Author Talks

2025 - 2026 Series

• September 18, 2025: Al Churella. Salvation or Disaster? American Railroads and the Penn Central Merger of 1968

  Al Churella will return to Hagley for a talk based on the final volume of his landmark series. The Pennsylvania Railroad: Volume 3, The Long Decline, 1933-1968 concludes the story of this iconic transportation company, covering its long decline from the 1930s to its merger with the New York Central Railroad in 1968 to create the Penn Central. For his talk at Hagley, Churella will look closely at the end of his saga, the biggest merger in the history of American business that united the nation's two most famous railroads—the Pennsylvania and the New York Central. That union, a decade in the making, soon gave rise to the largest bankruptcy in the United States. More than the story of two failing railroads, the creation of Penn Central reflected the ills that plagued the railroad industry and the efforts of strong-willed individuals in business and government to reshape national economic priorities.

• December 4, 2025: Debra Michals. She's the Boss: The Rise of Women’s Entrepreneurship since World War II

  In the years after World War II, as women were being pushed from wartime jobs for returning soldiers, government and business leaders—and women themselves—saw small business ownership as a viable economic solution. In just five years, US women owned nearly a million of the nation’s businesses. In the decades since, women have moved increasingly into business ownership, often outpacing male start-ups so that today, they own more than fourteen million businesses, 40 percent of all US companies. She’s the Boss chronicles the forces that made entrepreneurship attractive to women. In rich detail, Debra Michals shares the stories of the countless women of all races, ethnicities, genders, and abilities who contributed to this important history. The book also explores the intersection of women’s personal choices within changing social, political, and economic factors, such as the rising divorce rates of the 1960s and 1970s, ongoing workplace and credit discrimination, civil and women’s rights activism and activist entrepreneurs, the 1970s recession and 1980s “Reagan Revolution,” and more recently, the internet, crowd-funding, and social entrepreneurship.