ANN ARBOR—Pulitzer Prize-winning author and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin will provide the keynote presentation at the Making of America celebration on March 12.

William Gosling, University Library Director; U-M history Prof. Sidney Fine; and Donald Waters, program officer from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will begin the celebration at 7:30 p.m. in the Chemistry Building Auditorium, 930 N. University St. The event is free and open to the public.

[Central Campus map, Chemistry Building lower center]

A press conference and a reception will follow. Kearns Goodwin, who is well-known for her expertise on the nation’s presidents, will present, “Shared Memories: The Lessons of History,” a sharing of her experiences in writing three presidential biographies as well as her own memoir on growing up in the 1950s in love with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The celebration centers on the University Library’s Making of America collection, a publicly accessible online resource focusing on 19th century American publications that includes more than three million pages of digitized documents. The documents, most published between 1850 and 1876, focus on topics ranging from the life and death of Abraham Lincoln to the latest 19th century household sciences to reflections on travel in the Western United States. Making of America is available on the Web at: http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/

Doris Kearns GoodwinWilliam GoslingCentral Campus mapMaking of America