History Author Show: Recent Episodes
Dean Karayanis
We’ve all been transported into the past by a special book, place or person. On the History Author Show, host Dean Karayanis and a team of correspondents bring you the people who build the time machines.
July 4, 2026 – In this episode, we’re joined by a familiar face, an attorney and author of great wisdom and insight. He’s David O. Stewart, here to talk about his latest book, “The Democracy We Must Keep: Seven Founders, Nine Documents, and the Ideas that Framed America.” Two hundred fifty years ago, men of different opinions, visions, and temperaments set out to create a world where people ruled, not kings or dictators. Nine key documents, analyzed by Mr. Stewart, shaped the nation and restrained the human frailties that the founders were very clear-eyed about. They thought it might not lats 50 years, but here it is at 250 thanks to the tools they gave posterity — us — to create “a more perfect union.” Check out David O. Stewart’s previous interviews on the History Author Show. These include his non-fiction books “George Washington: The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father,” “Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America,” and the epic, “American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America.” We also discussed The Lincoln Deception, a novel in his Fraser and Cook Historical Mysteries, and “The New Land,” book one of The Overstreet Saga.
March 15, 2026 – We welcome a treasure from the City of Brotherly Love, Irene Levy Baker, back into the Wayback Machine. Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, she’s here to discuss “Cheers to McGillin’s: Philly’s Oldest Tavern.” She previously joined us to talk about her book, “100 Things To Do In Philadelphia.” You can find that interview, and my 2016 conversation with the tavernkeeper, Chris Mullins Sr., in our archives, and visit McGillins.com for more. McGillin’s, which opened in 1860 — the year President Lincoln was first elected to replace Pennsylvania’s own James Buchanan — and is the oldest continuously operating tavern in Philadelphia. It survived two global pandemics, two World Wars, the Civil War, economic depressions, a fire, Disco, and 165 years of history. Mentioned in This Episode: * Chris Mullins, Sr. — McGillin’s Olde Ale House * Irene Levy Baker – 100 Things to Do in Philadelphia Before You Die * Rafe Bartholomew – Two and Two: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me * Robert Norden — The Old ’76 House
Feb 13, 2026 – We welcome award-winning author Jim Logan — a fourth-generation Oklahoman — aboard our time machine to discuss his debut novel, “Of Saints and Rivers.” The author, at 81, is as inspiring as his sweeping story that encompasses all the highs and lows of the period from the Gilded Age, Dustbowl, and Great Depression through the World Wars and the 1950s. The novel is the multi-generational saga of the McClellan family told through the eyes of their youngest son, Jordan. It’s a coming-of-age story that begins on the Oklahoma frontier and transports us to places like Mexico and a seminary, exploring themes of faith, family legacy, and the search for meaning. The book is praised as an emotionally rich, award-winning debut novel for fans of authors like Kristin Hannah and William Kent Krueger.
November 30, 2025 – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and lifetime Long Islander, Bill Bleyer, joins us in the time machine to walk the streets of Gotham past with his book, “The Roosevelts in New York City.” Among his previous books is “Sagamore Hill: Theodore Roosevelt's Summer White House.” The Roosevelts story in America began with Nicholas Roosevelt, a farmer who arrived four centuries ago and planted the seeds of a distinguished and impactful family ― one with ties to many places in New York City. On East 20th St. stands a recreation of the brownstone where President Theodore Roosevelt was born and developed his love of nature. The twin brownstone next door was where his uncle, Robert Roosevelt, instilled in the future president an interest in conservation, while having multiple affairs and even starting a second secret family with a mistress. The double townhouse on East 65th Street built by Sara Delano Roosevelt still stands, built so that her son, President Franklin Roosevelt, would have a suitable place to raise his family. It also allowed her, as Bill Bleyer says, to keep him tied to her apron strings while she meddled in their lives. Her daughter-in-law — TR’s niece, Eleanor Roosevelt — was driven to tears by having to live in a home that was not her own. Bill Bleyer details the unique places in the city where family members lived and worked and unveils the private interactions behind this famous American family. For more interviews on the Roosevelts: * David Pietrusza – 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents”
* David Pietrusza – Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal
* Michael Patrick Cullinane – Remembering Theodore Roosevelt: Reminiscences of his Contemporaries
* Michael Patrick Cullinane – Theodore Roosevelt’s Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon
* Winston Groom – The Allies: Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II
* David Pietrusza – TR’s Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy
* Tim Brady – His Father’s Son: The Life of General Ted Roosevelt, Jr.
* John J. Miller – The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football
* Kermit Roosevelt – Allegiance
* David Pietrusza – 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR
July 4, 2025 - With the 249th birthday of America on July 4, 2025, and the 250th anniversary of Independence Day looming in 2025, the nation’s eyes are cast back to the place where America was born. Paul Kahan returns to tells us how that ground was sown and how the city has grown in “Philadelphia: A Narrative History.” Paul Kahan earned a Ph.D. from Temple University and is a commentator on U.S. political, economic, and the craft of diplomacy. His book has been described as “accessible” by critics, by which they mean it’s written for everyone to enjoy, not for other academics. Check out our previous conversations with Paul Kahan: “The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant” “Amiable Scoundrel: Simon Cameron, Lincoln's Scandalous Secretary of War” “The Bank War: Andrew Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, and the Fight for American Finance”
May 11, 2024 – What happens when a celebrated author — Mohammed Ali’s official biographer, no less — turns his talents to putting his mother’s century-long life down on paper? In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard Thomas Hauser, author of “My Mother and Me: A Memoir.”
Eleanor Nordlinger Hauser, who passed away last year at 96, experienced a life of success and failures, meeting the march of years with resilience and grace until she made her peace with the fact that — as we all do someday— she had run out of tomorrows.
Thomas Hauser is the author of fiction and non-fiction books that are best-sellers the world over. They include “Final Warning: The Legacy of Chernobyl” and “Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times.” As you might expect for the official biographer of The Greatest, he has been inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame.
For more on Ali and boxing, check out these previous interviews:
- Todd D. Snyder – Bundini: Don’t Believe the Hype
- Todd D. Snyder – Beatboxing: How Hip-Hop Changed the Fight Game
- Jerry Izenberg — Baseball, Nazis & Nedick’s Hot Dogs: Growing up Jewish in the 1930s in Newark
April 1, 2024 – Where would an enslaved man who escaped the South find the courage to return to the Confederacy as a Union Spy? In this episode, we meet such a man thanks to Robert Hilliard, author of “In Freedom’s Shadow.” The novel is based on the heroic true story of John Scobell, an enslaved African American who escaped early in the Civil War.
Recruited by the Union to return south and gather intelligence, Scobell found new purpose as a spy. These was no ritzy James Bond missions, but daring border crossings, nerve-wracking dead drops, and a man at risk every moment of exposure, which would mean torture and death.
Rob has written about sports, history, and the outdoors for over two decades. He last joined us to discuss his book, “A Season on the Allegheny.” You can listen to that interview in our archives wherever you enjoy the show and find Rob on Twitter and Facebook.
October 11, 2023 – In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard Brent Butt, who those of you in the Great White North know as the creator and star of the sitcom “Corner Gas,” so beloved by Canadians that it has spawned an animated version and a movie. He’s also host of the Butt Pod, which — since you probably have your phone out right now — I suggest you swipe over and subscribe to for some really insightful interviews.
Brent Butt puts his talents to work on the thriller genre in “Huge: A Novel.” The story hits the circuit of nameless clubs in Western Canda where two comedians — one, a veteran in the business from America; the other, a lady newcomer from Ireland — meet the aspiring headliner who’ll change their lives, and perhaps end them.
You can read more at HugeTheNovel.com and — speaking of our guest always growing, refusing to be pigeonholed by one genre — these days, Brent Butt is transitioning to publishing more content on Substack as he transitions away from @BrentButt on Twitter.
September 4, 2023 – How did airship R101 — embodying the British Empire’s global ambitions — die in fireball of dreams, romance, and hubris and turn to ashes in the pages of history? S.C. Gwynne brings us this story of reaching for the sky in “His Majesty’s Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine.”
S.C. Gwynne previously joined us to discuss his books, “Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War,” and “The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football.” His 2010 book, “Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History,” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Visit our guest at SCGwynne.com or @SCGwynne on Twitter and @S.C.Gwynne on Facebook.
July 30, 2023 - What did service in the World Wars mean to women who found new opportunities to enter the workforce and join the fight as never before? We’ll go on a fictional ride with one of those service members with today’s novelist, Jenni Walsh.
Her novel is “The Call of the Wrens,” the third she joined us to discuss after her debut, “Becoming Bonnie,” and its sequel, “Side By Side,” about “the crash of the century,” when Bonnie Parker met Clyde Barrow. You can find those conversations in our archives wherever you enjoy the show or via the links above.
In “The Call of the Wrens,” Jenni introduces us to the women of Britain's Women's Royal Naval Service who are shaped by service in the Great War and twenty years later in World War Two, when they're confronted by a life-changing moment that they meet head on at 70 miles an hour.
It's a vivid, emotional saga of love, secrets, resilience—and the knowledge that the future will always belong to the brave souls who fight for it.
Visit our guest at JenniLWalsh.com, follow her @JenniLWalsh on Twitter and Instagram, and like her page on Facebook. Special thanks to Shannon Hargreaves of @the_reel_bookery on Instagram for submitting a video question for this interview.
June 17, 2023 - Reading about history is one thing, but what happens when a legendary sportswriter looks back nearly a century to recall his upbringing in Newark, New Jersey, during the trying decades of the ‘30s and ‘40s – as a Jewish kid, mind you — while Wall Street crashed and Hitler made war on the world?
In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard a real time-traveler — at least, that’s how I like to think of people who bring us their memories from days few of us lived. His name is Jerry Izenberg, and his memoir — the most personal of his many books — is titled, “Baseball, Nazis & Nedick’s Hot Dogs: Growing up Jewish in the 1930s in Newark.”
Jerry Izenberg is one of just two daily newspaper columnists to have covered the first 53 Super Bowls. He’s also been there for 54 consecutive Kentucky Derbies and the last five Triple Crown-winning horses. He earned the Red Smith Award for sports writing, has been named the New Jersey Sportswriter of the Year five times – oh, and is an inductee in in 17 Halls of Fame.
In his memoir, Mr. Izenberg – now in his 90s – casts his keen eye back on his first two decades of life, the ones that made him who he is today, as he faced antisemitism, the Great Depression, and World War II to find love, community, and purpose. It’s a life well lived, and it ain’t over yet.
Thanks to David Pietrusza, author of the upcoming book, “Gangsterland: A Tour Through the Dark Heart of Jazz-Age New York City,” for submitting a video question for his fellow baseball writer. You can enjoy my previous interviews with David here:
Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR ― Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal, and Unlikely Destiny TR’s Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series Too Long Ago: A Childhood Memory. A Vanished World
May 11, 2023 – Who was the greatest Major League Baseball catcher of all time? If the name Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra doesn’t spring to mind, have I got the movie for you. It’s the story of a kid from St. Louis and D-Day veteran whose life story has the power to uplift not just fans, but people from all walks of life.
