The 2020 Virtual History Book Festival opens with this live, online Keyote event with Erik Larson, bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (Crown, 2020). The event includes one hardcover copy of the book (with signed, archival bookplate), author presentation, and Q&A.
Ticket prices are the same as the cover price for the book (this is how the festival attracts great authors - your purchase supports their work, our independent bookseller, the festival, and the many partners who we support - thank you!). All books will be mailed to ticket holders, and the History Book Festival will pay the shipping costs. Additional copies of The Splendid and the Vile and other Erik Larson titles are available at time of ticket purchase (also free shipping) and directly from our official bookseller, Browseabout Books (https://www.browseaboutbooks.com/).
We are delighted that Erik Larson (#1 New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake and The Devil in the White City) has chosen to join us in our homes to share his fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz. Mr. Larson will enjoy a Spirited Discussion with Virginia Prescott, host of Georgia Public Radio's "On Second Thought" before he answers audience questions.
In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless” -- a story of political brinkmanship as well as an intimate domestic drama. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—to provide provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle.”
The Splendid and the Vile takes readers to a momment of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.
Sponsored by the Lee Ann Wilkinson Group