling their curators out of the galleries, house, and archaeology lab, handing them a drink and letting it fly on what they know, what they don’t know, and what they’re still arguing about. Historic facts, theories, conjecture and wine flow as Drayton Hall’s curators make a new mark (smudge?) on history. Bring your questions on the mysteries of Drayton Hall. Ask them where the colonnades are and what their ten-year bet is. No holds barred, the gloves are off at Charleston Library Society on Thursday, January 17, 2019 from 6 to 8 pm.
Round table discussion is free to all. The reception is for $10 members and $20 non-members. CLS members may use the promo code LIBRARY to login to the DH website to register for this event. Advanced registration required, please. No door admittance can be accommodated, please RSVP HERE TO ATTEND.
This lecture is made possible by a grant from South Carolina Humanities.
Moderator-
Carter L. Hudgins, Director of Clemson/College of Charleston Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, School of Architecture / Charleston Design Center
Speakers-
Carter C. Hudgins, Ph.D. , PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Sarah Stroud Clarke, Archaeologist and Curator of Collections
Patricia Lowe Smith, Curator of Historic Architectural Resources
Cameron Moon, Assistant Curator of Historic Architectural Resources

Speaker Series: Marie Benedict
2019-01-24 16:00 - 17:00
Bestselling author Marie Benedict will enthrall guests with discussion her new historical fiction, The Only Woman in the Room. The novel shares the story of Hedy Lamarr, a glamourous Oscar-nominated 1940s film star, who was also an avid inventor and the figure behind advances in communication technologies that led to Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth. Tickets are $5 for members and $10 for nonmembers. To purchase tickets, call 843-723-9912 or click here
Set in 1930s Austria before the start of WWII, THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM
introduces us to young Jewish Hedy Kiesler who marries the countrys richest man, Fritz Mandl,
a munitions manufacturer often referred to as the Merchant of Death. Fritz is responsible for
supplying weaponry to Mussolini and Hitler in deals struck over the couples dinner table where
Hedy was often the only woman in the room. Always the active listener, soon after she learns of
the Third Reichs military strategy and the horrific plans for the Jewish people, she escapes to
London and then to Hollywood. When she begins to suffer from survivors guilt as the military
plans she had previously overheard begin to manifest, Hedy decides she must take action and
help in some way. With the assistance of co-inventor George Anthiel, she utilizes the secret
military information learned at her ex-husbands side to develop an incredibly effective frequency
hopping weaponry system that could have ended the war sooner but ultimately ends up rejected
by the Navy.
Once a New York City lawyer, MARIE BENEDICT had long dreamed about a fantastical job unraveling the larger mysteries of the past as an archaeologist or historian — before she tried her hand at writing. While drafting her first book, she realized that she could excavate the possible truths lurking in history through fiction, and has done so in The Other Einstein, the story of Mileva Maric, Albert Einstein’s first wife and a physicist herself, and Carnegies Maid, the story of a brilliant woman who may have spurred Andrew Carnegie toward philanthropy. She is a graduate of Boston College and the Boston University School of Law, and lives in Pittsburgh with her family.

Music at the Library: Porto Seguro
2019-01-24 19:00 - 2019-01-27 20:00
Celebrate Carnival season with a concert of Brazilian music by the Charleston-based quartet and Library Society audience favorite, Porto Seguro. Lighthearted, rhythmic, and mellow like a great cup coffee, the bands blend is quintessentially Brazilian with an American twist. Susan Conant, flutes; John Holenko, mandolin; Tom Noren, seven string guitar and Jonathan Kennedy, bass cover a varied collection of choro (lighthearted Afro-European mix), samba (the raucous music of Carnival) and bossa nova (Brazils distinctive contribution to jazz) tunes. Throughout the concert, Noren, a native of Rio, provides a musical guidebook to Brazil. The band balances expert instrumental technique with a laid-back groove in an entertaining and informative program of well-known and unusual Brazilian tunes. Tickets are $25 for members and $35 for guests. To purchase tickets, call 843-723-9912 or click here.

2019 Gala with Judge Richard Gergel & John Huey
2019-01-25 19:00 - 20:00
2019 GALA WITH JUDGE RICHARD GERGEL & JOHN HUEY
$350 per person – For tickets, call 843-723-9912
We are thrilled to return to our Main Reading Room for a lovely Gala seated dinner on January 25th. Guests will be enlightened by Judge Richard Gergel and John Huey’s discussion of Gergel’s book, Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring.

