Ohio Northern University’s Pettit College of Law will present the 2014 Kormendy Lecture in the Large Moot Court Room on Wednesday, April 23, at 11:15 a.m. The program will feature a presentation by Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam.”

Logevall is an award-winning and renowned historian, accomplished educator, and prolific writer on the Vietnam War. His epic and groundbreaking book “Embers of War” won both the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in History and the prestigious Parkman Prize, which deemed it an “extraordinary work of modern history.”

The book is a result of more than a decade of research, in which Logevall accessed sources and archives on three continents never before tapped. In it, Logevall goes inside the councils of war–and gives the reader a seat at the conference tables where peace talks founder. He brings to life the bloodiest battles of France’s final years in Indochina–and shows how, from an early point, a succession of American leaders made disastrous policy choices that put America on its own collision course with history. In addition to his prolific writing career, Logevall is the John S. Knight Professor of International Studies and professor of history at Cornell University, where he serves as director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

The Kormendy Lectureship was established in 1987 in Ohio Northern’s College of Law through an endowment from Helen E. Kormendy, widow of Dr. Steven W. Kormendy. The Dr. Steven W. Kormendy and Helen E. Kormendy Law Lecture Fund is used each year to bring prominent individuals to campus to address matters of law in a public forum in the College of Law. Dr. Kormendy, who died on Jan. 6, 1985, graduated from the ONU College of Law in 1928 and was posthumously awarded an honorary LL.D. in 1985. The Ohio State Bar Association honored him for 50 years of law practice, and he was active in events in the Hungarian community in Cleveland.

This event is open to the public.