A lecture at 6pm at USF St. Pete on Tuesday, February 28, offers a rare opportunity to see a Pulitzer Prize winning historian in his natural habitat. Former Eckerd College professor and ex-St. Pete resident Dr. Jack Davis will kick off the Florida Studies Speaker Series, a collaboration between the Florida Studies Program at USF St. Pete and The Florida Humanities.

Davis will be talking about his most recent book, The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird. Accolades for The Bald Eagle include being named Los Angeles Times’ top-five non-fiction book of 2022, New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, Amazon Best Book of 2022, and Apple Best Books of 2022. It was his 2017 book The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea that earned Davis the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for History. 

Today, Davis is a professor of history and the Rothman Family Chair in the Humanities specializing in environmental history and sustainability studies at the University of Florida. Davis is an academic whose approach has mass appeal, intended for anyone who is intellectually curious.

His visit coincides with the 20th Anniversary of USF St. Petersburg’s Florida Studies Program, which has awarded graduate degrees to many of the area’s local historians, museum curators, and authors. The FREE talk will take place at 6:00pm, February 28, 2023, at Lynn Pippenger Hall on the USF St. Pete Campus.