. . . the changing perspectives of historical understanding are the very best introduction we can have to the practical problems of real life.
McNeill, one of the last of the encyclopedic "universal historians" and beloved professor emeritus of the University of Chicago, returns, at age 90, to his home stomping grounds to deliver one of the premier lectures of the 2007 festival. The author of The Rise of the West, Plagues and Peoples, and The Pursuit of Truth: A Historian's Memoir will draw on his uniquely informed sense of the vast sweep of human history to put humanity's current prospects in context. His interlocutor at the end of the talk will be his own son, Georgetown University historian J.R. McNeill, one of the country's foremost environmental historians and coauthor (with his father) of The Human Web: A Bird's Eye View of World History (2003).
