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Lake Forest, Ill. - In honor of the Lincoln Bicentennial Lake Forest College welcomes Eric Foner, one of this country’s most prominent historians, to campus on Thursday, February 5. Dr. Foner will deliver a lecture titled “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and Slavery.” The presentation will take place at 8 p.m. in the Lily Reid Holt Memorial Chapel. A signing of his latest book Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World will follow the presentation. The public is invited to attend free of charge. Please call 847-234-3100 for more information.

Dr. Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and specializes in the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and 19th-century America. He is a past president of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Society of American Historians.

Author of numerous books and essays, his publications have concentrated on the intersections of intellectual, political and social history, and the history of American race relations. Some of his best-known books are: Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970; reissued with new preface 1995) Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (1976); Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy (1983); Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988) (winner, among other awards, of the Bancroft Prize, Parkman Prize, and Los Angeles Times Book Award); The Reader's Companion to American History (with John A. Garraty, 1991); The Story of American Freedom (1998); and Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (2002); Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (2005). His books have been translated into Chinese, Korean, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese.

Dr. Foner has also been the curator of several museum exhibitions, including the prize-winning “A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln,” at the Chicago Historical Society. A recipient of numerous awards for his teaching, scholarship, and writing Dr. Foner is also an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy. He serves on the editorial boards of Past and Present and The Nation, and has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, London Review of Books, and many other publications, and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows.

Dr. Foner’s visit is generously supported by the Oppenheimer Family Foundation. Lily Reid Holt Memorial Chapel is located on the College’s Middle Campus at the corner of Sheridan and College roads. Ample parking is available and campus is accessible via Metra.

Dr. Foner’s book Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World is available for purchase at the Lake Forest Bookstore, 680 North Western Ave.

Lake Forest College is a national liberal arts institution located 30 miles north of downtown Chicago. The College has 1,400 students representing 45 states and 68 countries.

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Irene Ratliff
847-735-6010