presents Robert Watson

7:00pm via Zoom  
Temple Beth El of Fort Myers is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom Event
 

There will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the lecture. You can ask a question about the topic or choose a question from one of the many topics listed in his bio.

Click here to join with Zoom

  or by phone:  (646) 876-9923 
      Meeting ID: 849 3554 4557
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR     

An award-winning author, Robert Watson has published over 40 books and roughly 200 articles translated internationally on history and politics, as well as two multi-edition encyclopedia sets on the presidents and first ladies. His recent books include Affairs of State(Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), America’s First Crisis (SUNY Press, 2014), The Presidents’ Wives (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2014, 2^nded.), The Nazi Titanic (Da Capo Press, 2016), The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn (Da Capo Press, 2017), George Washington’s Final Battle(Georgetown University, 2020), and the forthcoming Escape!(Rowman & Littlefield, 2020). His books have won the John Barry Book Award, the John Lyman Book Award, the Independent Publishers’ Gold Medal in History, and were nominated for many other awards.

Robert was born in Harrisburg, attended public schools in nearby Hershey, and was educated at Virginia Tech, where he was a member of the football and track teams. He holds the title Distinguished Professor of American History and Director of Project Civitas at Lynn University in Boca Raton and serves as Senior Fellow with Senator Bob Graham’s Florida Joint Center for Citizenship.

A frequent media commentator, Watson has been interviewed thousands of times by news outlets around the world, including CNN, MSNBC, USA Today, The New York Times, NPR, and the BBC, and has appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and C-SPAN’s American History TV andThe Washington Journal. He was a Sunday columnist for the Sun-Sentinel newspaper and political analyst for WPTV 5 (NBC), a regular guest on such outlets as WPBT 2 (PBS), WIOD 610 AM, WFTL 850 AM, RTE 1 Ireland, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and a commentator and researcher for several TV documentaries including the series “Secret Nazi Ruins” for the Science and Discovery Channels and “Drain the Oceans” for the National Geographic Channel. 

Dr. Watson co-convened several national conferences on the American presidency, co-founded the annual Truman Legacy Symposium for the Truman Presidential Library, and served on the boards the Harry S. Truman Foundation, Calvin Coolidge Foundation, and George McGovern Center for Leadership. Watson also served as the editor of the scholarly journal White HouseStudies, the assistant editor and book review editor of The Social Science Journal, and the “Presidency Series” editor for the State University of New York Press, and has been a visiting scholar with such historic sites as the Truman Presidential Library, Gerald Ford Presidential Museum, Illinois Holocaust Museum, US Military Academy, National Archives, Smithsonian Institution and Pentagon, to name a few. He is also one of a select group of historians invited every few years to rank the presidents.

As a community leader, Professor Watson has hosted many civic education programs and workshops for schools. With his teenage son, he hosted an annual writing contest for five years for students in southeast Florida called “Let’s Write Together.”

Watson is the recipient of many awards for his contributions to the study of the presidency, election commentary, community service, civics programs, and efforts to combat anti-Semitism and incivility. He was also named “Professor of the Year” at Florida Atlantic University and Lynn University (3 times), won campus service awards at Florida Atlantic University (2 times) and Lynn University, and has been inducted into two sports halls of fame.