CLS Book Club: Two For One Selections
2019-01-30 10:30 - 12:00
CLS BOOK CLUB – TWO FOR ONE. TWO SELECTIONS. TWICE THE FUN.
CLS Book Club returns with a new twist. Patrons can choose to read either Kate Atkinson’s Transcription or Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight, or both! We will discuss both novels and find their commonalities. Free with RSVP . To RSVP, call 843-723-9912 or email dreutter@charlestonlibrarysociety.org
TRANSCRIPTION –
In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever.
Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.
Transcription is a work of rare depth and texture, a bravura modern novel of extraordinary power, wit and empathy. It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of the best writers of our time.
WARLIGHT –
From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of The English Patient: a mesmerizing new novel that tells a dramatic story set in the decade after World War II through the lives of a small group of unexpected characters and two teenagers whose lives are indelibly shaped by their unwitting involvement.
In a narrative as beguiling and mysterious as memory itself–shadowed and luminous at once–we read the story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel. In 1945, just after World War II, they stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the war, all of whom seem, in some way, determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? And what does it mean when the siblings’ mother returns after months of silence without their father, explaining nothing, excusing nothing? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all that he didn’t know and understand in that time, and it is this journey–through facts, recollection, and imagination–that he narrates in this masterwork from one of the great writers of our time.

A Nina Campbell Luncheon
2019-01-31 12:00 - 14:00
Meet and hear from one of the worlds most renowned interior designers, Nina Campbell, as she discusses her unique style & career. Each attendee receives a copy of the recent book, Nina Campbell Interior Decoration: Elegance and Ease by Giles Kime. From royal households, to prestigious addresses in London and New York, to pied-a-terres in Rome and luxury hotels, Ms. Campbell is one of todays most influential forces in interior design. $125 per person, includes a copy of Nina Campbell Interior Decoration: Elegance and Ease . To purchase tickets, call 843-723-9912 or click here.
One of the foremost interior designers today, Nina Campbell’s almost fifty-year career exemplifies the best of English interior design, and this eponyymous book masterfully illustrates her love of pared-down traditionalism, sumptuous textiles, clear colour, and, above all, comfort.
English style is one of the most enduring decorating idioms as demonstrated by the success of books on the works of Colefax and Fowler, Mario Buatta, David Hicks, and Mark Hampton. Campbell, the doyenne of the look, adds freshness with vibrant colours, whimsical textiles, and an informal elegance, and this book is sure to be an essential addition to design libraries on masters of the field.
A portfolio of her own London residences, from past decades to present day, establishes her mastery of designing for style and ease, while images from recent projects shows her versatility working in contexts as different as a hotel in Germany, pieds-à-terre in New York and Rome, a town house in London, and a designer show house in Los Angeles. Complementing the beautiful images of her work, a biographical essay (the first of its kind in a book about Campbell) follows the designer from her beginnings, to her stunning interior design work of the past few years.
About the Author: Nina Campbell is Britain’s most respected interior designer whose career spans
almost five decades. Her clients include the Duke and Duchess of York, the Queen of Denmark, Rod Stewart, Ringo Starr, and Mark Birley, owner of the legendary private club Annabel’s. Campbell–who continues to be a force in the decorating field throughout the world–has recently opened her second London showroom.
Giles Kime is the Interiors Editor of Country Life. After graduating in History of Art from Manchester University, he started his career at Condé Nast at The World of Interiors and, at 26, he was appointed the youngest-ever editor of the wine magazine Decanter. He later joined Telegraph newspapers, where he launched Telegraph Home, a fifteen-page interiors section, and wrote a weekly wine column. Prior to joining Country Life, he spent fourteen years as Executive Editor of Homes & Gardens magazine. He has written three books, on interior design, property, and wine.
Carolina Herrera has been an internationally acclaimed fashion designer in New York for nearly four decades.
© Nina Campbell by Giles Kime, Rizzoli New York, 2018.

Lifelong Learning: The Educated Citizen and Democracy
2019-02-06 11:00 - 12:00
The Educated Citizen and Democracy
This talk contains dangerous ideas. Some may be useful in understanding past elections and bracing for coming ones. But at its heart, it is about misconceptions about education, and about what constitutes the core suite of knowledge and analytical skills needed to be able to fully exercise our rights and meet our obligations as free citizens of a democracy. It also touches on why public discourse and it reportage has become less brainy and more chaotic, despite the proliferation of higher education. Tickets are $10 for members and $15 for nonmembers. To purchase tickets, call 843-723-9912 or click here.
Presenter: Dr. John Scott Cowan, PhD, DMilSc
Principal Emeritus, The Royal Military College of Canada
John Scott Cowan studied physics and then physiology at Toronto. A post-doc at Laval University preceded 24 years at the University of Ottawa as professor, chair of the department of physiology, and then VP. Leaving Ottawa in 1995, he became VP at Queen’s University before becoming principal of the Royal Military College of Canada (1999-2008). RMC is the university of the armed forces in Canada.
He has been President of the Canadian Federation of Biological Societies, the Canadian Physiological Society, and the Canadian Association of University Business Officers. He has also worked extensively in labour relations. A pilot, he has flown about 6000 hours in 64 aircraft types. Research in physiology co-existed with defence issues, starting with a 1963 monograph on defence policy. Since 2001 he has focussed on asymmetric threats, piracy, the characteristics of the profession of arms, and defence education. He was president of the CDA Institute 2008-2012, and chair of the Defence Advisory Board of Canada 2010-2013. In 2017 he retired as the Honorary Colonel of the Princess of Wales’ Own Regiment.

