Throughout the summer, Great Books Summer Program welcomes special guests, authors and educators to campus to join our discussion. This series is a major feature of the program and brings fascinating and sometimes well-known visitors to engage with our young people.

2008 Guest Speakers included:

Dr. Joseph J. Ellis Nationally recognized scholar of American history. The author of seven books, including the National Book Award-winning American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. He is the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College.  Harold Augenbraum Harold Augenbraum is Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, presenter of the National Book Awards. He has published six books on Latino literature of the United States. Augenbraum has been awarded ten grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, received a Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America for distinguished service to the mystery field, founded the Proust Society of America, coordinated the national celebration of the centennial of the birth of John Steinbeck and the upcoming commemoration of the centennial of the death of Mark Twain, and taught U.S. Latino literature at Amherst College. He also writes the sometime blog "Reading Ahead: The Future of Literary Reading". For a full profile, click here.  D.A. Powell D. A. Powell is the author of Tea, Lunch and Cocktails. The latter was a finalist for the Lambda and the National Book Critics' Circle Awards. Powell's honors have included fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the James Michener Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America and an Academy of American Poets Prize. In reviewing Cocktails, the New York Times said of Powell "No accessible poet of his generation is half as original, and no poet as original is this accessible." For a full profile, click here. Photo credit: Trane Devore  Eric Burns Eric Burns is an award-winning journalist and the author of five acclaimed books. The recipient of an Emmy Award for media criticism, Burns was the long-time host of Fox News Channel's Fox News Watch and has been a commentator for Entertainment Tonight, A&E's Arts & Entertainment Revue, NBC Nightly News and the Today Show. He has also been named by the Washington Journalism Review as one of the best writers in the history of broadcast journalism. He is the author of Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism, The Joy of Books: Confesions of a Lifelong Reader and Broadcast Blues: Dispatches from the Twenty-Year War Between a Television Reporter and His Medium. His next book, Virtue, Valor, and Vanity: The Founding Fathers and the Pursuit of Fame, comes out later this year, on November 7th.

Guest Speakers from 2007 included:

Dr. Debby Applegate The winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for her biography of Henry Ward Beecher, The Most Famous Man in America. Her writing has won her numerous prizes and has appeared in publications from the Journal of American History to The New York Times. She has been a Sterling Fellow at Yale University and has taught at both Yale and Wesleyan Universities.  Dr. Josiah Ober Holds the Constantine Mitsotakis Chair at Stanford University. He writes and teaches courses on various topics conjoining Greek history, classical philosophy, and political theory and practice. He is the author of numerous books including Athenian Legacies: Essays on the Politics of Going On Together.  Daniel Asa Rose The executive editor of the international literary magazine The Reading Room and a regular book reviewer for The New York Observer and New York Magazine. A 2006 NEA Literary Fellow, he has won an O. Henry Prize and two PEN Fiction Awards.  Bill Roorbach O. Henry Award and Flannery O’Connor Award-winning author whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including the Atlantic, Granta, and the New York Times Magazine. He currently holds the Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross.  Howard Greene and Dr. Matthew Greene President and Educational Director (respectively) of the nation's leading independent educational consulting company. They are the authors of numerous books, including the Greenes' Guides to Educational Planning Series; and the hosts of the PBS television’s "Ten Steps to College with the Greenes" and "Paying for College with the Greenes."

Click here to see a selection of our 2006 guest speakers.