In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard sports journalist Lindsay Berra, whose here to talk about the new documentary made about the life of her grandfather, New York Yankees legend Yogi Berra.
The film is called “It Ain’t Over,” and if you grew up with Berra as just a pitchman, if you know him only from his Yogisims or the Hanna-Barbera rip-off cartoon Bear Who Shall Not Be Named, you are missing out on a chance to be inspired.
For more on Yogi Berra’s service in World War II, check out the event I emceed at the at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center in Little Falls, New Jersey, conducted in partnership with the Bob Feller Act of Valor Foundation. It was titled: Sacrifice & Courage — A Tribute to D-Day.
May 1, 2023 – When a president of the United States dies, what does how we memorialize his life and service say about the republic? Our time machine welcomes back Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky to give her insights as we discuss “Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture,” co-written with Matthew R. Costello.
The book includes observation of several scholars, bringing to life a vision shared by the White House Historical Association and the Southern Methodist University Center for Presidential History where Dr. Chervinsky is a senior fellow in addition to her responsibilities teaching about the presidency at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.
Dr. Chervinsky last joined us for an interview about her debut book, “The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution,” which earned the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Excellence in American History Book Award and the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize.
Visit LindsayChervinsky.com for more or find our guest on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. You can also subscribe to her email newsletter, Imperfect Union, which sends valuable and interesting observations straight to your inbox.
Thanks to presidential historian Louis Picone for submitting a video question for this interview. You can enjoy our three conversations about his special books in our archives.
- Grant’s Tomb: The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon
- Where the Presidents Were Born: The History & Preservation of the Presidential Birthplaces
- The President is Dead! The Extraordinary Stories of the Presidential Deaths, Final Days, Burials, and Beyond
March 21, 2023 – How did a man who worked at the JFK Presidential Library grapple with the 35th president’s legacy over his own lifetime to deliver portrait of the real man behind the myths of Camelot? In this episode, our time machine welcomes back Stephen F. Knott, author of “Coming to Terms with John F. Kennedy.”
We previously welcomed Mr. Knott onto the show way back in 2015 to discuss the book he co-authored with Tony Williams: “Washington & Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America.” Mr. Knott is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and worked on Senator Ted Kennedy’s campaign in 1976.
Find him at StephenFKnott.com or on Twitter and Facebook.
January 23, 2023 – How did the relationships of two pairs of U.S. presidents — Theodore Roosevelt with William Howard Taft and Franklin Delano Roosevelt with freshman Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson — change the course of history, and the world we live in today?In this episode, presidential historian Mike Purdy brings us Presidential Friendships: How They Changed History. Mike is an opinion contributor to The Hill and founder of PresidentialHistory.com, where you can find his award-winning presidential history blog. He joined us last to chat about his previous book, 101 Presidential Insults: What They Really Thought About Each Other — and What It Means to Us.Visit Mike @PresidentialHistorian on Instagram, on Twitter @PREShistory or follow his Facebook page Mike Purdy Presidential History.Thanks to Mike’s fellow presidential historians who supplied questions for his interview. They are Feather Schwartz Foster, who joined us to discuss Mary Lincoln’s Flannel Pajamas: And Other Stories from the First Ladies’ Closet, and David Pietrusza, whose conversations you’ll find below.
* Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal
* 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents
* 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR ― Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal, and Unlikely Destiny
* TR’s Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy
* Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series
* Too Long Ago: A Childhood Memory. A Vanished World
December 19, 2022 – How did Kermit the Frog, Big Bird, and the rest of the Sesame Street expand their neighborhood to Moscow after the collapse of the USSR? In this episode, we meet the woman who adapted a beloved American TV show for an audience newly freed from behind the Iron Curtain.TV producer and filmmaker Natasha Lance Rogoff who brings us, “Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia.” It’s the true story of the Soviet Union tearing down its walls and a reborn Russia opening its doors to the best the West had to offer — despite assassinations, armed attacks, and even the kidnapping of Elmo at the barrel of AK-47s.Visit her at NatashaLanceRogoff.com, where you can navigate through to her social media accounts on all the major platforms, including @LanceRogoff on Twitter.
November 21, 2022 – If you could ride along in a Humvee with one of the most admired American combat leaders of the last half century, what would you hope to learn?
In this episode, our time machine welcomes back internationally acclaimed military historian and U.S. Army veteran Mike Guardia. We last caught up with Mike to discuss his book, Skybreak: The 58th Fighter Squadron in Desert Storm.
Mike returns to discuss his acclaimed biography of Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, titled, Hal Moore: A Soldier Once…and Always. Mike Guardia served six years on active duty as an Armor Officer and got to know his subject, whose leadership you may recall from the Mel Gibson’s portrayal in the film We Were Soldiers.
Visit our guest at MikeGuardia.com, or on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
October 24, 2022 - Something special this week for the season of pumpkins, ghosts, and Candy Corn: A YouTube feature on what Hollywood gets right and wrong about yesterday called History Author Showtime.
It’s a video breakdown of the 1975 movie, “The Legend of Lizzie Borden,” starring Elizabeth Montgomery, who you may remember as Samantha Stevens from “Bewitched.” I often ask authors what they think of the film or TV portrayals of the past, and for this week, I pulled some soundbites from Cara Robertson, who I interviewed about her book, “The Trial of Lizzie Borden.”
“The Legend of Lizzie Borden” was her favorite portrayal of the tried-but-not-convicted alleged murderess. I’ve previously published Showtime breakdowns of AMC’s “The Americans,” which featured former KGB agent Jack Barsky, who I interviewed about his book, “Deep Under Cover. My Secret Life & tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America.”
I also covered “The Dummy,” a 1962 episode of The Twilight Zone. Anne Serling, author of “As I Knew Him: My Dad Rod Serling” had a surprising and amusing recollection of the infamous ventriloquist dummy used in show that I just felt deserved to be highlighted.
Thank you for subscribing at YouTube.com/@historyauthorshow to support more time travel adventures.
October 10, 2022 - What if historical fiction could give someone the courage that saves their life? In this episode, Judith F. Brenner shares her debut novel The Moments Between Dreams, which has the power to do just that, as we mark Domestic Violence and Polio Awareness Months.
The book has been described as "edutaining,' both educational and entertaining, as we return to the 1940s and ‘50s for a story set during the polio epidemic wrapped around housewife Carol’s carefully concealed abusive marriage.
Judith F. Brenner is a journalist by training and runs Creative Lakes Media, LLC, a freelance writing and editing services company. Her personal essays have been published in Writers in the Know literary magazine and Minnesota Parent magazine.
Find our guest at JudithFBrenner.com, where you can navigate through from there to all her social media accounts, on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
September 26, 2022 - How did Franklin Delano Roosevelt win reelection with 46 of the 48 states in 1936, despite America being in the throes of the Great Depression? In this episode, legendary historian David Pietrusza to discuss his new book, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR's 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal.
Enjoy his previous appearances in our archives where we discuss his books:
TR’s Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR ― Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal, and Unlikely Destiny Too Long Ago: A Childhood Memory. A Vanished World
Find our guest @DPietrusza on Twitter or DavidPietrusza.com.
Special thanks to Mike Purdy for submitting a video question for this interview. He appeared on the History Author Show to discuss his book 101 Presidential Insults: What They Really Thought About Each Other and What It Means to Us. He’ll be back to talk Presidential Friendships: How They Changed History.
September 3, 2022 - On the morning of September 8th, 1900, disaster struck the vibrant, prosperous island of Galveston, Texas, tearing out its heart. In this episode, our time machine travels back to the turn of the last century to meet sixteen-year-old Clara and the Gladys family, against the backdrop of the worst natural disaster to ever strike the United States -- that killed between 6,000 and 8,000 on the island of Galveston.
Our guide on this journey is international award-winning author Anna J. Walner who brings us Saltwater and Driftwood: A Historical Novel.
Anna is a native Texan and began her career as a fantasy novelist, delivering the Enrovia Series and the four-volume Uluru Legacy, a story of vampires and werewolves.
Visit our guest at AnnaJWalner.com, or on social media through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
August 22, 2022 - What if you were a Midwestern haberdasher-turned-senator, who served just three months as vice president, before finding yourself thrust into the Big Chair, charged with winning World War II?
In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard journalist Jeffrey Frank who brings us, The Trials of Harry S. Truman: The Extraordinary Presidency of An Ordinary Man, 1945-1953.
Jeffrey Frank is the best-selling author Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage. He has published four novels, among them the Washington Trilogy — The Columnist, Bad Publicity, and Trudy Hopedale — and is the coauthor, with Diana Crone Frank, of The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen: A New Translation from the Danish, which won the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Prize.
He was a senior editor at the New Yorker, the deputy editor of The Washington Post’s Outlook section and is now a contributor to major publications nationwide. Visit him at JeffreyFrank.com, or on Facebook and @JeffreyAFrank on Twitter.
Special thanks to Sally Mott Freeman for offering her insights in a video question for this interview. You can check out our conversation about her excellent book, The Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family's Quest to Bring Him Home.
August 8, 2022 - In the late summer of 1942, the First Marine Division sought to wrest Guadalcanal from the Japanese Empire. We’ll meet one of only two reporters on hand to record the carnage, as the spot in the Pacific earned its nickname, the Island of Death.
In this episode, our time machine travels back war zones to meet in intrepid journalist who told soldiers’ stories to the folks back home. Our guide on this journey is Ray E. Boomhower, a senior editor at the Indiana Historical Society Press, biographer, and former reporter, who brings us Richard Tregaskis: Reporting under Fire from Guadalcanal to Vietnam.
For more, visit RayBoomhower.Blogspot.com and @RayBoomhower on Twitter.
Special thanks to Deborah A. Cohen for submitting a video question for this interview. In the History Author Show archives, you can watch or listen to our conversation about her book Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War.
July 25, 2022 - How did the worlds of hip-hop and boxing unite, blending together music, race, sports, and politics? In this episode our time machine welcomes back Dr. Todd D. Snyder who brings us Beatboxing: How Hip-Hop Changed the Fight Game. We previously caught up to discuss his previous book: Bundini: Don't Believe the Hype.
Meeting Mohammed Ali's hype man, Drew "Bundini" Brown, was an experience that really stuck with me, in a way that made me scared to think I might never have known a thing about him, if not for today's guest.
Todd D. Snyder, an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at Siena College in Albany, New York, who grew up in West Virginia as the son of a boxing trainer. He's excellent at divining the poetry in rap and how it developed this symbiotic relationship with the sweet science. His previous books include 12 Rounds in Lo's Gym: Boxing and Manhood in Appalachia.
