Oct 2020 Book Program

About the Author

Joseph Crespino is the Jimmy Carter Professor of History at Emory University.  He is an expert in the political and cultural history of the American South since Reconstruction.  A distinguished historian, his research has been supported by prestigious fellowships. Crespino has published three books, has co-edited a collection of essays, and has written for academic journals as well as for respected news publications. He won the 2008 Lillian Smith Book Award and was named a 2019 Georgia author of the Year -- History for his most recent book,  Atticus Finch: The Biography—Harper Lee, Her Father, and the Making of an American Icon 

About the Book

How do you write the biography of a fictional character?  Joseph Crespino answers his own question by revealing the various ways in which Harper Lee's cherished father was the model for the archetypal figure of Atticus Finch. With great nuance and historical perspective, Crespino explores the divergent portrayals of Atticus Finch -- in the apprentice manuscript belatedly published as Go Set a Watchman, in the beloved novel of To Kill a Mockingbird, and in the Academy Award portrayal by Gregory Peck.

Amasa Coleman (A.C.) Lee (1880-1962) was a highly respected lawyer, legislator, and newspaper editor in Monroeville, Alabama. An erudite, largely self-educated man of "unstinting propriety", A.C. Lee practiced the principled paternalism of segregation while denouncing the horror of lynchings and mob rule. Using his access to newly available letters of Harper Lee and his research of hundreds of newspaper editorials by A.C. Lee, Crespino tells a story of family and literature set amidst the upheaval of their turbulent times. "This insightful work elucidates the literary, personal, and civil rights issues that shaped Harper Lee and her two novels."  Publishers Weekly   It "is probably the best book about Harper Lee to come out since her death in 2016." USA Today

See TEDx Emory Talk Searching for Atticus Finch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b99gi4PHQUs

Listen to WABE City Lights  https://www.wabe.org/emory-professor-explores-paradox-of-atticus-finch-in-new-biography/

https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/joseph-crespino/atticus-finch/9781541644946/