Music at the Library: BJ Barham Solo Tour
2019-02-07 20:00 - 22:00
The Library Society is excited to partner with Murias Entertainment to host American Aquarium frontman, BJ Barham for his acoustic solo tour throughout the South. Come enjoy an evening of stories and songs by this talented singer-songwriter. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 day-of. To purchase, click here.
Bio:
B.J. Barham was a long way from home when the tragedy happened.
On November 13, 2015, the singer-songwriter—raised in a small North Carolina town called Reidsville—was in the middle of his fourth European tour with American Aquarium, the rising alt-country act he’d led for nearly a decade. They were in Belgium, less than two hours from Paris, when bad news began to arrive: a series of terrorist attacks, including one in a rock club, had left more than 100 dead. Family members, friends, and the fans American Aquarium had amassed from so many years on the road immediately reached out, making sure the band had been far away.
“The onslaught of text messages, voicemails and everything that came in the next day sparked something in me,” Barham remembers. “In the next two days, the entire record was written.”
The record he’s talking about is Rockingham, Barham’s remarkable and intensely personal solo debut. Not long after the wave of well wishes had passed, Barham found himself piecing together composites of people he’d known since childhood, of those folks and places who had impacted his life in fundamental ways. He sang into his cell phone and scribbled in notebooks, stealing away for quiet moments in order to put the melodies and characters floating through his mind into song.
The shock of the moment and the distance from home seemed to give Barham a crucial perspective on the moments and circumstances that had helped shape him. Wolves, American Aquarium’s much-lauded 2015 breakthrough, had contained Barham’s most honest, vulnerable statements to date. But these songs took the next step, allowing Barham to share stories about those around him. In “O’Lover,” he portrays a hard-working farmer forced to make some desperate decisions to support the ones he loves. In “Reidsville,” named for the place he’d called his home until relocating to North Carolina’s capital, he immortalized beautiful, sweet, doomed souls, stuck in love in the sort of small towns that are disintegrating all across America. You needn’t have been to Reidsville to recognize these elegantly written, expertly realized protagonists.
“This is the first record I’ve ever made that’s not autobiographical—it’s fictional narrative in a very real place,” Barham says. “These songs are human condition stories set in my hometown, Reidsville.”
Barham made these songs his new priority. Not long after he returned stateside, he asked Bradley Cook, the musician and mentor who had co-produced Wolves, to hear them. By afternoon’s end, they had hatched the plan to make Rockingham. Two months later, on January 31, Barham returned from another American Aquarium tour.
On Monday, he and the band he’d built to record Rockingham—himself, Cook, Cook’s brother and multi-instrumentalist Phil Cook, drummer Kyle Keegan, American Aquarium standbys Ryan Johnson and Whit Wright—met for the first time. On Tuesday and Wednesday, they rehearsed. And on Thursday and Friday, they cut all eight songs at Durham’s Overdub Lane. They mixed the results over the weekend, between the sold-out hometown shows and various festivities of American Aquarium’s annual pilgrimage, Roadtrip to Raleigh. Cialis The whirlwind kept the songs simple and the recordings human, reflecting a reality much bigger and less perfect than the vacuum of a recording studio.
These tunes, after all, didn’t need much tampering. Rockingham puts its scenes and scenarios front and center, the beautiful grain and twang of Barham’s voice bringing it all to life. He limns lifelong romance and instantaneous tragedy during the paradoxically heartbreaking, heart-mending “Unfortunate Kind” and details the disappointments and dreams of the blue-collar laborer with “American Tobacco Company.” With its acoustic guitars and pealing organs, ragged vocals and rugged characters, Rockingham is a stunning, personal portrait of small-town America, easily identifiable and familiar.
For the album’s sole autobiographical moment, Barham, now happily married and sober, penned a letter of sound advice and Southern attitude to his daughter-to-be, “Madeline.” It’s too personal to fall under a roots-rock purview, too singular to be swallowed by a larger situation. Like all of Rockingham, it’s not the sound of Barham stepping away from American Aquarium but instead stepping confidently into the thoughts, stories, and feelings of his own thirty years.
“This is just an outlet for a songwriter. It’s me being able to do something different. This is like people who love their jobs, picking up hobbies,” says Barham, “This is an exercise for myself.”

