Events and Activities

UAH HISTORY DEPARTMENT

2/17/2008

Award-Winning Historian Dr. Michael Neufeld to Speak on Wernher von Braun Feb. 26 and Feb. 28

Dr. Michael Neufeld, Chair of the Space History Division at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution and author of Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (Knopf, 2007), will give two public lectures the last week in February.

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 26
"Wernher von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War"
7:30 p.m.
Roberts Recital Hall, UAH
Book signing following the talk

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 28
"Space Hero or Nazi Villain? Wernher von Braun as Cold War Icon"
11:10 a.m.
Frank Franz Hall, UAH
(as part of the UAH Honors Forum)

Dr. Neufeld's biography of von Braun was just chosen as the winner of the 2008 Richard W. Leopold Prize of the Organization of American Historians. The Leopold Prize is given by the Organization of American Historians every two years for the best book written by a historian connected with federal, state or municipal government.

Neufeld's book has been critically acclaimed by the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the L.A. Times Book Review, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times of London. Neufeld also discussed his book on NPR’s Talk of the Nation in October and with the Smithsonian's Air and Space Magazine.

Neufeld is visiting UAH as a Humanities Center Short-Term Eminent Scholar.