Cruise Lecture Topics

One Hundred—and Counting….  Here is a list of my cruise lecture topics to date

  • Amazing Alexander:  Humboldt in South America
  • The Amazon
  • America’s Sweetheart and the “It” Girl:  Mary Pickford and Clara Bow
  • Antonio Vivaldi and the Pietà
  • A Study in Sherlock:  Arthur Conan Doyle and the World’s Most Famous Detective
  • “As Far as I Think It Possible for Man to Go”: The Life, Death, and Legacy of Captain Cook
  • Asian Warriors and Queens
  • Bar Harbor
  • Before the Maya:  The Earliest Mexican Civilizations
  • Before Starbucks:  The Fully Caffeinated History of Coffee
  • Bosom Enemies:  The Acadians and the Conquest of Canada
  • Bronze Age Women of the Aegean
  • Called by the Wild: Jack London, American Adventurer
  • Caravaggio:  Bad Boy of the Baroque
  • Carthage:  The Other Ancient Mediterranean Empire
  • Catherine the Great
  • Charles Darwin in South America
  • Convivencia: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Iberia
  • The Crusades
  • Digging Old Ground:  The First Female Archaeologists
  • El Dorado:  The Story Behind the Legend
  • Enchanted isles, Sailing Ships, and the World’s Most Famous Whale: Herman Melville’s Life and Literature
  • The Face:  Portrayals of Jesus in Art
  • Ferdinand and Isabella and the End of Convivencia
  • Finding Odysseus
  • The First AustralianS
  • The Fish that Launched a Thousand Ships : The Story of Cod
  • For Love and Liberty I:  Simon Bolivar and Manuela Saenz
  • For Love and Liberty II:  Giuseppe and Anita Garibaldi
  • The Founding of New Zealand
  • The French and Indian War
  • From Miscreants to Matriarchs: The First Women Settlers in Australia
  • Gentle Giant:  Pedro II of Brazil
  • Getting to Know Anna:  The Woman Behind the Story of The King and I
  • Ghost Ships
  • God, Gold, and Gloriana:  The Story of Sir Francis Drake
  • The Golden Age of Islamic Spain
  • The Gospel of Glaciers: John Muir
  • The Great Eruption:  How the Santorini Volcano Changed the Mediterranean
  • Henry the Navigator
  • Hindu Mythology
  • Hinduism for Beginners
  • “I Put All My Genius Into My Life.  I Put Only My Talent Into My Writing”:  A Portrait of Oscar Wilde
  • Isn’t It Romantic?  Byron, Shelley, Love, Death, and Italy
  • King Arthur:  Medieval Man of Mystery
  • Loneliness and Light:  The Art of Edward Hopper
  • Magic Hammers, Missing Eyes, and Rainbow Bridges:  Norse Mythology
  • The Maori
  • Marooned! Life Stories and Lessons from Shipwrecks
  • Mayhem, Mutiny and a Masterpiece in the Louvre:  The Raft of the Medusa
  • The Merry History of Robin Hood
  • Midsummer Magic
  • Monaco and the Grimaldis
  • Monterey Pop and the Summer of Love
  • “The Most Beautiful Adventure”:  Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Move Over Superman:  Beowulf, The First Superhero
  • Mutiny Goes to the Movies:  Bounty, Potemkin, and Amistad
  • Never Silent:  Women in Early Hollywood
  • Nightmare Voyage:  Magellan and the Armada de Moluccas
  • Nineteen Months to the Pacific:  The Lewis and Clark Expedition
  • North to Alaska: The Gold Rush
  • The Not Plain and Never Bland Story of Vanilla
  • The Olympics
  • People of the Tides: The Tlingit Nation
  • Peter the Great and His Times
  • The Portuguese in Brazil
  • Putting the Oy in Ahoy:  Piracy and the Jews
  • The Reconquista
  • The Religions of Vietnam
  • Rise, Fall, Repeat:  A Brief History of the Acropolis of Athens
  • Rotgut, Riches and Rebellion:  How Rum Shaped American History
  • Rounding the Cape:  Vasco da Gama and the Search for India
  • The Russians in Alaska
  • Sea Monsters from Leviathan to Godzilla
  • Silent Sentinels:  the First Civilizations of Peru
  • ”Something Bigger than Fact”: The Art of Emily Carr
  • Spice!  How Cinnamon, Cloves, and Nutmeg Changed the Worlds
  • Sunken Gold: The Lost Treasure Ships of the Caribbean
  • Tempest in a Teapot: The Surprising History of the World’s Favorite Beverage
  • The Stripper and the Swineherd:  Justinian and Theodora
  • “Thar She Blows!”  A History of Atlantic Whaling
  • “There Is Practically Nothing Left”:  The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire
  • ”The Thief Colony”:  The Founding of Australia
  • “To Go a-Pyrating”:  Who, What and Why Were the Pirates of the Caribbean?
  • To Live and Die in Pompeii
  • Trailblazers: Gold Rush Women
  • Unlikely Allies: The Headhunters of Borneo in World War II
  • Understanding Buddhist Art
  • Unvanquished:  The Spanish Conquest of Chile
  • The Vietnam War, Part 1: Colonialism , Conquest and Conflict
  • The Vietnam War, Part 2:  The American War
  • Venetian Visionary:  the Art of Titian
  • The Vikings
  • The Vikings in North America
  • Wayfaring:  The Navigational Genius of the Pacific Islanders
  • When Africans Ruled
  • Women of the High Seas
  • Women Who Wouldn’t:  Feisty Females of the British Isles
  • Zheng He and the Chinese Treasure Fleet

PLUS destination lectures for more than  50 ports in countries all over the world