Author and journalist Rick Atkinson will visit UGA and Athens for the Ferdinand Phinizy Lecture, which will be included in the university's annual Humanities Festival and in the Global Georgia public events series of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. It is also part of the UGA Spring 2026 Signature Lectures series. The event is free and open to the public, with no advance registration required. Requests for accommodations for those with disabilities should be made as soon as possible but at least seven days prior to the event. To request an accommodation, please contact Dave Marr at davemarr@uga.edu.

Rick Atkinson is one of the nation’s foremost public historians, the author of eight narrative histories about five American wars. The Fate of the Day, his second book in a planned trilogy on the American Revolution,  debuted in 2025 as the #1 New York Times nonfiction bestseller and was lavishly praised by critics and peers. With The Fate of the Day, Ken Burns said, Atkinson “takes his place among the greatest of all historians,” and according to The New York Times, “there is no better writer of narrative history.”

Atkinson won the Pulitzer Prize in history for An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, the first volume of his trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II. His other books include The Long Gray Line, a narrative saga about the West Point class of 1966; Crusade, a narrative history of the Persian Gulf War, and In the Company of Soldiers, an account of his time with the U.S. 101st Airborne Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During his long career as a journalist, which included two decades at the Washington Post, Atkinson won Pulitzer Prizes for national reporting (1982) and public service (1999). He has also served as the Gen. Omar N. Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership at the U.S. Army War College, where he remains an adjunct faculty member.

John Spalding, trustee and chair emeritus of the UGA Foundation, will give an introduction on behalf of the Phinizy family, which established the lecture. Anna Stenport, Dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, will give welcoming remarks.

The Ferdinand Phinizy Lectureship is endowed through the University of Georgia Foundation, administered by the department of history, and presented in partnership with the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts and the University of Georgia Press.