Visit him at HillbillySpeaks.com, or on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
July 2, 2022 - Who were the citizen spies who risked their lives to bring General George Washington the intelligence he needed to win the War for Independence? In this episode, we take a fictional trip back to the American Revolution, to meet the people who fought for liberty with their wits and secrecy, not muskets and cannon.
Our guide on this journey is S.W. O'Connell who brings us, The Patriot Spy, Book One of the Yankee Doodle Spies Series, followed by Book 2, The Cavalier Spy, and Book 3, The Winter Spy.
S.W. O'Connell is a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer who has served in a wide variety of counterintelligence assignments around the world. Upon retirement, he decided to mix his love and study of history with his military experiences to craft historical novels.
Visit him at Yankee Doodle Spies Dot Blog Spot Dot Com, on Facebook, or @SWOconnell on Twitter.
Special thanks to Thomas J. Howley for submitting a video question for this interview. Watch or listen to the History Show interview about his novel Wolf of Clontarf: The Irish, the Vikings and the Foreigners of the World.
June 27, 2022 - How did revolutions in the two great English-speaking nations -- the United States and the United Kingdom -- give birth to the American Constitution, and what does its creation have to tell us about the challenges we face over 200 years since its ratification?
In this episode, we dig into those questions, traveling back to when it all started with James D. R. Philips, a lawyer and visiting lecturer at the University of Sydney’s Law School in Australia. His book is Two Revolutions and the Constitution: How the English and American Revolutions Produced the American Constitution.
In the interview we discussed the dispersion of power that makes the U.S. government almost coup-proof, as well as the New York Sun column where I quoted James Philips: It’s Dangerous for January 6th Hearings To Portray Our Republic as a Fabergé Egg.
Visit our guest at JamesPhilips.net, or on Twitter and Facebook.
June 13, 2022 - Before he won ten World Series titles with the New York Yankees, Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra answered a higher team’s calling, to serve his country in World War Two -- a role in the Navy that ultimately led him to a rocket ship supporting the Normandy landings.
For June 6, 2022, the 78th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings, my column in the New York Sun was titled: “Yogi Berra’s War: ‘Deja Vu All Over Again.’” It looked at the famed catcher’s service during the Normandy invasion, and spread the word about an event you’ll be enjoying in this week’s episode.
It’s a roundtable discussion held at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center, conducted in partnership with the Bob Feller Act of Valor Foundation. It was titled: Sacrifice & Courage, A Tribute to D-Day.
I was honored to act as moderator for the conversation, which was streamed live to military personnel at posts all around the world and all the ships at sea. Our panel in Little Ferry, New Jersey, on the campus of Montclair State University featured former governor of Mississippi and Secretary of the Navy Raymond Mabus Jr., Rear Admiral Edward “Sonny” Masso (retired), Luke Epplin -- author of Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball -- and Larry Berra, the son and namesake of Yogi.
In this interview, I also recommend a few books that I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing authors about, that have covered the service of ballplayers and the Normandy Landings. One is about the son of the 26th president, the oldest man and highest-ranking officer to go ashore that day. That book is His Father's Son: The Life of General Ted Roosevelt, Jr., by Tim Brady.
The others are by baseball historian Jim Leeke:
The Best Team Over There: The Untold Story of Grover Cleveland Alexander and the Great War From the Dugouts to the Trenches: Baseball During the Great War Nine Innings for the King: The Day Wartime London Stopped for Baseball – July 4, 1918
May 16, 2022 - Today, mapping the source of the Nile River is as easy as a Google search, but the mystery intrigued humanity for centuries. In this episode, best-selling author Candice Millard introduces us to the men who won a race worthy of Indiana Jones in River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile.
We last met up with Candice Millard to discuss her book, Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape and the Making of Winston Churchill. Regular listeners have also heard me praise Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine & the Murder of a President as well as The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey.
For more, visit CandiceMillard.com or follow her @Candice_Millard on Twitter and like her at Facebook.
Thanks to Todd Arrington, who we met up with to chat about his book, The Last Lincoln Republican: The Presidential Election of 1880. Todd is site manager at James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio.
Music credit: "Temple of Endless Sands" by Darren Curtis.
May 2, 2022 - Imagine you're struggling to feed your family during the Great Depression, and you cause a tragic accident at work. Do you risk your precious job at a time of sky-high unemployment and breadlines, or let someone else take the fall for what you did wrong? We'll meet a young man who faced that dilemma with award-winning novelist Sheila Myers who brings us The Truth of Who You Are.
In this based-on-a-true-story work of historical fiction, we meet Ben Taylor, whose decision stateside with the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps follows him from Great Smoky Mountains all way to the France during the Battle of the Bulge and back.
Sheila Myers is a college professor of ecology in Upstate New York. Her previous work of historical fiction earned the 2017 Best Book of Fiction by the Adirondack Center for Writing.
Sheila's Durant Family Saga followed Union Pacific Railroad tycoon Dr. Thomas C. Durant, and his children, from the 1870s throughout their boom-and-bust lives. We interviewed her about each book in the trilogy.
Book 1: Imaginary Brightness
Book 2: Castles in the Air
Book 3: The Night Is Done
Visit our guest at SheilaMyers.com, or on Twitter and Facebook.
Special thanks to Rob Hilliard for submitting a question for the interview. You can hear my conversation with Rob about his book, A Season on the Allegheny, in our archives wherever you enjoy the show.
April 18, 2022 - If a group of World War Two-era journalists invited you out for drinks, ready to open up about their interviews with everyone from Gandhi and Neru to Mussolini and Hitler, what would say? Readers get that opportunity with Deborah Cohen who brings us Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War.
In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard journalists John Gunther, H. R. Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean, and Dorothy Thompson, who have do their job before and during the war, confronting the likes of Hitler and Mussolini, but also isolationist forces who think dictators might not be so bad.
Deborah Cohen is the author of The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914-1939, Household Gods: The British and Their Possessions, and Family Secrets. She is also the Richard W. Leopold Professor of History at Northwestern University, focusing on modern Europe. Visit her at DeborahCohen.com or @DeborahACohen on Twitter.
Special thanks to Cara Robertson for sending this great book our way. In our archives, you can listen to Cara chatting about her book The Trial of Lizzie Borden: A True Story.
April 4, 2022 - What would you do if your estranged father died, leaving behind piles of Nazi-era documents related to the fate of your family's café in the world wars? In this episode, our time machine travels back to the inter-war years, to meet a Jewish family rocked by the turmoil of Austria-Hungary and them Germany coming out on the losing side.
Our guide on this journey is Meriel Schindler who brings us The Lost Café Schindler: One Family, Two Wars, and the Search for Truth. After her father Kurt's death, Meriel was left to confront their broken relationship, and untangle the truth behind the tales he spun -- stories of an extraordinary family tree featuring Franz Kafka, Oskar Schindler, the Jewish doctor who treated Hitler’s and his mother, and others. Only one thing was concrete: The café that the Nazis stole when her family was forced to flee.
Find our guest at MerielSchindler.com, or at @MerielSchindler on Twitter.
Special thanks investigative journalist Gerald Posner for submitting a video question on anti-Semitism for The Lost Café Schindler, and also providing a blurb for the book. Gerald has done three previous interviews about his books:
God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK
We also cite my conversation with Gerald's wife and writing partner, Trisha, and her book The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story .
March 21, 2022 - Who were the young American pilots who launched their fighter jets into the wild blue yonder during the first Gulf Wear, aiming to pry tiny Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's fist? In this episode, we'll travel back to January 17, 1991, as Desert Shield transforms into Desert Storm high in the skies over Iraq.
Once there, we'll meet those American airmen -- and the teams on the ground that kept their F-15C's flying against Soviet MiG-29 Fulcrums -- with internationally acclaimed military historian and U.S. Army veteran Mike Guardia who brings us Skybreak: The 58th Fighter Squadron in Desert Storm.
Mike Guardia served six years on active duty as an Armor Officer and is widely praised for his acclaimed biography Hal Moore: A Soldier Once…and Always, chronicling the life of LTG Harold G. Moore, whose leadership you may recall from the Mel Gibson's portrayal in the film We Were Soldiers. Mike has been nominated for the Army Historical Foundation’s Distinguished Book Award not once but twice. In 2021, he was named Author of the Year by the Military Writers Society of America.
Visit our guest at MikeGuardia.com, or on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
March 7, 2022 - Best-selling author Eva Stachniak joins us to discuss her latest novel, The School of Mirrors. "During the reign of Louis XV, impoverished but lovely teenage girls from all over France are sent to a discreet villa in the town of Versailles. Overseen by the King’s favorite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, they will be trained as potential courtesans for the King. ... The students at this 'School of Mirrors' rarely ask questions, and when Louis tires of them, they are married off to minor aristocrats or allowed to retire to one of the more luxurious nunneries."
It's a rich and enjoyable story, focusing not just on the ribald details, but on the relationship between a mother and her daughter, who succeeds despite the many obstacles to women at the time, but longs to know the truth about her father's identity.
Eva Stachniak was born in Wrocław, Poland, moved to Canada in 1981, and has worked for Radio Canada International and Sheridan College, where she taught English and Humanities. She is the bestselling author of The Winter Palace, Empress of the Night, Necessary Lies, and Garden of Venus, in addition to The Chosen Maiden.
You can find our interview on The Chosen Maiden in our archives. I was also honored that Eva asked me to MC an event and Q&A at the Kosciuszko Center in Manhattan some years back. You should absolutely check them out if you're interested in preserving the history of this dual American and Polish hero.
Visit our guest at EvaStachniak.com or find her at Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
February 21, 2022 - It was once an unattainable dream, kept out of reach by lynch mobs, police dogs and firehoses. But in 2008, Barack Obama fulfilled the promise of that all men are created equal. In this episode, we take a look back at the man who changed the face of the Oval Office forever, just in time for Presidents' Day and Black History Month.
Our guide on this journey is Professor Claude A. Clegg III who brings us The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama. He is the Lyle V. Jones Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a joint appointment in the Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies and the Department of History.
Visit him at ClaudeClegg.com and @ClaudeClegg on Twitter.
Special thanks to Bijan C. Bayne who offering up a question for Professor Clegg. I previously interviewed Bijan for his books Elgin Baylor: The Man Who Changed Basketball and Martha’s Vineyard Basketball: How a Resort League Defied Notions of Race and Class. He's also the writer-producer of the docuseries, "Six Degrees of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar."
February 7, 2022 - Theodore Roosevelt's life is the stuff of myths and legends, a persona he carefully cultivated over his decades charging through public life. But what did those who shared his private moments think of the Rough Rider? We'll get freshly uncovered insights from those who knew him best, meeting the 26th president through the eyes of friends, families and confidants, through 14 lost oral histories from the 1950s.
