Vickers Lecture brings former congressman

J.C. Watts, former four-term congressman from Oklahoma and author of What Color Is a Conservative? will speak on “Our Nation Today” at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 29 at the Lied Center. Watts, the former House Republican conference chair and fourth-ranking Republican in the House, retired from Congress in 2002. The speech is presented by the Vickers Memorial Lecture Series and the School of Business, and is free and open to the public. For more information call 864-7573.

KU librarian to sign book about printing

Richard W. Clement, special collections librarian at the Spencer Research Library, will talk about and sign copies of his new book, Books on the Frontier: Print Culture in the American West: 1763-1875, from 11 a.m. to noon Dec. 13 at Oread Books in the Kansas Union. The event is free and open to the public.

The book chronicles the westward spread of printing and shows how the frontier book and newspaper became a medium for the transmission of cultural values and the formation of a new kind of community.