An Evening with the Mackinac Center

Please join us for an evening of fellowship and celebration as we honor America's 250th anniversary as a democracy. Featuring acclaimed historian and biographer, Walter Isaacson, author of The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, which explores the origins of the most revolutionary sentence in the Declaration of Independence.

Walter Isaacson

Few writers connect America’s past and future as compellingly as Walter Isaacson. By chronicling figures from Benjamin Franklin to today’s innovators, like Elon Musk, his work highlights the enduring values of liberty, ingenuity, and self-government that have guided the nation for nearly 250 years — and continue to shape its future.

A former CEO of the Aspen Institute, CNN, and editor of TIME, Mr. Isaacson has spent decades at the center of conversations on leadership, innovation, and power. His storytelling bridges past breakthroughs with today’s defining challenges, illuminating the choices that will determine what comes next.

Joseph G. Lehman
President, Mackinac Center for Public Policy

An engineer by training, Joe joined the Mackinac Center in 1995 and was named president in 2008. During his tenure, Michigan has seen numerous free-market policy advances in education, labor and state fiscal affairs. He and his wife are founders of Midland County Habitat for Humanity.