David Luhrssen - Historical Secret Societies in America
Program Date: February 20, 2019
David Luhrssen provides an informative speech about many of the secretive organizations, from the Ku Klux Klan and the Mafia to influential groups in our history like the Freemasons, that have shaped American life for better or for worse. Author David Luhrssen takes the path of trying to establish what can be known about groups that kept their activities secret and to understand what they actually accomplished.
David Luhrssen is co-founder of the Shepherd Express, an alternative weekly newspaper, and has written books on film, music and other aspects of culture, articulating. timeless theme rooted in historical experience. He addresses the ways ideas shape reality and how the past shapes the present in books, articles and talks.
He is author of Secret Societies and Clubs in American History, Mamoulian: Life on Stage and Screen, Hammer of the Gods: Thule Society and the Birth of Nazism, and coauthor of The Encyclopedia of Classic Rock, Brick Through the Window: An Oral History of Punk Rock, New Wave and Noise in Milwaukee, War on the Silver Screen, Elvis Presley: Reluctant Rebel, A Time of Paradox: America Since 1890, and Searching for Rock and Roll. He has contributed to the American National Biography Online, the Grove Dictionary of American Music and 100 People Who Changed 20th-Century America and has been published in Historically Speaking, History Today, the Journal of American History, and other journals. Luhrssen co-founded the Milwaukee International Film Festival, is a regular contributor to WUWM’s “Lake Effect” program and Arts & Entertainment Editor of Milwaukee’s weekly newspaper, the Shepherd Express.