Our guide on this journey is Michael Patrick Cullinane who brings us these never-before-heard stories in Remembering Theodore Roosevelt: Reminiscences of his Contemporaries. We previously caught up with Michael when we compared our busts -- our TR busts, that is -- to discuss his book, Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon, which earned the TR Book Prize. (Watch or listen here.)
Michael Patrick Cullinane is Professor of U.S. History at the University of Roehampton, London, and host of The Gilded Age and Progressive Era podcast. Find him at MichaelPatrickCullinane.com, or on his Twitter and LinkedIn.
January 24, 2022 - What happens when an acclaimed author on figures from George Washington and James Madison to Aaron Burr and Andrew Johnson, turns his historical searchlight inward to his own family's American story? David O. Stewart does just that in his novel The New Land, Book One of the Overstreet Saga.
This is attorney-turned-author David O. Stewart's fifth appearance on the show. I previously caught up with him to chat about his non-fiction books George Washington: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father, Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America, and the epic, American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America. We also discussed The Lincoln Deception, a novel in his Fraser and Cook Historical Mysteries.
David's new trilogy lands on the rocky shore of Broad Bay, Maine, in 1753, where we meet Johann Oberstrasse, a Hessian mercenary who's had enough of war after being hired out to the King of England. Johann's wife, Christiane, resolves that their son will never march in his father's footsteps. But the New World brings old problems, challenging the rebranded Overstreet family's longing for a peaceful life.
Find our guests at DavidOStewart.com, or on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Special thanks to Lindsay M. Chervinsky, Ph.D, who submitted a question for David about Washington’s biggest regrets. Watch or listen to our conversation about her book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.
January 10, 2022 - Surrounded, low on supplies, and on the verge of surrender, the soldiers of Argentina -- many young, barely trained conscripts -- wrote home in the waning days of the Falkland War, telling tales of hardship that bore no resemblance to the propaganda woven by the military junta back in Buenos Ares.
Ricky D. Phillips brings us these up-close accounts for the first time in Last Letters from Stanley: The Unpublished Argentine Battle for the Falklands, who we previously chatted with about his book The First Casualty: The Untold Story of the Falklands War. Visit Ricky at his military history blog, Making History, or find him on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.
December 13, 2021 - How did a college dropout from Missouri, grow up to win five Marconi awards and rescue AM radio -- to have one U.S. president carry his bags into the Lincoln bedroom, and another award him the Medal of Freedom? It's the amazing life story of radio's greatest of all time, Rush Limbaugh, from his long-time friend James Golden, known better to tens of millions of listeners as Bo Snerdley.
The book is Rush on the Radio: A Tribute from His Sidekick for 30 Years, an intimate portrait of someone who strove for excellence every day, even as he battled terminal lung cancer. This is a unique and special episode for host and guest, since Dean joined Rush's TV show in 1995 and rejoined the website in 2000, having been part of the EIB Network team ever since. The result is a unique and heartfelt interview.
His most recent Washington Times column cites some of the parallels between Rush opening up talk radio to all voices and upstart Rumble's efforts to take on YouTube. The piece is titled, "All Americans should join Rumble's free speech fight."
James Golden is a long-time radio producer, call screener, and the host. You can catch him on 77 WABC New York at 4-5PM Weekdays and 8-10AM Saturday mornings, or via his show podcast. You can also listen to his iHeartRadio series, Rush Limbaugh: The Man Behind the Golden EIB Microphone.
Visit him at JamesGolden.com, or find him on social media at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, where you can find me as well.
November 29, 2021 - How did a high school hockey team go from being the very worst in the country to the top 5%, and what lessons can we apply to our own lives from that historic turnaround? In this episode, our time machine steps onto the ice twenty years ago with the lowly Ann Arbor Huron High School River Rats.
Our player-turned-coach is best-selling author John U. Bacon, who rescued a team with a tradition of losing so engrained, they hadn't won a game in a year and a half, going 0-22-3. He brings us Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America’s Worst High School Hockey Team.
John U. Bacon teaches at Northwestern and the University of Michigan, and has written several New York Times bestsellers, including Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines, Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football, and, Endzone: The Rise, Fall, and Return of Michigan Football. For history beyond sports, enjoy our archived conversation about The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism.
Visit LetThemLeadByBacon.com for more or find him on social media at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
November 15, 2021 - On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Was it a lone gunman or something more sinister? In this episode, we debunk the conspiracy theories with renowned investigative journalist and attorney Gerald Posner, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.
Gerald previously appeared on the History Author Show to discuss his 2015 book, God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican, and his eerily prescient book that hit shelves on the eve of the pandemic ... Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America. His wife and research partner, Trisha Posner, also shared her chilling biography The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story.
Visit Posner.com for more on today's guest, and follow him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. You can also check out his columns in Forbes magazine.
November 1, 2021 - Adolf Hitler infamously told his naval commander-in-chief, Admiral Karl Dönitz, "On land, I am a hero. At sea, I am a coward." But those battles on, under and over the Atlantic decided the fate of the world every bit as much as action in Europe and North Africa.
In this episode, our time machine welcomes back Simon Read who brings us his wildly enjoyable new book The Iron Sea: How the Allies Hunted and Destroyed Hitler's Warships. In our archives, you can find my previous conversation with Simon, that's about 2015's Winston Churchill Reporting: Adventures of a Young War Correspondent.
Simon Read is a former journalist and the author of eight previous nonfiction books. His work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Publishers Weekly, and TIME magazine. Three of his previous books, including Winston Churchill Reporting and Human Game: The True Story of the "Great Escape" Murders and the Hunt for the Gestapo Gunmen, have been optioned for film and TV adaptations.
Visit our guest at SimonReadWriting.com, or on social media at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.
October 18, 2021 - America's only bachelor president has had whispers about his relationship with a certain vice president for almost two centuries. But were they more than friends, and why does the answer matter in 2021?
Our time machine travels back to the pre-Civil War period, to delve into the personal lives of our 15th president, James Buchanan, and his roommate William Rufus King, the 13th vice president -- a pair that has long been the target of snickering, insults -- and more recently, of celebration.
Our guide on this journey is a historian, not a gossip columnist. Thomas Balcerski and he brings us Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King. Tom is a presidential and political historian at Eastern Connecticut State University, as well as a contributor for CNN, NBC Connecticut, and Made by History, the Washington Post's history blog. Find him on social media at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Special thanks to presidential historian Louis Picone for submitting a video question for this interview. Louis has appeared on the History Author Show three times for his books Grant’s Tomb: The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon, as well as the bookenders Where the Presidents Were Born: The History & Preservation of the Presidential Birthplaces and The President is Dead! The Extraordinary Stories of the Presidential Deaths, Final Days, Burials, and Beyond.
October 4, 2021 - Theodore Roosevelt is invoked in contemporary politics so often, it's easy to forget that he died in his bed 100 years ago. So who was the real flesh-and-blood man, and what would he think of his evolution into a mythical folk hero?
Our time machine travels back, to meet the real TR with Michael Patrick Cullinane, author of Theodore Roosevelt’s Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon, winner of the coveted TR Book Prize.
Michael Patrick Cullinane is professor of U.S. history at Roehampton University in London, and the author of previous books, as well as the upcoming title Remembering Theodore Roosevelt: Reminiscences of his Contemporaries. He also hosts The Gilded Age & Progressive Era podcast. Find him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
September 20, 2021 - In 2020, we saw one what was long called impossible: Peace deal after another between Arab states and Israel in the Abraham Accords. What do the leaders of these nations see for the future, and how can we foster it by better understanding the past?
Joel C. Rosenberg has seen history unfold firsthand and spoken personally to the men changing their corner of world by beating swords into plowshares. Joel's latest book after a string of New York Times bestselling novels and non-fiction books is Enemies and Allies: An Unforgettable Journey inside the Fast-Moving & Immensely Turbulent Modern Middle East.
In it, Joel shares exclusive, never-before-published quotes, insights, and analysis from his conversations with some of the most complex and controversial leaders in the world including Benjamin Netanyahu (who he worked for as a strategist), Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and many others.
Visit JoelRosenberg.com or check out Joel's Fast Traffic Blog where he track "events and trends in Israel, the U.S., Russia and throughout the Epicenter (the Middle East & North Africa)." He's also editor-in-chief at All Arab News and All Israel News. His social media accounts are at Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Sep 6, 2021 - Our time machine travels back to a bright morning that turned dark, when ships of all sizes answered cries for help to evacuate Lower Manhattan after terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers. Our guide on this journey is Jessica DuLong who bring us, Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boat Lift.
Jessica DuLong is an award-winning author, journalist, historian, ghostwriter, book collaborator, proposal doctor, editor, writing coach, and a marine engineer as well. Her previous book is My River Chronicles: Rediscovering the Work that Built America; A Personal and Historical Journey.
Visit JessicaDuLong.com for more, or follower her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. For more on 9/11, check out the History Author Show interview with Governor George Pataki about his book, Beyond the Great Divide: How a Nation Became a Neighborhood.
August 23, 2021 - Everyone has heard the timeless music of George Gershwin, but we may never have heard it in quite the same way without the love of Gershwin's life, Katharine Faulkner Swift, who he nicknamed "Kay." Mitchell James Kaplan brings us their Jazz Age romance in his novel, Rhapsody. In it, we meet a restless society wife who attends a concert that changes her life and the face of musical theater. The song is Rhapsody in Blue, composed by the young genius, Gershwin.
Mitchell James Kaplan earned his BA with Honors in English Literature at Yale, where he won the prestigious Paine Memorial Prize. His previous novels are Into the Unbounded Night, and, By Fire, By Water. Visit him at MitchellJamesKaplan.com, and on the major social media platforms where you can find me as well: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.
August 9, 2021 - In this episode, we toss the keys to our time machine into the hands of Lincoln historian Jason Emerson, who I welcomed for Q&A about his book Mary Lincoln for the Ages and several other titles related to the 16th president and the First Lady. Jason's guest hosting our interview with Michael Burlingame about An American Marriage: The Untold Story of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd.
James McPherson of the New York Review of Books says that Dr. Burlingame "knows more about Abraham Lincoln than any other living person." He holds of the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois-Springfield, and is the author of several books on Honest Abe, including the two-volume Abraham Lincoln: A Life.
July 26, 2021 - You may not have heard the name Wolf the Quarrelsome. But once you meet this bold, Irish warrior -- and the woman who risked her life to build his spy ring -- you'll never look at Ireland quite the same way. In this episode, our way-back machine travels ten centuries into the past, as Viking invaders storm his island, and Wolf mounts a 15-year resistance campaign, climaxing in arguably the most decisive battle of the Middle Ages: The Battle of Clontarf.
Our guide on this journey is novelist Lt. Col. Thomas J. Howley who brings us Wolf of Clontarf: The Irish, the Vikings and the Foreigners of the World. Howley is a retired U.S. Army officer-turned-civilian operational intelligence analyst supporting U.S. government Defense and Federal Law Enforcement agencies. Meet him and his Irish wolfhound at TJHowleyBooks.com.
