Slide Shows

Slide shows include his newest Great Boston Fires, Return to Scollay Square, Scollay Square, Route 128, The Curse of the Bambino, the Big Dig, Who Wrote Shakespeare?, Presidential Landmarks in New England, The Ponzi Scheme, and the West End. 

A schedule of public shows is at the bottom of this page.  Email David and book one of the following shows for your next event today! 

In 2004 Arcadia Publishing released David's fourth book, which, like his first, is all about Scollay Square.  The new Scollay Square book features dozens and dozens of never-before-seen or published photographs (some taken backstage at the Old Howard) along with playbills, postcards, theater programs – even loan shark receipts! 

To celebrate this new Scollay Square book, David has put together a brand new Scollay Square slide show which, like the book, also contains new images of the Square to go along with brand new stories and tales about the performers, politicians, inventors, and activists who made Scollay Square such an exciting place.

Based on David's first book on Scollay Square (Always Something Doing) this slide show describes the evolution of the part of Boston where everyone went - but few admitted it! From John Winthrop, (who settled here in 1630) to Sally Keith (who entertained here in the 1940s and 1950s) to Government Center today, this show will surprise you with tales of Revolutionary War heroism, scientific breakthroughs, and Civil War courage - all in the same place where a hot dog stand and a burlesque theater made truants of all New England.  (Jack Thomas of the Boston Globe wrote that David has a "...a fascinating slide show...full of splendid anecdotes...") 

This slide show is based on David's 2003 book, Building Route 128, which he co-wrote with author and speaker Yanni Tsipis.  (A click on the book's cover will take you to a web site devoted to the roadway.) 

This 45-minute show chronicles the road we love to hate.  In the 1930s, the “experts” called the planned circumferential highway around Boston a “Road to Nowhere,” and predicted that by 1970 traffic would peak at 15,000 vehicles a day. 

Today, in some spots, almost 200,000 jam the highway. 

In his latest slide presentation, David will present the complete story of Route 128, from its beginning in the 1920s as an ad hoc collection of two-lane roads that formed a rough arc 15 miles from Boston (the road was to intended to keep drivers away from Boston’s grid locked downtown), through the construction of the divided highway in the 1950s, and then how one man’s vision became the catalyst for the fantastic growth around the highway. 

This slide show includes images from the Massachusetts Department of Public Works archives, as well as the archives of many of the over two dozen towns and cities through which the highway passes. Building Route 128 will appeal not only to those with an interest in Route 128 itself but also to those curious about the history of Boston’s suburbs and the fundamental changes Route 128 brought to the region over the past four decades. 

In 1920, Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth (known to his legion of fans as the Bambino) to the New York Yankees.  The Red Sox, who had been winners of five of the first fifteen World Series, never won another, instead subjecting their fans to agonizingly close calls for 86 years.  The Yankees, who never even contended until 1920, went on to win 26 World Series championships until, in 2004, the Red Sox mounted the greatest comeback in the history of baseball and beat the Yankees 4 straight and went on to win the World Series.  Some people called that 86 year drought of championships the Curse of the Bambino.  It has been the subject of a book, countless newspaper and magazine articles, and David (along with Steven Bergman) even wrote a musical about it (a click on the CD cover below will send you to the web site.) 

Now it's a slide show. 

David will take your audience back 100 years to the roots of Boston baseball, when the team (just like today) captured the heart and soul of its citizens and was also (like today) inexorably intertwined with politics and politicians.  Then we'll see and hear the real story behind Harry Frazee, his purchase of the Red Sox, and later of a young Babe Ruth.  Then we'll learn the differing reasons why, in 1920, the Babe was sold to the New York Yankees. 

You'll be surprised at the answer. 

As with all of David's shows, your audience will not need any previous knowledge of the subject to enjoy the program.  Of course, baseball fans will certainly derive extra pleasure (or agony) out of reliving the saga of the Boston Red Sox and their - ultimately successful - struggle for a World Series championship since 1918, but the Curse of the Bambino is being written so that even those who don't know the difference between a home run and pop fly will enjoy the story. 

