February 21: David Levering Lewis—The Stained Glass Window

Presented by 192 Books, David Levering Lewis reads from his new book The Stained Glass Window: A Family History as the American Story, 1790–1958 (Penguin Press, 2025)

This event will take place in person at 192 Books at 192 10th Ave on Friday, February 21st at 7:00 PM ET. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. The discussion will also be streamed directly on this page. There is no login required. A recording will be archived.

Books will be available for sale after the conversation.

David Levering Lewis—The Stained Glass Window: A Family History as the American Story, 1790–1958 (Penguin Press, 2025)

Sitting beneath a stained glass window dedicated to his grandmother in the Atlanta church where his family had prayed for generations, preeminent American historian David Levering Lewis was struck by the great lacunae in what he could know about his own ancestors. He vowed to excavate their past and tell their story. David Levering Lewis’s lineage led him to the Kings and Belvinses, two white slaveholding families in Georgia; to the Bells, a free persons of color slaveholding family in South Carolina; and to the Lewises, an up-from-slavery Black family in Georgia. In The Stained Glass Window, Lewis reckons with his legacy in full, facing his ancestors and all that was lost, all the doors that were closed to them.

Photo by Frank L. Stewart

David Levering Lewis is professor emeritus of history at New York University. A recipient of the National Humanities Medal, Lewis received the Pulitzer Prize for each volume of his W. E. B. Du Bois biography. He is the author of eleven books. Lewis has received fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Humanities Center, the Wilson Center, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the MacArthur Foundation. He lives in New York City.