Author Mark Bowden To Visit Campus
St. Louis-born author Mark Bowden will discuss his latest book, The Best Game Ever: The Birth of the Modern NFL, at 7:30 p.m. on March 11 at Maryville University Auditorium. His lecture is co-hosted by Maryville’s 13th annual Medart Lecture Series and the Maryville Talks Business speaker series.
In his book, Bowden tells the story of the 1958 NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants—the game that catapulted pro football into modern American culture. The game featured 17 future Hall of Famers and was watched on television by 45 million people; up to that point, the most ever to share in the excitement of a football game at one time.
Perhaps best-known for writing the book, Black Hawk Down—which became an international bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award—he also worked on the screenplay for the 2002 blockbuster film of the same title.
In 2001, Bowden won the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award for his international bestseller, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw, the story of the hunt for Colombian cocaine billionaire Pablo Escobar. He is currently working on a screenplay based on this book.
Bowden is a national correspondent for Atlantic Monthly and a regular contributor to other major magazines. He is also an adjunct professor in creative writing and journalism at Loyola College of Maryland.
Upcoming in the Medart Lecture Series:
Naomi Susan Baron, Ph.D., will discuss “Control Freaks: How Language Technologies are Reshaping Future Communication,” at 7:30 on April 6 at the Maryville University Auditorium. Her book, Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, was published in the past year.
Maryville University, founded in 1872, is a four-year, private university located in west St. Louis County. Ranked by U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s Best Colleges in the Masters-Midwest category, Maryville University students may choose from 50 academic programs, including degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels. Among recent graduates, 94 percent are employed or attending graduate school. More than 15,000 Maryville alumni work and live in the St. Louis region.