Best-selling Author Thomas Cahill to Speak

Author Thomas Cahill

Adelphi University is pleased to welcome historian and best-selling author Thomas Cahill, who will deliver a lec-ture on the "Life and Art in the Middle Ages" on Wednesday, October 24, at 7:00 p.m. in Adelphi's Ruth S. Harley University Center Ballroom, 1 South Ave-nue, Garden City. The lecture is open and free to the public.

Best known for condensing complex historic events into accessible and entertaining narratives, Thomas Cahill is the author of How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe; The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert No-mads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels; Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Je-sus; Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why The Greeks Matter; and Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe.These five books are part of The Hinges of History, a seven-volume series in which he recounts formative moments in Western civilization. He re-tells the history of the Western world through stories of individuals who contributed immensely to Western culture and the evolution of Western sensibility. He reveals how we have become the people we are and why we think and feel the way we do today.

Born in New York City to Irish-American parents and raised in the Bronx, Mr. Cahill was educated by Jesuits and studied ancient Greek and Latin. He continued his study of Greek and Latin literature, as well as medieval philosophy, scripture and theology, at Fordham University, where he completed both a B.A. in classical literature and philosophy, and a pontifical degree in philosophy. He went on to complete his M.F.A. in film and dramatic literature at Columbia University. He studied scripture at New York's Union Theological Seminary, and recently spent two years as a visiting scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he studied Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible in preparation for writing The Gifts of the Jews. In 1999, he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Alfred University in New York.

He has taught at Queens College, Fordham University, and Seton Hall University, served as the North American education correspondent for the Times of London, and was for many years a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Prior to retiring to write full-time, he was director of religious publishing at Doubleday for six years. He and his wife, Susan, also an author, founded the now legendary Ca-hill & Company Catalogue.

For more information about this and other events on campus, please visit www.adelphi.edu, or call the Cultural Events Hotline at (516) 877-4555.