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University Communications

Presidential Biographer to Speak at University of Richmond

November 17, 2004

Historian and bestselling biographer of JFK and other American presidents Robert Dallek will discuss "Leadership Lessons from the Lives and Times of Presidents" Dec. 8 at the University of Richmond.

His speech, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Jepson Alumni Center. To reserve tickets, call (804) 289-8980.

Dallek's appearance marks the debut of a new lectureship on biography named for Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential biographer James MacGregor Burns, a founding faculty member of the university's Jepson School of Leadership Studies.

Dallek's most recent book is the 2003 "An Unfinished Life," which examines the life and times of John F. Kennedy. Fellow biographer Douglas Brinkley called it "hands-down the best biography of JFK." Burns called it "a stellar work by one of our finest historians."

The New York Times named as notable books Dallek's two-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson and his times, "Lone Star Rising" (1991) and "Flawed Giant" (1998), as well as his 1983 book "The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs."

His book "Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945," won the Bancroft Prize in 1980 and was nominated for the American Book Award in history. He currently is working on a book about Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger.