Fall 2005 Tate Book Club
The Center for Teaching Excellence, in conjunction with the Tate Distinguished Lecture Series, is proud to announce the third year of The Tate Book Club Series. This program is open to the entire SMU community and is a way of developing interdisciplinary relationships with students, staff and faculty from other areas around campus.
Participants are asked to read a designated book by or about the featured Tate speaker. The group meets from 3:00-4:00 on the day of the Tate lecture in the Texana Room of the DeGolyer Library, and receives VIP seating at the 4:30 Student Forum held in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center. This is becoming another great SMU tradition and we hope that you will participate.
Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2005: Carly Fiorina
Book: Backfire: Carly Fiorina’s High-Stakes Battle for the Soul of Hewlett Packard, by Peter Burrows, moderated by Keven Ann Willey, Vice President & Editorial Page Editor, The Dallas Morning News.
Carly Fiorina, former chairman and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard, from 1999 to 2005, led the company’s merger with Compaq Computer Corp. Before joining Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina spent nearly 20 years at AT&T and Lucent Technologies, where she held a number of senior leadership positions. She directed Lucent’s initial public offering and subsequent spin-off from AT&T. Fiorina was listed by Fortune magazine as the most powerful woman in business for six years in a row, from 1998 through 2003.
Born in Austin, Texas, Fiorina earned a bachelor’s degree in medieval history and philosophy from Stanford University, an M.B.A. degree from the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, and a Master of Science from Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Keven Ann Willey joined The Dallas Morning News in 2002 after more than 20 years with the Arizona Republic in Phoenix. During her career there, she rose from reporter to editorial
page editor. She was previously a staff writer for the Associated Press. She attended college in Tucson and Guadalajara, and graduated from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff following a brief study tour in Europe.
Her assignments as a journalist have included interviews with such diverse personalities as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Shirley MacLaine, Patti Duke, Al Haig, and Jehan Sadat, widow of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Ms. Willey covered the 1988 and 1992 presidential elections, traveling often with the major candidates.
Ms. Willey currently serves on the Board of the Tate Lecture Series.
Additional background information on Carly Fiorina has been compiled by Marcella Stark, Central University Libraries, SMU, and can be found by clicking here.
Tuesday, September 6, 2005: The Fall 2005 Tate Lecture Series kicked off with General Colin Powell & David Gergen
The Tate Book Club had a pre-lecture discussion of Powell’s book (authored with Joseph E. Parisco), My American Journey (Random House, 1995).
We were honored to have SMU Alumnus, Jeanne Tower Cox (BBA 1978) guide our discussion. Jeanne is a third-term member of the
University’s Board of Trustees and a founding board member of the John Tower Center for Political Studies (named for her father, the former U.S. Senator from Texas). She also serves on the Advisory Board of the SMU Maguire Center for Ethics & Public Responsibility, and on the Dedman College Executive Board.
More background on Colin Powell and his book have been compiled by Marcella Stark, Central University Libraries. Southern Methodist University, and can be found by clicking here.
Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2005: David McCullough, “Master of the Art of Narrative History”
Book: John Adams, by David McCullough, moderated by Edward Countryman, University Distinguished Professor of History.
David McCullough (born July 7, 1933) is an American historian and best selling author. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, he has been called a "master of the art of narrative history." His books include The Johnstown Flood, The Great Bridge, The Path Between the Seas, Mornings on Horseback, Brave Companions, Truman, and John Adams. His most recent book, 1776, was a New York Times and Amazon bestseller. None of his books have ever been out of print, a rare feat for an author with many published works.
McCullough has been an editor, essayist, teacher, lecturer, and familiar presence on public television — as host of "Smithsonian World," "The American Experience," and narrator of numerous documentaries including "The Civil War" and "Napoleon." He is a past president of the Society of American Historians and has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received 31 honorary degrees.Edward F. Countryman, University Distinguished History Professor, moved to SMU in 1991
from the University of Warwick in England where he was a Reader in American History. He earned his B.A. at Manhattan College, which gave him an honorary doctorate in 1999, and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Cornell University. He was awarded the prestigious Bancroft Prize by Columbia University in 1982 for A People in Revolution. He has also published The American Revolution in two editions (1985 and 2003) and Americans: A Collision of Histories.
More background on David McCullough and his book have been compiled by Marcella Stark, Central University Libraries, SMU, and can be found by clicking here.
Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2005: Eliot Spitzer, New York State Attorney General
Book: Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, by John Helyar, Bryan Burrough, moderated by Christopher Hanna, Professor of Law.
Professor Hanna will concentrate on Chapters 7 and 15 of Barbarians at the Gate comparing the excesses and greed of the 80’s and 90's, using RJR Nabisco and Enron as case studies. As a result of the corporate scandals of the last few years beginning with Enron in 2001, Mr. Spitzer has been actively pursuing civil actions against a number of corporations and criminal prosecutions against their corporate officers involved in these scandals.
Eliot Spitzer took office in 1999 and through a series of innovative actions has redefined the role of Attorney General. He investigated conflicts of interest by investment banks, illegal trading practices by mutual funds and bid rigging in the insurance industry. He has recovered billions of dollars for small investors and other consumers in these cases and was the catalyst for industry-wide reforms. Again and again, Attorney General Spitzer has acted to stop fraud in the marketplace, to level the playing field for honest businesses and to help restore confidence in the markets.
The title that most accurately reflects his role is "the People’s Lawyer." The cases that mean
the most to him are his pioneering labor rights cases to ensure the minimum wage and decent workings conditions for immigrants and other low-wage workers in service industries.
Professor Christopher Hanna of the Dedman School of Law will lead this book discussion. He is uniquely qualified through his experience as a consultant to the United States Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, where he worked on a three-volume report on Enron (released in 2003). He has given nationwide talks on this subject.
Background on Eliot Spitzer (Tate Speaker) can be found by clicking here.