Jun 15
Pondering the Worst. President. Ever.: How to make looking at history fun again
Carls in Cannon Valley invite you to
Pondering the Worst. President. Ever.:
How to make looking at history fun again
a conversation with author Robert Strauss '73
Date
Thursday, June 15, 2023
Time
1:30 p.m.
Location
Northfield Historical Society
408 Division Street
Northfield, MN 55057
Cost
This event is free.
Robert Strauss is a former reporter for Sports Illustrated, a feature writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, a sports and news producer at the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia and TV critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Asbury Park Press. As a freelance writer, his main outlet was the New York Times, where he had more than 1000 by-lines. He also taught creative non-fiction at the University of Pennsylvania for 20 years.
Strauss is a 1973 graduate of Carleton, majoring in Philosophy, the perfect argumentative training for being a sportswriter. At Carleton, he was sports editor and columnist for the Carletonian and, for two years, Commissioner of the Marvin Rotblatt softball league. He was also president of the Carleton Student Association. All this obscures that he was probably the worst athlete in Carleton history. He played five minutes for the freshman basketball team of 1969-70, scoring no points and garnering all of one assist for a team that refused to win a game. As a sophomore, he was voted the worst player in Carleton intramural ice hockey. He also played club rugby for two years at Carleton.
He is the author of the 2016 Independent Publishers’ Association winner of the gold medal for biography, Worst. President. Ever., a paean to James Buchanan. Sony has optioned it to be either a sitcom or comic film. He is also the author of Daddy’s Little Goalie, a funny and sentimental memoir about being the dad of girl athletes, and Final Founder, a biography of John Marshall, the Forrest Gump of the Founders, in that he was everywhere from Valley Forge to Supreme Court Chief Justice through the 1830s. He is currently working on a proposal about the Founders of the Confederacy.
Questions?
Contact Alumni Relations via email or 800-729-2586.