A presidential historian will open the 2012-13 Trumbull Town Hall lecture series.
Richard Norton Smith has served as director of six Presidential libraries - the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in Iowa; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center in Kansas; the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and the Reagan Center for Public Affairs in California; and the Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library in Michigan.
His philosophy is, ''There's no excuse for a dull book, a dull museum, or a dull speech. Especially when dealing with history - the most fascinating subject I know."
Graduating from Harvard in 1975 with a degree in government, Smith worked as a White House intern and as a freelance writer for the Washington Post before becoming a speech writer for Massachusetts Sen. Edward Brooke and later working for Sen. Bob Dole.
Smith is the author of several books, including ''An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover,'' ''The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation,'' ''Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation'' and ''Thomas E. Dewey and His Times.'' He currently is working on a biography of Nelson
Rockefeller.
Smith appears regularly on C-SPAN and ''The News-hour with Jim Lehrer'' and he has worked as a presidential historian for ABC News.
Smith will speak at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at Packard Music Hall, 1703 Mahoning Ave. N.W., Warren. He is the first of four speakers in the 2012-13 Trumbull Town Hall series. Other programs will feature:
Nov. 14 - Author Bruce Caplan on the sinking of the Titanic. His book on the subject is now in its 18th printing.
March 12, 2013 - Food historian Francine Segan, who will do a program called ''Chocolate 101: History and Tasting.''
April 17, 2013 - Scholar Elliot Engel, a frequent Trumbull Town Hall lecturer, returns for a program called ''The History and Mystery of Wine.''
Season tickets good for admission to all four programs are $60.
For season tickets or more information, call 330-373-1900.
Individual tickets for Smith's lecture are $25 for adults and $5 for students and will be available at the Packard box office the morning of the lecture.