Douglas Brinkley, a distinguished history professor, author and CNN commentator, will be speaking on the “Silent Spring Revolution” at 7 p.m. Monday, April 11, in the Founders Room (Quad 170) at Saint John’s University. Brinkley is author of the forthcoming book, Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, and the Great Environmental Awakening (Harper Collins, November 2022).

“This will be my first public lecture on my book, Silent Spring Revolution, which will be published in November,” Brinkley said. “The time is urgent to discuss environmental stewardship. I hope my history lecture will inspire CSB and SJU students. Climate change is real and frightening. As are nuclear weapons.”

This event is sponsored through a collaboration with the SJU President’s Office and the Eugene McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement.

“Douglas Brinkley is one of the most important historians of his generation,” said James Mullen, SJU transitional president. “We are both honored and grateful that he has generously agreed to visit the McCarthy Center and not only deliver a lecture but also visit classes and meet with students.”

Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and professor of history at Rice University, a CNN presidential historian and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He has received seven honorary doctorates in American Studies. He works in many capacities in the world of public history, including for boards, museums, colleges and historical societies. Six of his books were named New York Times “Notable Books of the Year” and seven became New York Times bestsellers.

Brinkley’s The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2007) received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award. He was personally selected by Nancy Reagan to edit President Ronald Reagan’s presidential diaries (2011). His 2012 book Cronkite won Fordham University’s Ann M. Sperber Prize for outstanding biographies. His two-volume annotated The Nixon Tapes (2016) won the Arthur S. Link – Warren F. Kuehl Prize. He received a Grammy Award in 2017 for Best Jazz Ensemble as co-producer of Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom.

The New York Historical Society selected Brinkley in 2017 as their official U.S. Presidential Historian. He is on the Board of Trustees at Brevard College and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. He is a member of the Century Association, Council of Foreign Relations and James Madison Council of the Library of Congress.