Lectures

Life and Death on the Nile: DNA & the Royal Mummies

Wednesday, March 25, 2026
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
In-Person Lecture
$10 per Osher at Dartmouth member
$15 per non-member

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Through an extraordinary fluke of history, we have several mummies of the 18th Dynasty still existing in Egypt. By using the most advanced techniques of DNA research available today, we now know with some certainty the familial connections between these mummies. Tutankhamen, Amenophis IV, Nefertiti, and Queen Tiye can still tell us so much about themselves through this genetic study. They were powerful. They were wealthy. They were a close family whose art shows a delightful intimacy. This lecture will look at the current history surrounding King Tut and his family in Egypt during the New Kingdom. Please join us for "Life and Death on the Nile: DNA and the Royal Mummies." 

David Sandberg is from Dedham, Massachusetts. He has a BA in European History from Framingham State University. He minored in Shakespearean Studies. David writes, "I love the existential force of Shakespeare. We connect with him even now because we share our humanity with him." David has worked at the Biomedical Libraries at Dartmouth College off and on since November of 1992. "I am always just mesmerized by the human body and its power to heal. It's both incredibly complex in so many ways and extraordinarily resilient. Working in a medical library is such a gift." David lives in Sunapee, New Hampshire on the Sugar River and spends his time outside of work at the Abbott Library on the weekends. "I love helping folks find the book they want. It's a joy to be able to do that."

The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of War

Wednesday, April 29, 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
In-person lecture
$10 per Osher at Dartmouth member
$15 per non-member

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Join Osher at Dartmouth in welcoming author Steven Ujifusa, who will discuss the story and themes of his book, The Last Ships From Hamburg, a propulsive human drama that chronicles the mass exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe to America in the early years of the twentieth century, and the men who made it possible.

Over thirty years, from 1890 to 1921, 2.5 million Jews, fleeing discrimination and violence in their homelands of Eastern Europe, arrived in the United States. Many sailed on steamships from Hamburg. Moving from the shtetls of Russia and the ports of Hamburg to the mansions of New York’s Upper East Side and the picket lines outside of the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, The Last Ships from Hamburg is a history that unfolds on both an intimate and epic scale. Meticulously researched, masterfully told, Ujifusa’s story offers original insight into the American experience, connecting banking, shipping, politics, immigration, nativism, anti-semitism, and war—and delivers crucial insights into American Jewish identity and the current immigration debate. 

Steven Ujifusa writes about American social and business history. His third book, The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I, tells the story of Eastern European Jewish immigration to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was released by HarperCollins on November 21, 2023, and was named by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of the year, and is a finalist for the Athenaeum of Philadelphia's Literary Award. 
 
His second book, Barons of the Sea: And Their Race to Build the World's Fastest Clipper Ship, tells the saga of the great 19th-century American clipper ships and the Yankee merchant dynasties they created.  In 2012, The Wall Street Journal named his first book, A Man and His Ship: America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the SS United States (Simon & Schuster), as one of the 10 best nonfiction books of the year.  

Steven is the recipient of the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence from the Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York, a MacDowell artist residency, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. He has appeared on National Public Radio, CBS Sunday Morning, and numerous other media outlets. A native of New York City and raised in Chappaqua, New York, Steven received his undergraduate degree in history from Harvard University and a joint master's in historic preservation and real estate development from the University of Pennsylvania.  

His fourth book, The Age of Traction: The Rise and Fall of the Electric Streetcar, will be published by Grove Press. 
 
Steven resides in Philadelphia with his wife, Alexandra (an emergency room pediatrician), and two sons.