Cities in War Struggle and Peace

So the UO's Department of Architecture is sponsoring this lecture series called Cities in War, Struggle and Peace: The Architecture of Memory and Life.

This year's series is subsubtitled Rebuilding Cities after War and Disaster, and I'm interested in it because I'm a history geek. There's a lecture at 7:30 pm each Tuesday night through Feb. 19 in Lawrence 177, which, if you can find it in the most confusing building on the UO campus, will provide you with incredibly uncomfortable chairs and leave you with a huge backache but a full brain. Next week's lecture is on Tokyo, and I should have an interview with the lecturer up next Friday as well as an article in next week's paper. Head to the Triple-A events webpage for more info.

The kickoff lecture was by Brian Ladd, an historian associated with the State University of New York at Albany, whose book The Ghosts of Berlin garnered a lot of praise. I wrote a story about his lecture for this week, and here's a follow-up Q&A with Ladd (he was nice enough to talk to me over the phone for about half an hour late on a Friday). You like WWII movies or books? You've visited Berlin? Or hey, you like words like "Luftwaffe" that mean something bad but just seem like so much fun to yell out?

Read on.