Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 920/832-6590
For Immediate Release				March 26, 1999

     Michael Beschloss, America's "Leading Presidential Historian" Discusses
Leadership in Lawrence University Convocation 


          APPLETON, WIS. -- In the wake of only the second presidential
impeachment trial in the nation's history, award-winning historian and
best-selling author Michael Beschloss offers his perspective on the state of
the presidency Tuesday, April 13 in a Lawrence University convocation. 
     Beschloss delivers the address "Presidential Leadership" at 11:10 a.m.
in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.  He also will conduct a question-and-answer
session at 2 p.m. in Riverview Lounge of the Lawrence Memorial Union.  Both
events are free and open to the public.
     Named "the nation's leading presidential historian," by Newsweek
magazine, Beschloss, 43, is the author of six books, a regular commentator
on PBS's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," a contributor to ABC News and
frequent guest of numerous other television network news programs.
     Following the historic U.S. Senate vote in February that acquitted
President Clinton, Beschloss told MSNBC that the impeachment process would
be judged in light of "whether it connects to anything else that Bill
Clinton did.  This will be seen as an isolated episode that, yes, Bill
Clinton committed some serious offenses, but I don't know how much it tells
us about the way he did business across the board." 
     As a writer, his novelist approach has earned Beschloss praise for
bringing  history to life through meticulous scholarship.  The New York
Times called him "one of the leading practitioners of the diminishing art of
diplomatic history" and he was described as "off the charts in terms of
discipline, dedication and encyclopedic knowledge" by a U.S. State
Department official who collaborated with Beschloss on a book about the Cold
War.
     His two most recent books, "Taking Charge: The Johnson White House
Tapes, 1963-1964," published in 1997, and "The Crisis Years: Kennedy and
Khrushchev, 1960-1963," were both national bestsellers. "The Crisis Years"
won the Ambassador Book Prize for American Studies and was hailed as "a
remarkable tour de force in Cold War history" by the Washington Post.  He
also wrote about the Cold War in his 1993 book, "At The Highest Levels: The
Inside Story of the End of the Cold War." 
     His other works include, "Eisenhower: A Centennial Life" (1990),
"Mayday:  Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair" (1986) and "Kennedy and
Roosevelt:  The Uneasy Alliance" (1980).  His latest project is a history of
the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, its origins and its impact on America.
     A native of Chicago, Beschloss is an alumnus of Williams College and
Harvard University.  He served as an historian at the Smithsonian
Institution from 1982 to 1986, spent two years as a senior associate at St.
Anthony's College at Oxford University and was a senior fellow of the
Annenberg Foundation in Washington, D.C. from 1987 until 1996.
     A member of the American Historical Association, Beschloss currently
sits on the boards of Foreign Affairs magazine and the White House
Historical Association.