July 12, 2021 - Imagine you're Jewish during the Second World War, but safely in bed an ocean away from Nazi Germany, secure in the vastness of Canada. Would you march into the heart of the Third Reich, risking your life to stare down Hitler's war machine, for a country that didn't consider you a fully loyal and equal citizen?
In this episode, we meet the heroes that Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King said faced a "double threat" from Axis evil: Not just Fascism, but their survival as a people. Our guide on this journey is Ellin Bessner, a professor of journalism at Centennial College in Toronto and the author of Double Threat: Canadian Jews, the Military, and World War II.
Although Canada had turned away European Jews desperate to escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism -- and while those already in Canada found doors to many jobs and universities slammed in their faces -- when war came, an huge numbers answered the call to fight, defying bigotry and earning valor that has been shamefully forgotten.
Ellin also hosts the CJN Daily, a podcast from The Canadian Jewish News. Visit her at EllinBessner.com or on social media at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
June 28, 2021 - We all know the name of John Henry “Doc” Holliday, but who was he in that lifetime beyond the fences of the O.K. Corral, standing guns drawn with Wyatt Earp? Our time machine travels back to meet this icon of the Old West, before and after his moment of destiny in Tombstone, Arizona, at the O.K. Corral.
Our guide on this journey is Victoria Wilcox, who brings us The World of Doc Holliday: History and Historic Images. Victoria Wilcox is founding director of Georgia’s Holliday-Dorsey-Fife Museum and the brains behind the documentary In Search of Doc Holliday. She also authored The Saga of Doc Holliday trilogy, featuring the historical fiction novels Southern Son, Dance with the Devil, and Dead Man's Hand. True West Magazine named her the Best Historical Western Novelist and her debut novel earned Georgia's Author of the Year Award.
Visit our guest at VictoriaWilcoxBooks.com, or on the social media outlets Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.
June 14, 2021 - In 1982, the military junta in Buenos Aires had an idea to boost its sagging popularity: Invade the Falkland Islands, a British territory that Argentines called Las Malvinas. Only 60 Royal Marines stood in the way, 8,000 miles from home and cut off from support.
In this week's episode, we bring you "the book they said couldn’t be written about the battle that they say never happened," debunking the conventional wisdom that those Marines surrendered without a fight. That narrative does injustice their heroic defense as well as the price paid by the Argentines thrown into a war by leaders who cared little for its soldiers, and sailors on ships such as the doomed ARA Belgrano.
Our guide on this journey is Ricky D. Phillips, who brings us The First Casualty: The Untold Story of the Falklands War. His second book invokes the capital of the Falkland Islands and the soldiers of Argentina writing home, telling a very different story than their government's sunny propaganda tales of victory. That's Last Letters from Stanley: The Unpublished Argentine Battle for the Falklands.
Visit Ricky Phillips at his military history blog, Making History, or find him on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.
May 31, 2021 - The United States of America goes to great lengths to recover the remains of those who fall in battle, to offer a headstone, a finally resting place that loved ones can visit to honor their sacrifice. But what about those who fall and cannot be identified? In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard readers ages 7 to 97, with a book that's perfect for Memorial Day.
Since 1937, an elite body of guards began the round-the-clock vigil that continues to this day, steeped in tradition, and dedicated to honoring our nameless war dead. Our guide into one of the most sacred places in the United States, within Arlington National Cemetery, is Jeff Gottesfeld who brings us the illustrated history, Twenty-One Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. You can find him at JeffGottesfeldWriter.com, as well as on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.
Gottesfeld is a novelist, playwright, screen-and-TV writer whose work (including The Tree in the Courtyard: Looking Through Anne Frank's Window) has earned awards from the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America, and the National Council for the Social Studies. Matt Tavares is the author-illustrator, who has brought his talents to many previous books including Henry Aaron’s Dream, There Goes Ted Williams, Becoming Babe Ruth, and the New York Times bestseller Dasher. Find him at MattTavares.com, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Google+.
May 17, 2021 - When we think of George Washington, we see him carved onto Mount Rushmore -- above all of us and certainly above anything as oily as politics. But how did he get up there? Joining us to shine new light on the warrior-statesman's career from a mere state legislator to the single most dominant force in the creation of the United States, is David O. Stewart, who bring us George Washington: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father.
Special thanks to Lindsay M. Chervinsky, Ph.D, who submitted a question for David about Washington's biggest regrets. Watch or listen to our conversation about her book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.
We previously caught up with David O. Stewart to chat about his books:
Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America American Emperor – Aaron Burr: The Man Who Shot Alexander Hamilton The Lincoln Deception (A Fraser and Cook Historical Mystery)
Also check out:
Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy and the documentary Going to the Devil: The Impeachment of 1868, presented by The Great Courses at Hunter College.
May 3, 2021- Who was the Roman general Marc Antony before he became a legend, before he rose as a man in full, forever linked in history with Cleopatra? We'll meet a boy struggling to redeem his disgraced family name in this week's novel, Antonius: Son of Rome. It's book one in Brook Allen's Antonius Trilogy, followed by Antonius: Second in Command and the conclusion, Antonius: Soldier of Fate.
Brook Allen introduces us to this historic figure before sculptors and Shakespeare got their hands on him, sharing her passion for ancient history, and redeeming a man whose enemies have had their say for 2,000 years.
Brook Allen earned a B.A. from Asbury University and a Master's at Hollins University with an emphasis in Ancient Roman studies, so she has the grounding in facts to really bring this story to life. Visit her at BrookAllenAuthor.com and find her on Twitter or Facebook.
Special thanks to Tonya Mitchell for recommending The Antonius Trilogy. You can find that interview in the archives, where we discuss her Nelly Bly novel, A Feigned Madness.
April 19, 2021 - How did the trauma of the First World War follow a baseball legend home, sending both his game and his life into downward spirals? Returning to introduce us to this tragic Hall of Famer is Jim Leeke, who brings us The Best Team Over There: The Untold Story of Grover Cleveland Alexander and the Great War.
Grover Cleveland "Pete" Alexander is a legendary name in baseball, but a key factor in his career -- months of service as an artillery sergeant in the Great War -- has been overlooked. Jim is a contributor to the Society for American Baseball Research Baseball Biography Project, as well as the writer or editor of several books on U.S. and military history. Visit our archives wherever you're watching or listening now for my previous conversations with Jim Leeke.
Howell's Storm: New York City's Official Rainmaker and the 1950 Drought Nine Innings for the King: The Day Wartime London Stopped for Baseball, July 4, 1918 From the Dugouts to the Trenches: Baseball During the Great War Matty Boy: A Civil War Novel for Young Readers
Follow Jim on Twitter at the handles @JimLeeke and @WW1Baseball.
April 5, 2021 - How did the general who saved the Union and served two terms as president, earn so much love from the nation that they memorialized him with what's the largest mausoleum in the Western Hemisphere? We explore this story with Louis Picone in Grant's Tomb: The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon.
Louis and I previously caught up to discuss his books Where the Presidents Were Born: The History & Preservation of the Presidential Birthplaces and The President is Dead! The Extraordinary Stories of the Presidential Deaths, Final Days, Burials, and Beyond. In Grant's Tomb, he examines how Americans memorialized one of the most significant leaders in history, and how that man defied a death sentence from cancer to write his epic memoir and provide for his wife and family.
Learn more about our guest at LouisPicone.com, or connect with him across social media platforms LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
March 8, 2021 - What happens when a legendary historian aims his keen eye in the rearview mirror, examining the places, people, and experiences that made him a great storyteller? Well, when the historian is David Pietrusza, the answer is the rich, funny and poignant memoir Too Long Ago: A Childhood Memory. A Vanished World.
Before returning us to the Amsterdam, NY, of Upstate New York in the 1950s and '60s, David Pietrusza wrote or edited a treasure trove of books and has appeared everywhere from C-SPAN and the History Channel, to ESPN and Fox Sports Channel, as well as too many fine radio shows to list. He is also featured on AMC's Making of the Mob: New York. It's easy to see why he's been called "one of the great political historians of all time."
David Pietrusza has sat down with me to discuss four of his previous books, interviews which you can find in our archives or below. They are:
TR's Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR ― Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal, and Unlikely Destiny
For more, visit @DPietrusza on Twitter or DavidPietrusza.com.
February 15, 2021 - There has been no more noble fight in all of history than the one guaranteeing equal rights for formerly enslaved people.
So how did America forget the Black congressman and a Civil War veteran president to ensure that all those Union soldiers hadn't died in vain -- and more importantly, that the words on those Reconstruction Era amendments to the Constitution guaranteeing rights to the freedmen, weren't just ink on the page, laughed at by marauding lynch mobs?
In this episode, we meet this overlooked odd couple with Benjamin R. Justesen who brings us Forgotten Legacy: William McKinley, George Henry White, and the Struggle for Black Equality. Justesen writes, "William McKinley's role as a sincere friend and benefactor of African-Americans may be one of the best-kept secrets in American political history." He also introduces us to the inspiring Congressman White, whose skill as an orator -- and later as the founder of Whitesboro, New Jersey -- is the stuff of legend.
Ben Justesen is a former journalist, teacher, and U.S. Foreign Service Officer whose previous book is George Henry White: An Even Chance in the Race of Life.
February 8, 2012 - The U.S. Navy builds modern marvels: 100,000-ton hunks of metal that glide across the ocean rather than sinking like rocks. But how do they do it? The short answer is "computers." But it was Raye Montague who first designed a ship with that technology, doing so as a single mother during the height of the Cold War, and as a Black woman born into the segregated Little Rock of 1935. She literally let nothing stand in her way.
We meet this inspirational trailblazer in Overnight Code: The Life of Raye Montague, the Woman Who Revolutionized Naval Engineering thanks Raye's son, David R. Montague, and his co-author, Paige Bowers, who previously stopped by to chat about her debut book The General's Niece: The Little-Known de Gaulle Who Fought to Free Occupied France. You can enjoy that conversation in our archives wherever you're listening now.
Paige Bowers holds a master’s degree in modern European history and taught about French history and culture at Louisiana State University. David R. Montague earned a Ph.D. at Howard University and a BA at Morehouse College, both in Political Science, as well as an MA in Crime and Commerce at George Washington. He's the director of online learning and faculty mentoring at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
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January 25, 2021 - When George Washington accepted the responsibility of being the first president of a new nation, he felt the weight of history on his broad shoulders, knowing that every step he took, would set precedents for generations. So, how did he pick a team of advisers to keep his path straight on the long march to nationhood?
We explore how he pioneered the presidential cabinet with Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky. She's a historian of Early America, the presidency, and government who brings us The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.
Lindsay Chervinsky is Scholar in Residence at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona College, Senior Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, and Professorial Lecturer at the School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University. She earned her Ph.D. in history from UC Davis.
