Library News

2019 Ruth Ratner Miller Award

The 2019 Ruth Ratner Miller Award for Excellence in American History will be presented to John Stauffer, a leading authority on antislavery, the Civil War era, social protest movements and photography on Saturday, October 26 from 7:00 - 8:00 p.m. in the Main Library Rotunda.  Tickets are available at the Concord Bookshop and the Barrow Bookstore. Adults $15, Students $5. Sponsored by the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library.

Stauffer is a Harvard University professor of English and American Literature, American Studies and African American Studies. His 19 books include The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (2002), Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (2008), and The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song That Marches On (2013). Stauffer has authored more than 50 academic articles and his essays have also appeared in Time, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, and the Washington Post, among other places. He also has advised three award-winning documentaries, and has been a consultant for feature films including Django Unchained (2012) and the Free State of Jones (2016). He has held the Ruth Garvey Cochener Fink Visiting Professorship in Leadership at Washburn University, a Massachusetts Historical Society Fellowship and a Gilder Lehrman Institute Fellowship, served as a Bancroft Prize Juror, and received Purdue University's Distinguished Alumni Award. He has appeared on national radio and television and has lectured widely throughout the United States, Asia and Europe, including for the State Department's International Information Program.