Athens, Ga. – Esquire editor and best-selling author A.J. Jacobs will give the Mingledorff-Lorimer Lecture in Print Media April 10 at 4 p.m. in the University of Georgia Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries.
A reception will follow the lecture in the auditorium of the Russell Special Collections Building. The event is free and open to the public. Parking is available in the adjacent Hull Street parking deck.
A columnist for Mental Floss magazine and frequent NPR commentator, Jacobs is the author of four New York Times best-sellers, including “The Know It All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World” and “The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.” In his quest to improve his mind, body and spirit, Jacobs immersed himself in his research, reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, following every rule in the Bible from the well-known 10 Commandments to the more obscure, and testing a number of exercise and diet regimens.
Jacobs is hosting the world’s largest family reunion in New York in 2015, an event that will be documented by filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, in connection with his next book, which will be about ancestry, DNA and the history of the human race.
In addition to his books, Jacobs has written for The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and New York magazine and has appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Today,” “Good Morning America,” CNN, “The Dr. Oz Show,” “Conan” and “The Colbert Report.”
The Mingledorff-Lorimer Lecture in Print Media was established in 1997 through a gift from Huldah Cail Mingledorff in honor of her father-in-law, George Horace Lorimer. From 1899 until 1936, Lorimer was editor-in-chief of the Saturday Evening Post, one of America’s best-known publications. By vastly improving the caliber of fiction and articles, Lorimer resuscitated the failing family magazine.
In addition to the endowment that supports the biannual lecture, Mingledorff donated Lorimer’s personal papers from his Saturday Evening Post years, as well as his extensive library, to UGA Libraries’ Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library. For more information, see www.libs.uga.edu/scl.