Find her at LindsayChervinsky.com, or on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where you can also find the page for QuincyTheHistoryHound.
Previous interviews on the period:
David Head: A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution Bob Drury and Tom Clavin: Valley Forge Peter Stark: Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America’s Founding Father Fergus Bordewich: The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government
January 11, 2021 - In 2017, Sports Illustrated named Mike "Doc" Emrick the greatest sportscaster of all time. But how did a kid from a tiny town in the American Midwest, grow up to be a voice synonymous with Canada's game, the first media member inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, a TV heavyweight, and the winner of eight Sports Emmys?
How did Doc sound just as excited about the 10,000th goal he saw, as he did when he was a boy in the 1950s, watching the Fort Wayne Komets put the biscuit in the net for the very first time? We get those insights in his memoir, Off Mike: How a Kid from Basketball-Crazy Indiana Became America's NHL Voice.
In a career that spanned 47 years, Doc had stops everywhere from ESPN and CBS, to Fox, SportsChannel, MSG, NBC, and beyond. He survived prostate cancer along the way, and spent 5,000 nights away from his beloved wife, Joyce. They've certainly earned their retirement. The Emrick's are also lovers of all creatures great and small. In fact, Doc is donating proceeds from sales of Off Mike to animal charities.
The History Author Show will be dropping the gloves to fight for animals in need alongside Doc and Joyce. Amazon gives us a portion of every book you purchase through their links on this page. We'll be matching triple that amount times three and donating to pets in need. So if you're thinking of picking up a copy of this inspiring, entertaining memoir, please consider doing it through us.
December 28, 2020 - What's it like being the great-grandson of one of the greatest leaders of the 20th Century, the man called "the Greatest Briton"? In this episode, we pay tribute to Jonathan Sandys, Winston Churchill's great-grandson, who passed away at just 43 years old on December 29, 2018. With the two-year remembrance upon us, we reached back into the archives to share a speech he delivered to the English-Speaking Union at the Fort Orange Club in Albany, NY, about his book, God and Churchill: How the Great Leader’s Sense of Divine Destiny Changed His Troubled World and Offers Hope to Ours.
You can also enjoy our full interview about God & Churchill from October 6, 2015 in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com, our iHeartRadio Channel, iTunes, etc.
Jonathan, like his famous ancestor, had the power to uplift even in the darkest times. We hope this speech will inspire you to "never surrender," to "Never, never, never give up," as we approach 2021. As Winston Churchill said, "When you're going through hell, keep going."
December 14, 2020 - In 1880, Maria Longworth Nichols Storer founded Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati, aiming to give American artists a place to produce quality pieces to beautify the home, but also practical ceramics and tile.
It grew into a world-renowned success, one that endures to this day.
Spinning the pottery wheel for us is Bob Batchelor who brings us the illustrated history Rookwood: The Rediscovery and Revival of an American Icon -- a Publishers Weekly Holiday Gift Guide 2020 Selection.
We previously caught up with Bob to chat about his books The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius and Stan Lee: The Man behind Marvel. Bob Batchelor is a cultural historian who has written or edited more than two dozen books on popular culture and American literature, including books about John Updike, The Great Gatsby, and Mad Men.
Find him at BobBatchelor.com, on Facebook, or at the Twitter and Instagram handle @BobPBatchelor.
November 30, 2020 -What are your favorite stories from growing up? Well, make room on your bookshelf for the chickens who dreamed of speaking Yiddish. We dive into a treasure trove of children's literature, brought together here for the first time by Miriam Udel. Her book is Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children's Literature. Perfect for anyone on your Hanukah or Christmas list.
That's right. Santa can clean out the bookshelves on this one -- a great gift for any young person year 'round.
Storytelling binds us all together, so you don't have to be of the Jewish faith to enjoy these tales, although they'll speak in a different way to those readers. Miriam Udel is associate professor of Yiddish language, literature, and culture at Emory University. She holds an AB in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and a PhD in Comparative Literature, both from Harvard. In 2019, she was ordained a rabbi at Yeshivat Maharat.
Her previous book is Never Better! The Modern Jewish Picaresque, which earned the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. For more, visit MiriamUdel.com or Miriam Udel on Twitter and Instagram.
November 16, 2020 - "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." The phrase is the stuff of legend, but who wrote that memorable lyric? In this episode, we meet the street poet with a heart of gold, Drew "Bundini" Brown, Jr., one of boxing’s most mysterious and misunderstood figures -- and the one who motivated Muhammad Ali to be the greatest.
Join us in the corner of Sugar Ray Robinson and the young Cassius Clay as he transforms into a transcendent sports icon. Bundini kept the boxer grounded, sticking by him despite opposition from the Nation of Islam, who tried to bully, bribe and brush him out of the entourage for marrying a Jewish woman. Born in the Jim Crow South, Bundini struggled out of poverty and a broken home, to enlist in the U.S. Navy, appear in several Hollywood films (including the Blaxploitation classic Shaft), and break convention to uplift everyone around him.
Khalilah Camacho-Ali, Muhammad Ali’s second wife, said, "When you talk about Bundini, you are talking about the mouthpiece of Muhammad Ali, an extension of Muhammad Ali’s spirit. There would never have been a Muhammad Ali without Drew 'Bundini' Brown." This enigmatic figure of the sweet science is the subject of today's biography, Bundini: Don't Believe the Hype.
Bringing us ringside is Todd D. Snyder, an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at Siena College in Albany, New York, and Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Ohio University. His previous books include The Rhetoric of Appalachian Identity and 12 Rounds in Lo's Gym: Boxing and Manhood in Appalachia. He's also the son of a boxing trainer where he grew up in West Virginia.
Find Todd D. Snyder online at HillbillySpeaks.com, on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
November 2, 2020 - One of Europe's greatest monsters. One of America's greatest presidents. We'll dig into the parallel paths that led these men and their nations to very different final destinations with renowned historian David Pietrusza. We sat down at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y., to discuss his book 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR ―Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal, and Unlikely Destiny.
We last chatted with the award-winning historian about his books... 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents, and, TR's Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy, as well as, Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series. David Pietrusza has written or edited a stack of best-selling, award-winning books, including those on pivotal presidential election years 1948 and 1960, in addition to the '20 and '32 campaigns. He's appeared everywhere from C-SPAN and the History Channel, to ESPN and Fox Sports Channel, and AMC's Making of the Mob: New York. It's easy to see why he's been called one "one of the great political historians ... of all time."
Follow him @DPietrusza on Twitter and DavidPietrusza.com. You can also explore the 32nd U.S. president's legacy online at FDRLibrary.org or on Twitter @FDRLibrary.
October 19, 2020 - In 1887, the New York World newspaper laughed off 23-year-old Elizabeth Cochrane's dreams of being a reporter. Today, she's a New York City legend, known to history by the pen name Nellie Bly. But to sew up that dream job, Nellie had to go undercover in the closest thing Gilded Age Gotham had to hell: The asylums of Blackwell's Island on the East River.
Tonya Mitchell brings us a meticulously researched, fictionalized account of Nellie's mission in her debut novel, A Feigned Madness. It follows Nellie's quest to expose the corrupt officials running the asylum, and blow up the conventional wisdom that women just can't hack it in a newsroom.
You've seen Tonya Mitchell's award-winning fiction in the Copperfield Review, Words Undone, the Front Porch Review, and various anthologies. She's also earned a BA from Indiana University in the field Nellie Bly pioneered, journalism, and describes herself as obsessed with the Victorian Era, as we'll see in the rich, transportive detail of her fiction.
Visit her at TonyaMitchellAuthor.com or on , Facebook and Instagram.
You can learn more about the fact behind the fiction of this episode, in our interview with Stacy Horn about her book, Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York.
October 5, 2020 - In 1881, an assassin shot President James A. Garfield just four months into his term, ending this noble leader's plans for carrying out Abraham Lincoln's legacy of equality for formerly enslaved Americans. But how did he get into the big chair?
Our time machine heads into the hurly burley of the 1880 election, the only time two Civil War veterans faced off across the Mason-Dixon line of politics. It's the ultimate winner, James A. Garfield of Ohio, who we meet in the book The Last Lincoln Republican: The Presidential Election of 1880. Our campaign manager on the road to the White House, is Benjamin Todd Arrington, site manager of the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio.
Learn more about the 20th president's life and unfulfilled potential at the National Parks Service website, or on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.
Special thanks to Candice Millard for submitting a question for Todd. She's author of the landmark James A. Garfield book Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President. You find our conversation her latest book, Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill, in our archives.
Also mentioned in this episode: Johnny Cash's rendition of the Western ballad, "Mr. Garfield," and Benjamin R. Justesen, author of Forgotten Legacy: William McKinley, George Henry White, and the Struggle for Black Equality. Watch for that interview in the coming months.
September 21, 2020 - The Great War is over, but the Spanish Influenza continues to deliver the butcher's bill. Everywhere, children are dying. But in Philadelphia, they're also disappearing -- and they all have one thing in common: They're immigrants. We dive into a riveting novel set 100 years ago that's eerily familiar today with acclaimed novelist Ellen Marie Wiseman.
She brings us The Orphan Collector, a Target Book Club Pick and an Editor’s Choice in Historical Novel Society magazine. Her 13-year-old heroine, Pia, and her mother care for twins, Ollie and Max, even as prejudice and the Purple Death beset them on all sides. Like so many German immigrants, her patriotism was immediately suspect, and her father -- feeling the need to prove his loyalty -- did so by enlisting to fight the Kaiser.
With Armistice Day, they dare to hope for a return to normalcy. But when Pia leaves quarantine at home in a desperate search for food, she can't imagine that she'll return to find her brothers have evaporated into thin air.
Ellen Marie Wiseman's previous novels include best-sellers The Life She Was Given: A Moving and Emotional Saga of Family and Resilient Women, and, What She Left Behind: A Haunting and Heartbreaking Story of 1920s Historical Fiction -- which sold over half a million copies -- and The Plum Tree: An Emotional and Heartbreaking Novel of WW2 Germany and the Holocaust.
Visit EllenMarieWiseman.com for more on her fictional adventures, and follow her at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Sep 7, 2020 - On September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda sought to break the American union, aiming at what they saw as fatal flaws in our democratic system. Two decades later, the man who was governor of the Empire State on that day of infamy dares to ask, "Did the terrorists win?" In this episode, the 53rd governor of New York, George E. Pataki, joins us to discuss Beyond the Great Divide: How a Nation Became a Neighborhood, co-authored with former congressman Trey Radel of Florida.
Governor Pataki spent twelve years at the helm of the Empire State and delivered the lone remarks at Ground Zero on the one-year commemoration of the attacks, choosing to recite the Gettysburg Address. He discusses how 2020 America, like Lincoln's, faces domestic divisions that would've seemed impossible as the rubble of the Twin Towers smoldered.
