Scott Simon will deliver the 2013 Department of History Ross Horning Lecture on April 15th at 7:30 PM. Simon is the Emmy Award winning National Public Radio Weekend Edition Saturday host and author of the Barnes and Noble Sports Book of the Year, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball. A book signing will follow the lecture and copies of his books will be available for purchase.

Simon, known for his comforting voice and emotionally gripping writing style, has an expansive reporting background that has taken him through the entire United States as well as to every continent. He has interviewed and profiled some of the most interesting personalities of the times, from Mother Teresa to Ariel Sharon and Wyclef Jean, to roving street kids in Rio. The Peabody-Award-winning journalist has covered 10 wars, hundreds of campaigns, sieges, famines, hurricanes, earthquakes, civil wars, and scandals. He is the author of several books including Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan (2002), which topped the Los Angeles Times nonfiction bestseller list.

The lecture is named for Ross Horning, a professor of history at Creighton University from 1964 until his death in 2005. In his early years, Horning spent time as a minor league baseball player. He loved to tell the story of how he was the only player ever to be traded in the middle of a game and that’s why he testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing in 1951 about baseball’s reserve clause. Tracy Leavelle, Ph.D., chairman of the Department of History said, “Having Scott Simon talk about Jackie Robinson at the lecture is very fitting given Ross Horning’s past life in baseball.”

Jackie Robinson Day is celebrated in Major League Baseball every April 15th, and this year marks the 66th anniversary of Robinson’s Major League debut.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Doors open at 7:00 PM.