Ambassadors’ Corner: Deborah Lee James
2019-02-08 18:00 - 19:00
Join the audience for this inaugural event, add your questions to the discussion, and receive a complimentary copy of Secretary James new book.
The Ambassador’s Corner, a collaborative venture between the College of Charleston’s School of Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs and Charleston Library Society, features discussions between Ambassador James Melville and today’s most impactful thought-leaders on the global scene.
James Melville is the host of the Corner. He recently retired after a thirty-three year distinguished career in the foreign service, holding positions in Berlin, London, Moscow, Paris, and Washington. Most recently he served as the US Ambassador to Estonia.
Deborah Lee James has thirty years of senior homeland and national security experience in the federal government and private sector. She served as the 23rd Secretary of the Air Force (2013-17), leading a force of 660,000 and managing a $139 billion budget. Her recent book, Aim High: Chart Your Course and Find Success, offers an insider’s view on how things really work in Washington.
Tickets are $30. All ticket purchases are final and include a copy of James’ Aim High: Chart Your Course and Find Success. To purchase tickets, click here.

SOLD OUT – Speaker Series: John Oller
2019-02-12 18:00 - 19:00
Join the College of Charleston Friends of the Library and author John Oller to explore the real story of the “George Washington of the South,” Francis Marion. Catapulted into popular memory by fictional depictions on television and in film, the historical Marion bears little resemblance to these caricatures. His exploits, however, were no less heroic. The first biography in nearly half a century, Oller’s “Swamp Fox” compiles striking evidence to provide a fresh look at Marion the man and his integral role in the American Revolution.
In this action-packed true story we meet many colorful characters from the Revolution: Banastre Tarleton, the British cavalry officer who relentlessly pursued Marion over twenty-six miles of swamp, only to call off the chase and declare (per legend), that “the Devil himself could not catch this damned old fox,” giving Marion his famous nickname; Thomas Sumter, the bold but rash patriot militia leader whom Marion detested; Lord Cornwallis, the imperious British commander who ordered the hanging of rebels and the destruction of their plantations; and “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, the urbane young Continental cavalryman who helped Marion topple critical British outposts in South Carolina. But most of all we’ll Francis Marion himself, “the Washington of the South”—a man of ruthless determination yet humane character, motivated by what his peers called “the purest patriotism.”
John Oller’s stories will no doubt be riveting to fans of this piece of Lowcountry legend.
Tickets to this event are free to the public, however RSVPs are requested. To reserve your tickets, please click here

John Oller, a lawyer and journalist, is the author of six non-fiction works of American history. A graduate of The Ohio State University and Georgetown University Law Center, Oller is a member of Biographers International Organization and the Dramatists Guild.

Music at the Library: Small Opera Presents
2019-02-14 19:00 - 20:00
Small Opera will present a portion of their Love & Death program this Valentine’s Day at the Charleston Library Society. What better way to celebrate the holiday than with classic pieces from performances including highlights from Bizet’s Carmen and Puccini’s La Boheme. Tickets are $25 for members and $35 for nonmembers. To purchase, call 843-723-9912 or click here.
SMOP is a no-frills opera company bringing compact shows & pop-up community events around the southeast U.S. Our goal is to make the classic art form fresh, fun, and accessible for all by bringing the opera to YOU, the audience: we sing in unconventional spaces and environments, we have modern interpretations of classic repertoire, and we encourage audience participation!
We use intimate casts, minimal costumes, stripped sets, simply…
NOMADIC VOCAL DRAMA

Lifelong Learning: Best Friends, Whether We Like It or Not: US-Canada Relations and Interactions 1760-Present
2019-02-20 10:00 - 13:00
Best Friends, Whether We Like It or Not: US-Canada Relations and Interactions 1760-Present
This Lifelong Learning class will cover the history of the relationship between the US (or its precursor colonies) and Canada (or its colonial precursor) from the fall of Quebec near the end of the French and Indian War to the present. The impact of each on the other, in terms of flow of people, of trade, of conflict or cooperation, and of cultural interaction will be covered. Perspectives on identities in the 40 years following the Declaration of Independence and a somewhat new take on the War of 1812 will be covered. The shift from cautious friendship after 1870 to the closest of allies today will be addressed, and contemporary relationship challenges related to trade and defense will be analyzed.
Tickets are $25 for members and $35 for nonmembers. To purchase tickets, call 843-723-9912 or click here.
Presenter: Dr. John Scott Cowan, PhD, DMilSc
Principal Emeritus, The Royal Military College of Canada
John Scott Cowan studied physics and then physiology at Toronto. A post-doc at Laval University preceded 24 years at the University of Ottawa as professor, chair of the department of physiology, and then VP. Leaving Ottawa in 1995, he became VP at Queen’s University before becoming principal of the Royal Military College of Canada (1999-2008). RMC is the university of the armed forces in Canada.
He has been President of the Canadian Federation of Biological Societies, the Canadian Physiological Society, and the Canadian Association of University Business Officers. He has also worked extensively in labour relations. A pilot, he has flown about 6000 hours in 64 aircraft types. Research in physiology co-existed with defence issues, starting with a 1963 monograph on defence policy. Since 2001 he has focussed on asymmetric threats, piracy, the characteristics of the profession of arms, and defence education. He was president of the CDA Institute 2008-2012, and chair of the Defence Advisory Board of Canada 2010-2013. In 2