Then as now we find ourselves asking: Can this nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to equality, long endure? This former presidential candidate, state legislator, mayor of Peekskill, and three-term Republican governor of a deep-blue state, shares optimistic solutions for reuniting that wartime neighborhood in an era of domestic division and partisan strife that we all have a civic duty to combat.
You can learn more about binding up the nation's wounds at GeorgePatakiCenter.com or @GovernorPataki on Twitter.
Aug 24, 2020 - What if your grandparents had narrowly escaped a genocide that left one million people dead, just because they shared your faith and ethnic background? That's part of the Karayanis family story, in the mass murder of Greeks by Ottoman Turkey that followed the Great War.
Our guide back to the 20th Century's first genocide, is Greek-Australian Aris Tsifidis, who brings us The Genocide of the Greeks in Turkey: Survivor Testimonies from The Nicomedia (Massacres of 1920-1921). It's the first English translation of journalist Kostas Faltaits work, published in 1921 under the title, These are the Turks: Survivor Testimonies from the Nicomedia Massacre.
Aris administers the Greek Genocide Resource Center, an online portal containing bibliography, photos, testimonies and other documentation of the mass slaughter that left up to 1.5 million people dead, and forced over a million others out of the homeland where they'd lived for centuries. Connect on Twitter @Greek_Genocide and on Facebook at TheGreekGenocide and IzmitMassacres pages.
August 10, 2020 - Lizzie Borden has been testified against by generations of children in a nursery rhyme, and continually convicted in the court of public opinion. But did she swing the axe that whacked her parents, or didn't she? We dig into the 1893 murder trial with first-time author Cara Robertson. She brings us The Trial of Lizzie Borden: A True Story.
Based on transcripts of the proceedings, newspaper accounts, unpublished recollections of citizens in Fall River, Massachusetts -- and recently unearthed letters from Lizzie -- the book brings us inside a case that shook the deeply held convictions, assumptions and social anxieties of the 19th Century's twilight.
Cara Robertson began researching the Borden case as an undergraduate at Harvard and continued while earning an Oxford PhD and JD from Stanford Law School. She clerked at the Supreme Court of the United States for two justices and served as a legal adviser to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague.
Learn more about the book and cast your verdict -- guilty or not guilty -- at TrialofLizzieBorden.com.
July 27, 2020 - Video killed the radio star, and the talkies killed Vaudeville, but some legends adapt to changing times. In this episode, we meet one such innovator, who made a series of leaps from New York City's Hippodrome to Hollywood, with many entertaining stops and in between.
Born in the San Francisco of 1883 as Katherine Gertrude Hay, Gertrude Hoffman broke into show business as a mimic, copying highbrow performances from Europe and popularizing them for a broader American audience. She started as a pantomime ballet girl in the Gay Nineties, grew up with Vaudeville, and later worked as a choreographer and teacher, living well into the 1960's.
Joining us in our time machine is the Hargis associate professor of American literature at Auburn University, Sunny Stalter-Pace, who brings us, Imitation Artist: Gertrude Hoffmann's Life in Vaudeville and Dance. Find our guest online at SunnyStalterPace.com or on Twitter @SLStalter.
July 13, 2020 - He's the ultimate Civil War baby gone bad, born in 1866 with the modest handle of Robert Leroy Parker. So how did that dirt-poor son of a Mormon farmer grow up into a horse thief, rustler, and bank robber who ran with the Wild Bunch? Charles Leerhsen explores the origin story of a famous outlaw who never killed a soul in Butch Cassidy: The True Story of an American Outlaw.
If you're familiar with sensationalized, thinly researched Hollywood depictions of Butch, you'll find the real man even more entertaining and charming. Charles Leerhsen previously joined us to discuss one of my all-time favorite books Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. In it, he redeems one of baseball's all-time greats, stripping away the lies of the sensationalist sportswriter, Al Stump, who concocted tales of a brutal, belligerent racist.
Now, he aims the same careful eye to Butch, digging through legends and tall tales to paint a complete picture of an American original who just wanted to be liked -- and to avoid the 19th Century version of the cubicle life.
You've Charles Leerhsen's work everywhere from Sports Illustrated and Esquire to The New York Times Magazine and People. He has also been an editor at SI, Us Weekly, and Newsweek. Find him @CharlesLeerhsen on Twitter and at Leerhsen.com.
June 29, 2020 - Doctor. Major General. Hero of the American Revolution. Martyr who spilled his lifeblood fighting the British at Bunker Hill. And yet most of us have never heard of him.
Our guide on this journey is Christian Di Spigna, who brings us Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution's Lost Hero. Christian Di Spigna is a regular speaker and volunteer at Colonial Williamsburg, and an expert on the history of the era with a real passion for bringing the Revolution to life.
Visit him at FoundingMartyr.com or Martyr1776 on Twitter.
Since Dr. Warren stoked the flame of liberty in taverns, we also discussed my interview with Robert Norden at The '76 House in Tappan, New York. It's America's oldest restaurant, and a spot where all the major Continentals -- including George Washington -- spent time and took their meals.
It's also where the patriots held Benedict Arnold's British conspirator, Maj. John André, on the evening before his execution, as we discussed with Selene Castrovilla in her illustrated book, Revolutionary Rogues: John André and Benedict Arnold.
June 15, 2020 - Investigative journalist and attorney Gerald Posner shares the highpoints of the pharmaceutical industry's transformational successes, as well the moments they'd prefer to keep buried. We go along for the ride in his latest book, Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America. It's a page-turning journey to meet the scientists whose successes have improved the lives of every human being on earth, and the marketers who gave us infamous scourges like Thalidomide and the opioid crisis.
Yes, for every polio vaccine, there are those who lose sight of their noble mission to first do no harm, in the face of massive piles of corrupting cash and compliant congresses that are more lap dogs than watch dogs.
Gerald Posner is a distinguished attorney, Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, and an Honors Graduate of Hastings Law School. He's written definitive books on everything from the Nazi "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele, the Oklahoma City Bombing, 9/11, and Motown, to the JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinations. He previously appeared on the History Author Show to discuss his 2015 book, God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican.
We also welcomed Gerald's wife and research partner, Trisha, who shared the story behind her chilling biography, The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story.
Visit Posner.com for more on our guest, and follow him @GeraldPosner on Twitter, Facebook, and Posnergram on Instagram.
June 1, 2020 - Meet the commanders who led America to Victory in mankind's most terrible conflict before they had stars on their shoulders. Our guide on this journey is 82nd Airborne veteran and paratrooper Benjamin Runkle. He brings us Generals in the Making: How Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Their Peers Became the Commanders Who Won World War II.
It's the first comprehensive history of these men during the interwar years, when the already lean U.S. Armed Forces found themselves squeezed even further by the Great Depression and isolationist sentiment, all while facing
strains on marriages, bouts with the bottle, the deaths of wives or children, backwater postings, and stagnant chances for promotion.
In addition to his service, for which he earned a Bronze Star during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Benjamin Runkle has worked as a presidential speechwriter, Department of Defense official, director at the National Security Council, and professional staff member on the House Armed Services Committee. He is currently a senior policy fellow with Artis International and adjunct lecturer in Johns Hopkins University's Global Security Program. He holds a PhD from Harvard.
Check out Dr. Runkle's previous book, Wanted Dead or Alive: Manhunts from Geronimo to Bin Laden. You can find more of his work in major newspapers and periodicals, sharing his insights as America navigates the dangers of the 21st Century world. Also in this episode, we compared the wilderness years of generals like Ike, Patton, Douglas MacArthur, Matthew Ridgway, and Omar Bradley to Ulysses S. Grant's similar struggles between the Mexican and Civil Wars.
Offering up a question on those parallels was Donald L. Miller, who recently joined us to discuss his book, Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy.
May 18, 2020 - In an iconic, ad-libbed moment at the old Yankee Stadium, a terminally ill baseball player declared himself "the luckiest man on the face of the earth." A decade earlier, he'd sat down to write the remarkable story of his career in newspaper columns that remained buried for almost a century -- until now. In Lou Gehrig: The Lost Memoir, we meet Major League Baseball's most triumphant and tragic slugger as a young man with a great career in front of him.
He had no way of knowing that one day, that career would be cut short by ALS, or that the disease would one day bear his name. Alan D. Gaff brings us this treasure trove of writings that flesh out our picture of No. 4, the man they called the Iron Horse. Mr. Gaff is a veteran, best-selling author of books on the American Civil War, and president of Historical Investigations.
Visit our guest at AlanDGaff.com or @AlanDGaff on Twitter.
May 4, 2020 - What if a former U.S. congressman told you he had a secret about the most infamous presidential assassination, but died before revealing it? It's a turn-of-the-century whodunit, courtesy of historian David O. Stewart's novel, The Lincoln Deception (A Fraser and Cook Historical Mystery).
His Holmes and Watson team features the white Dr. Jamie Fraser, and African-American former baseball player, Speedwell Cook. We previously chatted about his non-fiction books, American Emperor – Aaron Burr: The Man Who Shot Alexander Hamilton, and Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America. Check out those interviews in our archives, visit our guest at DavidOStewart.com, and find him on Facebook.
You'll also enjoy his post-Civil War non-fiction exploration of the man who found himself president after Lincoln's murder: Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy. On that topic, he was recently featured in the documentary, Going to the Devil: The Impeachment of 1868, presented by The Great Courses at Hunter College. You can enjoy the Film Screening & Discussion on YouTube.
Look for the next books in the series -- The Paris Deception and The Babe Ruth Deception -- coming in the summer and autumn of 2020.
April 20, 2020 - In 1863, the Confederate States held a last stronghold on the Mississippi River: Vicksburg. Losing it, and the slavocracy would be sliced in half, mortally wounding their cause. Donald L. Miller musters us into the Grand Army of the Republic's campaign to capture this city on its high bluff in Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy.
Donald L. Miller is the John Henry MacCracken Professor of History at Lafayette College, and was awarded the prestigious Fletcher Pratt Prize for the outstanding book on the American Civil War in 2020. His previous books include City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America, as well as a book we discussed in one of our very first interviews, Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America.
April 6, 2020 - Pack your full-body swimsuit, everybody. We're headed for Coney Island in the summer of 1911, where we'll meet a young heiress, Peggy Batternberg. Peggy falls in love, dives into the seedy world where the other half lives, and stumbles upon the mystery of young women found murdered under the boardwalk.
Our time machine travels back to America's Playground, Coney Island, Brooklyn, with "writer, editor, and lover of words" Nancy Bilyeau, who brings us Dreamland. It's Nancy's fifth novel, following The Crown, The Blue, The Chalice, and The Tapestry. She also published a novella, The Ghost of Madison Avenue. Nancy's family tree traces back to a seed planted on Gotham's shores in 1665, when French Huguenot Pierre Billiou put down roots in what was then New Amsterdam.
Today, the stone house he built on Staten Island stands as the third oldest in New York State.
