The Spring 2010 Dinner/Lecture featured noted modern American history scholar Dr. William E. Leuchtenburg, the William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Friends program was held on Tuesday, April 13, 2010, beginning with a book signing and wine reception at 6:00 pm, followed by dinner and a lecture at 7:00 pm., in Barton College's Hardy Alumni Hall.

Dr. Leuchtenburg is one of the nation's top experts on the U.S. presidency in general, and the leading national scholar on Franklin Delano Roosevelt in particular. A native of Queens, New York, Dr. Leuchtenburg received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University, and his master's and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. After brief teaching stints at both Smith College and Harvard University, he began his 30-year tenure on the faculty at Columbia University, where he became De Witt Clinton Professor of American History. In 2008, he received an honorary doctor of letters degree from Columbia. He also served as Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University.

Lured to the UNC-Chapel Hill campus from Columbia in 1982, Dr. Leuchtenburg served for 20 years at UNC until his retirement in 2002. He has also served as president of three major historical organizations: the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Historians.

Dr. Leuchtenburg is the author of more than a dozen books on twentieth-century American History, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 and The White House Looks South: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson. Although the majority of his books concern FDR and the New Deal, he was asked by his longtime friend, the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr., to write his latest book, Herbert Hoover, as part of the American Presidents Series of biographies on all the presidents. The book was released in January 2009.

He and his wife, Jean Anne, reside in Chapel Hill.