history
May 2023
Challenging History: On the Streets of Newtowne
A new book aims to paint a more multi-dimensional view of the area charting its cultural influences and history starting ten thousand years ago, when indigenous people built communities there.
November 1998
Rabindranath Tagore: Exemplar of Power?
Herbert Vetter, editor of The Heart of God, a collection of the prayers and poems of Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, discusses the power of spirituality that Tagore evoked in his writings.
January 2021
Markers and Reminders: MLK to BLM
Cambridge Forum partners with the Harvard Square Business Association to examine Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and Black Lives Matter’s impact on the history of Cambridge, Boston, and beyond.
May 2020
The Alchemy of Us
Anissa Ramirez is a material scientist who is passionate about getting everyone excited about science, so much so that she calls herself a “science evangelist”. In her latest book, she looks at eight world-changing technologies.
April 2020
Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy
Joseph Nye, leading scholar of international relations considers presidents and their foreign policy from FDR to Trump who come up short in the morality polls.
February 2020
Migrating to Prison
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández takes a hard look at the immigration prison system’s origins, how it currently operates, and why.
January 2020
The Age of Illusions
Andrew Bacevich, Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at the Boston University, discusses his new book, The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory.
April 2019
They Were Her Property
Historian Stephanie Jones-Rogers discusses her new book about the role of white women in American slavery. They Were Her Property reveals that slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who benefited from the South’s slave market.
January 2018
How Storytelling Shaped the History of the World
Stories are much more than entertainment—they shape our world. They’ve inspired the rise and fall of empires and nations, sparked our understandings of basic political and philosophical concepts, and have given rise to religious beliefs.
December 2013
Bunker Hill and the Crisis of Leadership in Revolutionary America
Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution reflects on the bloody battle in Charlestown on June 17, 1775.
February 2013
Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science
Biographer Christoph Irmscher examines the life of this controversial figure in its Victorian cultural context.
January 2005
David McCullough: 1776
The late historian David McCullough, two-time winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award visited Cambridge Forum in 2005.
August 2002
The Life and Times of Madame C.J. Walker
A’Lelia Bundles, Emmy-winning producer and journalist shares stories from her best-selling book about her great-great-grandmother, Madame C.J. Walker, one of the first black women entrepreneurs of the 20th century.