SOLD OUT – Music at the Library: Bachanalia
2019-02-21 19:00 - 20:00
Join The Bach Society of Charleston as they celebrate Bach. This evening of music and romance begins with a concert of Baroque chamber music for harpsichord, violin, and voice followed by a talk offering glimpses into the personal life of Bach. Our speaker is Pulitzer Prize-finalist, scholar Christoph Wolff, author of the New York Times best-selling biography, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician. The program concludes with a book signing and reception featuring European wines, cheeses, and confections. Delightful in itself, this event is an amuse bouche for the Bach Society’s upcoming spring festival of Baroque music, March 8-10.
The Bach Society of Charleston is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to presenting Baroque music on Baroque instruments in an American Baroque city.
Tickets are strictly available through the Bach Society of Charleston and are $25 for adults and $10 for students. To purchase tickets, click here.
Pulitzer-prize finalist author and Harvard University Professor, Christoph Wolff will offer a lecture on the private life of Bach as chronicled in his New York Times best-selling biography, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician. His talk will be preceded by Baroque chamber music, featuring London Royal College of Music graduate and international guest soloist, Margaret Kelly Cook; Murray Somerville, founding conductor of the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, on harpsichord, and Allison Willet, founding member of the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, on Baroque violin.

Speaker Series: Sally Mott Freeman
2019-03-07 18:00 - 19:00
Join us to hear Sally Mott Freeman discuss her critically acclaimed book, The Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family’s Quest to Bring Him Home. Boasting a rave review from The New York Times, The Jersey Brothers tells the real- life survival tale of a trio of Navy brothers
at the epicenter of World War II. To RSVP, call 843-723-9912 or email dreutter@charlestonlibrarysociety.org
This extraordinary adventure of three brothers at the center of the most dramatic turning points of World War II is “liable to break the hearts of Unbroken fans, and it’s all true” (The New York Times).
They are three brothers, all Navy men, who end up coincidentally and extraordinarily at the epicenter of three of the war’s most crucial moments. Bill, a naval intelligence officer, is tapped by FDR to set up and run his secret map room in the White House basement. Benny is the gunnery and antiaircraft officer on USS Enterprise, one of the few ships to escape Pearl Harbor and, by the end of 1942, the only aircraft carrier left in the Pacific to defend against the Japanese. Barton, the youngest, gets a plum commission in the Navy Supply Corps because his mother wants him out of harm’s way. But this protection plan backfires when Barton is sent to Manila and listed as wounded and missing after a Japanese attack. Now it is up to Bill and Benny to find and rescue him…
Based on a decade of research drawn from archives around the world, interviews with fellow shipmates and POWs, and half-forgotten letters stashed away in attics, The Jersey Brothers is “a captivating tour-de-force” (San Antonio Express-News) that whisks readers from America’s front porches to Roosevelt’s White House to the battlefronts of the Pacific. But at its heart The Jersey Brothers is a family story, written by one of its own in intimate, novelistic detail. It is a remarkable tale of agony and triumph; of an ordinary young man who shows extraordinary courage as the enemy does everything short of killing him; and of brotherly love tested under the tortures of war.
“The Jersey Brothers shines in singularity. A blend of history, family saga and family questions, Freeman’s book [is] a winning and moving success, and adds an authoritative entry to the… vast canon of war literature” (Richmond Times Dispatch).
Sally Mott Freeman was a speechwriter and media and public relations executive for twenty-five years. She is currently Board Chair Emerita of The Writer’s Center, the premier independent literary center in the mid-Atlantic. The Jersey Brothers is her first book.

Coastal Conservation Book Launch: J. Henry Fair
2019-03-14 18:00 - 19:00
The Library Society and the Coastal Conservation League partner to celebrate the release of On The Edge: From Combahee To Winyah by J. Henry Fair, the revered photographer and environmental activist. Fair uses pictures to tell stories about people and things that affect people; On the Edge
is the first of his “Coastline” series and will surely delight all lovers of the Lowcountry. To RSVP, call 843-723-9912 or email dreutter@charlestonlibrarysociety.org
About the Book: On The Edge
This series is a portrait of the coasts before the major impacts of climate change and ocean rise take effect.Ironically, just as these realities council a move of infrastructure away from the ocean, coastal population density and infrastructure investment on the shore are rapidly increasing.
South Carolina is blessed with a stunning wild and beautiful coastline that goes from wilderness wetlands to world-class beaches.
It is a gift that is the result of geography, history, and inaccessibility, but the massive rush of people coming here to enjoy those amenities are overwhelming the existing infrastructure, and any attempts to preserve this gem.
Furthermore the combination of historic pollution issues, and the pressure to explore for petroleum resources combine with the reality of climate-change driven impacts to threaten this fragile coast.

Music at the Library: The Zephyr Trio
2019-03-21 19:00 - 20:00
The Zephyr Trio plays a lively set of Celtic music – old and new – to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in style. Three Charleston favorites: Karin McQuade (fiddle and vocals), Abigail Kent (award-winning harpist), and Susan Conant (flutes, whistles, vocals) collaborate for a new venture that showcases each of their distinctive gifts. Tickets are $25 for members and $35 for nonmembers. To purchase tickets, please call 843-723-9912 or click here
McQuade and Kent formed a Celtic combo during their SOA years but split to explore different paths through college. Meanwhile, Conant and McQuade fashioned a musical partnership while playing with local band, Good Foot. As Zephyr, the three join together to branch out in new directions. McQuade takes the lead with her stunning Gaelic vocals and unique fiddle style. Harpist, Abigail Kent, a star in her own right, alternates between providing a harmonic base and crafting brilliant solos. Conant helps knit the group together providing organizational structure while adding colorful accents on flute, recorders, whistles and back-up vocals.
McQuade explores styles ranging from Celtic music and gutsy contra dance tunes to oldie covers and indie originals with a diverse group of Charleston-based ensembles including Tea and Whiskey, Contra Force, Good Foot, Na Fidlieri and Yr Lad. She maintains a busy teaching studio and gigs throughout the Southeast.
Harpist, Abigail Kent, is the 2017–19 touring “Concert Artist” of the American Harp Society after winning the prestigious Pan-American solo competition. Currently, she is presenting solo recitals and teaching masterclasses throughout the US and Canada, while also having been a featured harp soloist for the 2017 World Harp Congress in Hong Kong, a Laureate Finalist at the 2017 Classics Alive management search in Los Angeles, and named the February 2018 “New Artist of the Month” for Musical America International Magazine. Ms. Kent studied for a year at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and then was selected as the Maryjane Mayhew Barton Fellow at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she graduated with the Landis Award for Excellence in Academics. Currently, she is a Presidential Scholar studying with Emmanuel Ceysson, Principal Harpist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, in the Masters of Music program at Mannes School of Music in New York City.
Susan Conant is a seasoned performer and teacher on flutes, whistles and recorders. As Interim Music Director for the Unitarian Church in Charleston, Conant conducts the choir and organizes and directs an energetic and diverse music program. She has played in and for a variety of local ensembles including Brazilian music band, Porto Seguro, Duo Dos, Charleston Pro Musica, Good Foot, Na Fidlieiri and the Charleston Symphony Spiritual Choir. Most recently she played recorder for the Charleston Symphony’s Harry Potter concert. She composes chamber music and has recorded two discs of her own compositions

Evening Post Book Launch: John Warley
2019-03-28 18:00 - 19:00
Join Evening Post Books as the celebrate John Warley and his most recent book, The Home Guard. To RSVP to this free event, call 843-723-9912 or email dreutter@charlestonlibrarysociety.org
Book Description:
In 1861, a 12-year-old boy and his 80-year-old grandmother flee their elegant home along the Beaufort River to shelter in the wilderness of Cane Island, South Carolina. They struggle to survive as the Civil War lays waste to the existence they’ve known and loved, a way of life doomed from its unholy inception. Carter’s mother Anna has fled to Charleston, along with most of his neighbors; his brother Preston is off fighting for the Confederacy; the family’s former slaves have looted his childhood home; and Union troops have commandeered his hometown. Meanwhile, Carter’s charming, cocksure cousin Gabe has asked him to spy for the Confederacy. In this classic coming-of-age story, Carter Barnwell is thrust into an early manhood as he faces the challenges of living off the land, caring for his ailing grandmother, wrestling with his budding sexuality, and wrangling with his awakening conscience. When he meets an abolitionist missionary from the north – who happens to be a beautiful young girl – Carter begins to see his world through new and critical eyes, even as he maintains fierce loyalty to the people and homeland he loves.
John Warley is an award-winning writer of fiction, non-fiction and essays. His 2014 novel, A Southern Girl, was the first book published under the University of South Carolina Press’s Story River Books imprint, Pat Conroy, editor. His more recently published Stand Forever, Yielding Never: The Citadel in the Twenty-first Century (Evening Post Books), documents the history of his alma mater for the half-century since General Mark Clark, retired as its president in 1965. In addition to his Citadel degree, Warley earned a J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School. He is the author of “The Citadel at War,” a narrative history of the college incorporated into the school’s war memorial on the campus. He lives in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Crafternoon: Hand Embroidery 2.0
2019-03-30 12:00 - 14:00
CRAFTERNOON:
HAND EMBROIDERY 2.0
Crafternoon returns with our Special Collections Librarian, Anna Smith!
Anna will lead the class with classic hand embroidery techniques to embellish cocktail napkins with springtime themes. Each participant will receive a set of four cocktail napkins, an embroidery hoop, needle and thread. Light refreshments will be served. Space is limited, so RSVP soon. For questions, email asmith@charlestonlibrarysociety.org. $45 per person – To purchase tickets, call 843-723-9912 or click here