Get the scoop on the Big Dig (and all the little and medium sized digs that came before it) with an illustrated slide show talk by historian, writer - and former Big Dig spokesperson - David Kruh. David will show how Boston has changed over the past 400 years, from the reduction of Beacon Hill, through the filling in of the Back Bay, ending with the country's most expensive construction job - the Big Dig. 

You'll go deep inside the project's tunnels and soar high above the towers of Boston's stunning new bridge over the Charles River. You'll also learn about the amazing technological advances being used to build this monstrous project in a working city, and why the price has climbed to $14 billion. 

Whether you're interested in Boston history, a fan of technology, or just an angry taxpayer who wants to see the actual hole into which the government is dumping your money, this is a must-see show. 

The doubts have been around for over 300 years. How could William Shakespeare - a man who never sailed - have written with such accuracy about sailing in The Tempest? Or how - without studying law - written with such insight about lawyers, courts and legal issues in plays such as Henry IV? Or how - without ever serving in the military - written so splendidly of the rigors and technical aspects of war as he did in Hamlet? In fact, some ask how Shakespeare could have written at all without ever having attended school! The answer, they say, is that he couldn't and didn't. 

It is a fascinating concept that has amused many, tantalized others, and consumed the lives of a few, including a Boston man who, in 1916, went to court to prove that someone other than Shakespeare wrote all those great works. Before you laugh… he won the case. 

In this slide presentation historian and author David Kruh presents the story of one man's search for the "real" author of the works attributed to William Shakespeare and how - in a stunning piece of historical irony - that search played a role in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor! 

In Boston during 1920, an enterprising immigrant by the name of Charles Ponzi set the financial world on fire by promising investors he would double their money in 90 days. He claimed he made the unheard of profits by dealing in International Reply Coupons, an internationally recognized form of pre-paid postage. At one time Charles Ponzi could barely afford to ride the subway to work or pay his rent on a one bedroom apartment. By April, as thousands lined up outside his School Street office to give him money, he had a chauffeured luxury car and a six bedroom home in Lexington. It wasn't until July that anyone suspected the truth: that Charles Ponzi was actually perpetrating a pyramid scheme - one of the oldest swindles in the world. But it was too late. By then he owed more than $28 million. That was the day he was arrested for fraud. Relive the days of Boston's most outrageous rogue in this one-hour slide lecture. 

Based on David's book, which was co-written with his father Louis. 

Do you know where in New England...? 

• The oath of office was taken by a President of the United States? 
• A plaque commemorates a Presidential visit to a bar?
• You can see a coconut that saved a President's life? 
• A former President, accused of being a traitor, was almost lynched?

In this slide show, audiences will take a 50-minute trip through 200 years of the U.S. Presidency, focusing on the native New Englanders who called the White House home. Together, we will visit most of the sites in New England dedicated to the United States Presidents, including birthplaces, homes, libraries, and yes, even bars. Its a great combination history and travelogue will be of interest to both the historically minded and tourist alike. 

The West End of Boston began as an isolated Federalist enclave, but slowly evolved into a neighborhood teeming with immigrants from all over the world. By the end of the 19th century it was the most crowded part of the city, and was the perfect studying ground for sociologists and urban planners. Although the home of one of Boston's most powerful "ward bosses," Martin Lomansey, after his death the neighborhood was unable to maintain its political clout, and in the 1950s and 1960s was bulldozed to make way for an urban renewal project that still evokes outrage today. Whether you are a former resident looking to relive a memory of a forgotten street corner or a student who wants to know how 17,000 people could be thrown out of the homes they loved, this is a fascinating 45-minute slide show.  (Look closely at the picture below and you'll see former West End resident Leonard "Spock" Nimoy!) 

Building Route 128
Sweetster Lecture Series, Wakefield, April 30 at 7:00 p.m.