James Giglio, the 2008 Weiner Distinguished Professor of Humanities at
Missouri University of Science and Technology, will deliver a public talk
titled “How Historians Evaluate Presidents” at 7 p.m. Tuesday Feb. 19, in the
St. Pat’s Ballroom A of Missouri S&T’s Havener Center.
Giglio has published several articles and three books on John F. Kennedy,
including “The Presidency of John F. Kennedy,” a work one reviewer hailed as,
“The best overall book on the Kennedy presidency.”
The talk will review and analyze the various polls involving historians’
evaluation of the great, near-great and failures as president. The focus will
be on why various presidents received the rankings they have, and how the
passage of time has affected certain evaluations. Giglio also will provide
various ways in which presidents should be evaluated.
Missouri S&T’s Maxwell C. Weiner Distinguished Professorship in
Humanities, established by an estate gift to the university in 1999, is rotated
among the arts, languages and philosophy department, the English and technical
communication department, and the history and political science department.
Weiner graduated from Missouri S&T when the university was known as the
Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy. He also studied at the University of
Hawaii and at Washington University in St. Louis. He retired from Westinghouse
Electric Corp.