JCC Bookfest Presents – Judy Goldman
2019-04-11 14:00 - 15:00
Charleston JCC WOW Bookfest proudly presents: Judy Goldman: Together: A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap
Admission: $10 – Tickets can be purchased by clicking here.
A routine procedure left novelist, memoirist, and poet Judy Goldman’s husband paralyzed. Together is her unforgettable account of the struggle to regain their normal life and a nuanced portrait of a marriage tested.
When Judy Goldman’s husband of almost four decades reads a newspaper ad for an injection to alleviate back pain, an outpatient procedure sounds like the answer to his longtime backaches. But rather than restoring his tennis game, the procedure leaves him paralyzed from the waist down – a phenomenon none of the doctors the family consults can explain. Overnight, Goldman’s world is turned upside down. Though she has always thought of herself as the polite, demure wife opposite her strong, brave husband, Goldman finds herself thrown into a new role as his advocate, navigating byzantine hospital policies, demanding and refusing treatments, seeking solutions to help him win back his independence.
Along the way, Goldman flashes back to her memories of their life together. As she tries envision her family’s future, she discovers a new, more resilient version of herself. Together is a story of the life we imagine versus the life we lead-an elegant and empathetic meditation on partnership, aging, and, of course, love.
For more information, contact Marylyn Haspel, Bookfest Director, at marylynh@charlestonjcc.org or 843-580-8564
This program sponsored in part by a generous allocation from the Charleston Jewish Federation

Music at the Library- CMC Presents Rock & Rondo Redux V
2019-04-11 19:00 - 20:00
Rock and Rondo Redux V
Musicians of CMC once again trade in their formal concert attire for leather and blue jeans for the return of the acclaimed crossover concert that combines classics of Rock and Roll with a masterpiece of the chamber music literature. Violinists Jenny Wess and Tomas Jakubek, violist Ben Weiss and cellist Timothy O’Malley perform Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” The Eagles “Hotel California” and Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” along with Beethoven’s glorious String Quartet Op. 18 No. 3.
For tickets, call 843-763-4941 or click here.

CLS Book Club: My Brilliant Friend
2019-04-17 10:30 - 12:00
Our final book club before the summer break will take place on April 17th, 2019 from 10:30-12:00 and will focus on friendship. Though a deep female friendship lies at the heart of the book selected for our next meeting—My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante—we will be reading the Wall Street Journal article Friendships for Guys(No Tears) by Jeffrey Zaslow as well. We will be covering, comparing, and contrasting male friendships with female friendships and diving into the subject as a whole and everyone is welcome. There will be something for everybody. Please RSVP – to do so, call 843-723-9912 or email dreutter@charlestonlibrarysociety.org
We are very excited to introduce our guest curators for this event: Lindy Carter and Pamela Levi.
Lindy Keane Carter is an award-winning journalist recently retired from a 40-year writing career. Her work has been published in airline magazines, trade periodicals, and academic medical journals. In 2012 she completed coursework in the Master of Arts Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. In 2014 she published her first novel (southern historical fiction), followed by her second in 2018. She is a two-time winner in the South Carolina Fiction Project, sponsored by the South Carolina Arts Commission. As for her reading tastes, Lindy likes a good story well told. Born and raised in Georgia, Lindy has lived primarily in Charleston since 1976.
Pamela Levi is Professor and Dean Emeritus from the University System of Georgia’s liberal arts university, Georgia College & State University. She has presented internationally and nationally on healthcare and education issues. The recipient of awards for excellence in teaching, scholarship and innovation. she has a substantive record of service and leadership at the local, state and national level. A Distinguished Lecturer for Sigma Theta Tau International, Dr.Levi retired after 32 years of teaching and administrative positions. She returned home to Charleston in 2003.

Music at the Library: Kate Kayaian
2019-04-25 19:00 - 20:00
Kate Kayaian presents The Voice of the Cello:
Acclaimed cellist Kate Kayaian takes you on a musical journey that explores the expressive range of her beloved instrument. Hearing works by Bach, Crumb, Hovhaness and Gianopoulos, you will discover how each composer’s cultural, political, and personal circumstances helped to shape their music, and how they each found their own unique voice while writing for the same instrument. Come and be transported to Germany, Japan, Greece, Armenia and beyond! Tickets are $25 for members and $35 for nonmembers. To purchase, call 843-723-9912 or click here.
Cellist Kate Kayaian is known for her stunning artistry and for her passion for communicating through music. She maintains a rigorous schedule balancing her solo and chamber music performances with her teaching and conducting positions and musical exchange projects around the world. Her 2018-2019 schedule includes recitals and concerts in Chicago, Seattle, Victoria, BC, Palm Beach, Charleston, Houston, Bermuda, and throughout the New England area.

Speaker Series: Lydia Fitzpatrick
2019-04-29 18:00 - 19:00
MON. APR 29 | 6:00PM – SPEAKER SERIES: LYDIA FITZPATRICK
The dazzling debut author, Lydia Fitzpatrick, will discuss her upcoming book Lights All Night Long, a gripping and deftly plotted narrative of family and belonging. Tickets are $5 for members and $10 for nonmembers. Every ticket purchased will receive a $5 off coupon for the title book Lights All Night Long useable specifically at this event. To purchase tickets, call 843-723-9912 or click here.
Fifteen-year-old Ilya arrives in Louisiana from his native Russia for what should be the adventure of his life: a year in America as an exchange student. The abundance of his new world the Super Walmarts and heated pools and enormous televisions is as hard to fathom as the relentless cheerfulness of his host parents. And Sadie, their beautiful and enigmatic daughter, has miraculously taken an interest in him.
But all is not right in Ilyas world: he’s consumed by the fate of his older brother Vladimir, the magnetic rebel to Ilyas dutiful wunderkind, back in their tiny Russian hometown. The two have always been close, spending their days dreaming of escaping to America. But when Ilya was tapped for the exchange, Vladimir disappeared into their towns seedy, drug-plagued underworld. Just before Ilya left, the murders of three young women rocked the towns usual calm, and Vladimir found himself in prison.
With the help of Sadie, who has secrets of her own, Ilya embarks on a mission to prove Vladimirs innocence. Piecing together the timeline of the murders and Vladimirs descent into addiction, Ilya discovers the radical lengths to which Vladimir has gone to protect hima truth he could only have learned by leaving him behind.
A rich tale of belonging and the pull of homes both native and adopted, Lights All Night Long is a spellbinding story of the fierce bond between brothers determined to find a way back to each other.
Lydia Fitzpatrick’s work has appeared in the The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, One Story, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a fiction fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant. She graduated from Princeton University and received an MFA from the University of Michigan. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two daughters.

Speaker Series: Lydia Fenet
2019-04-30 18:00 - 19:00
The country’s leading benefit auctioneer, managing director at Christies and a CLS sell-out lecturer speaks about her first book, The Most Powerful Woman In The Room Is You. Lydia Fenet will return to CLS to discuss her new book and auction off some incredible packages for the Library Society Membership. Tickets are $35 for members and $40 for nonmembers and include a copy of Fenet’s The Most Powerful Woman in The Room Is You. To purchase tickets, call 843-723-9912 or click here.

Lydia Fenet serves as the Managing Director and Global Director of Strategic Partnerships at Christies. In addition to her role within Christies, she has raised over half a billion dollars for over 400 non-profits worldwide as the leading benefit auctioneer in the country. Ms. Fenet has trained all of Christies benefit auctioneers for the past seven years, and travels around the country to speak to corporations and groups on The Art of Selling. Lydia’s auctioneering achievements have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Vogue, Crains, Elle, Vanity Fair, Forbes, WWD, Vogue.com, and WorkingMother.com. The Most Powerful Woman in the Room is You is her first book and will be published by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in Spring 2019. You can follow her auctions, antics, and anecdotes on Instagram: @LydiaFenet.
In The Most Powerful Woman in the Room Is You, Lydia Fenet takes you on her twenty-year journey from intern to managing director and global head of strategic partnerships at Christies Auction House. Lydia shares the revolutionary sales approach she has crafted over the years that has not only shaped her career, but helped her raise more than half a billion dollars for nonprofits around the world.
This is an approach that will empower you to sell your way to success in business and in life. For example, you’ll learn how to create your own Strike Method or signature move to help you feel confident entering any situation. Combining case studies and personal stories, Lydia also shares tips from some of the most powerful and successful women in business, fashion, journalism, sports, and the arts.
This book will show you how to take your career to the next level, whether its overcoming your fear of asking for something or bridging a wage gap. Lydia has been there and come back more powerful than ever. Inspiring and encouraging, Lydia’s hard-won advice will help you walk into any room with the confidence of a leader and motivate others to find their voice as well. Get ready to embrace your natural strengths, map your career, and take ownership of your life.