For more on our guest, visit NancyBilyeau.com, follow her on Twitter and Instagram @TudorScribe, or toss her like at Facebook.com/NancyBilyeauAuthor.
March 23, 2020 - Adolf Hitler ... had a need for speed. After all, it was the key feature in blitzkrieg, lightning war. So the Nazis poured resources into developing the fastest engines, sleekest race cars, and best drivers. Who dared stand against them? We'll meet the Jewish driver who took on these would-be Aryan supermen in Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler’s Best.
For this journey, we welcome a familiar face back into our time machine: Neil Bascomb. We previously caught up back in Norway with The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb -- and -- The Escape Artists: A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War.
Visit NealBascomb.com, follow @NealBascomb on Twitter, or like Facebook.com/NealRBascomb.
March 9, 2020 - Jerry Mitchell joins us with Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era. In addition to what we today know as the Mississippi Burning case, this unique memoir covers our guest's efforts in the assassination of Medgar Evers, the 16th Street Church bombing, and the firebombing of Vernon Dahmer.
By refusing to ignore pleas for justice when everyone else had given up hope, Mitchell's dedication that ultimately landed four members of the KKK in prison for the rest of their lives.
Jerry Mitchell has been a reporter in Mississippi since 1986, earning over 30 national awards and founding the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit that carries on his work of exposing injustices and raising up a new generation of investigative reporters. Follow him @JMitchellNews on Twitter.
February 24, 2020 - What if the Revolution sparked in 1776 had collapsed? In this episode, our time machine travels back to the last days of the American Revolution, to track down rumors of an unthinkable plot by the Continental Army to mutiny over lack of pay. Only George Washington stood against the passions of men that may have included such patriots Alexander Hamilton and James Madison?
Infiltrating the plot against the government to see just how far it goes is Professor David Head, who brings us A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution. Professor Head is a history professor at the University of Central Florida whose work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and George Washington's Mt. Vernon.
Visit him online at DavidHeadHistory.com, on Facebook at David Head History, or @DavidHeadPhD on Twitter.
February 10, 2020 - Recorded live at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, our time machine travels back to the end of the Great War and the dawn of Prohibition. Jazz Age America picks a president, with flappers in all 48 states casting ballots for the first time as a half dozen once and future presidents compete for victory.
They are: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge and the eventual winner, Ohio's Warren G. Harding.
Returning to share his historical wisdom is David Pietrusza, who brings us, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents. We last chatted with the award-winning historian about his books TR's Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy, and, Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series.
David Pietrusza has written or edited a stack of best-selling, award-winning books, including those on pivotal presidential election years 1932, 1948, and 1960. He's appeared everywhere from C-SPAN and the History Channel, to ESPN and Fox Sports Channel, and AMC's Making of the Mob: New York. It's easy to see why he's been called one "one of the great political historians ... of all time."
Follow him @DPietrusza on Twitter and DavidPietrusza.com. You can also explore the 32nd U.S. president's legacy online at FDRLibrary.org or on Twitter @FDRLibrary.
January 27, 2020 - Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fred Kaplan drops in on the key flashpoints of the Nuclear Age, from Harry S Truman first getting word that the Manhattan Project had birthed its radioactive fruit, to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Reagan's peace offerings to Gorbachev, to modern fears of rogue nations and terrorists gaining access to the ultimate firecrackers.
Fred Kaplan is the national-security point man for Slate, and is the author of five previous books including Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, and the Pulitzer finalist The Plot to Change the American Way of War.
January 13, 2020 - Our time machine travels back to the Civil Rights era, to meet a man who fought the racial discrimination of his day on the basketball court, while using his platform to support those battling in courts of law. In the process, he was the first man ever described as a "superstar."
We enjoy this 6' 5"pioneer's story in Elgin Baylor: The Man Who Changed Basketball. Giving us play by play courtside for the man who invented hangtime is award-winning cultural critic and sportswriter, Bijan C. Bayne. Bayne is a member of United States Basketball Writers Association, a founding member of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, and an executive board member and media relations director for the Association for Professional Basketball Research.
You can find our guest at Twitter @BijanCBayne and his blog at BijanC.WordPress.com. You can also enjoy our previous chat about Martha's Vineyard Basketball: How a Resort League Defied Notions of Race and Class.
December 16, 2019 - Our time machine travels back to the death throes of the Confederate States of America with New York Times best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist S.C. Gwynne who brings us Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War.
Click here for an excerpt -- "Chapter One: The End of Begins."
You can also enjoy our History in Five Friday segment on our guest's previous book, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson, or pick up Empire of the Summer Moon, the 2011 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in General Nonfiction that recounts the rise and fall of the Comanche. Learn more about our guest by visiting him at SCGwynne.com or @SCGwynne on Twitter.
Sam Gwynne previously joined me in the fall of 2016, when we played four quarters with a gridiron revolutionary in The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football. Find that interview in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com, iHeartRadio, iTunes, or wherever you listen to on-demand audio.
December 2, 2019 - Why would a Gilded Age woman climb the tallest mountains in the world? For the same reason a man would, of course: Because it's there. We meet the pioneer whose ambitions shattered glass ceilings on the very top of the world in Queen of the Mountaineers: The Trailblazing Life of Fanny Bullock Workman.
Our sherpa as we climb through this compelling woman's life is Cathryn J. Prince whose previous books include American Daredevil, Death in the Baltic, and Shot from the Sky. She has worked as a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor in Switzerland and in New York, where she reported on the United Nations, and is a frequent contributor to The Times of Israel and fine magazines everywhere.
November 18, 2019 - What if you woke up to find your 12-year-old daughter dead, and the local police destroyed your house looking for evidence to pin the murder on your innocent son? Attorney Donald E. McInnis introduces us to the real-life family that endured this nightmare in She's So Cold: Murder, Accusations and the System that Devastated a Family.
On a winter day in 1998, the town of Escondido, California, awoke to the terrible news that 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe had been brutally savaged by a knife-wielding killer. Putting the verdict first and trial afterwards like the Queen of Hearts, investigators launched an inquisition to prove their conclusion rather than follow the evidence, employing a cruel array of psychological manipulation tools to force two of Michael's friends to confess to parts in a murder they hadn't committed.
This book is a cautionary tale for anyone, dismissing the comforting notion that if we have done nothing wrong, we have nothing to hide. It's also a reminder that great injustices aren't just the stuff of some distant history of lynch mobs and show trials in banana republics. It's a very real threat in any system run by flawed human beings.
You can find our guest online at DonaldMcInnis.com, or like the Hamilton & McInnis page on Facebook.
November 4, 2019 - How did a "spinster" who declared, "I don’t care for children," and called them "little wretches," launch an organization that not only saved millions of them, but changed the way the world treats young people to this day? Clare Mulley returns to introduce us into this enigmatic force for good in The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb, Founder of Save the Children.
Proceeds from sales goes to support Save the Children.
Beginning in 1919, the charity that celebrates its centennial in 2019 has fought to uphold the human rights of children worldwide. Although today the charity is promoted by big-name stars and enjoys widespread recognition, it's origin traces back to a forgotten founder, Eglantyne Jebb, who lived a short life but left an enduring legacy.
Clare Mulley joined Save the Children as a corporate fundraiser in the 1990s. We last caught up with Clare to discuss her book, The Women Who Flew for Hitler: A True Story of Soaring Ambition and Searing Rivalry. For more on this historian, follow @Clare Mulley on Twitter, or toss a like to Clare Mulley Author on Facebook.
October 21, 2019 - Our time machine travels back to the Jazz Age, where we'll meet gambling mastermind Arnold Rothstein, whose lust for a sure thing inspired the most audacious and infamous scam in sports history: Fixing the World Series 100 seasons ago.
The Chicago White Sox took a dive on baseball's biggest stage against the Cincinnati Reds in the infamous "Black Sox" Scandal, in a scheme manipulated by A.R. (known as "The Brain" and "The Big Bankroll"), who spread cash around to everyone from bookies and judges to cops and politicians.
Returning to share his Cracker Jack historical wisdom is David Pietrusza, who brings us his award-winning book, Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series. We last chatted with the legendary historian about his latest title, TR's Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy. You can find that interview at HistoryAuthor.com, iTunes, our iHeartRadio Channel, or wherever you enjoy on-demand audio.
David Pietrusza has written or edited enough best-selling, award-winning books to fill the visiting dugout, including those on the pivotal presidential election years 1920, 1932, 1948, and 1960. He's appeared everywhere from C-Span and the History Channel, to ESPN and Fox Sports Channel. He's also featured on AMC's Making of the Mob: New York. It's easy to see why he's been called one "one of the great political historians of all time."
This interview was conducted at Historic Albany Rural Cemetery, after the October 5, 2019 ceremony marking President Chester A. Arthur's 190th birthday. Watch David Pietrusza's remarks at his grave site here.
Follow him @DPietrusza on Twitter and visit DavidPietrusza.com for more.
October 7, 2019 - What's a "honeyfuggle," and why did Theodore Roosevelt call William Howard Taft one? In this episode, presidential historian Mike Purdy checks in with the 44 men who've served as our presidents as they roast, criticize, and belittle fellow commanders-in-chief in a manner that would make Don Rickles smile. And who wouldn’t want to hear Benjamin Harrison mock Grover Cleveland on two, non-consecutive occasions?
The book is 101 Presidential Insults: What They Really Thought About Each Other - and What It Means to Us. Mike Purdy is the founder of PresidentialHistory.com, where you can find his award-winning presidential history blog. He's also a regular opinion contributor to TheHill.com. As the 2020 presidential election heats up, look for his work everywhere from CNN and the Wall Street Journal to USA Today, Reuters, Bloomberg, The Huffington Post, and the BBC.
You can also today's special guest at Presidential Historian on Instagram, on Twitter @PresHistory, or toss him a like at Mike Purdy Presidential History on Facebook.
September 23, 2019 - What if your family name was infamous? What if you were the only loyal American in a clan where everyone -- even your little, old grandmother -- backed treason? Jane B. Singer introduces us to just such a man in The War Criminal's Son: The Civil War Saga of William A. Winder. It’s the true story of Confederate General John H. Winder and his son, Union Captain William Andrew Winder, who served as prison commandants on opposite sides of the Mason-Dixon line.
Jane previously joined us to chat about another book from the period, Lincoln's Secret Spy: The Civil War Case That Changed the Future of Espionage. She is a Civil War scholar and author of The Confederate Dirty War, the basis of the History Channel special, Civil War Terror. Visit her online at JaneSinger.com, follower her on Twitter @JaneBSinger1, or toss her a like on Facebook at Jane Singer Author.
September 9, 2019 - Bob Batchelor introduces us to the boisterous, brass-knuckles bootlegger who quenched Dry America's thirst in the Roaring Twenties. His book is The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius. We last caught up with Bob to chat about his book Stan Lee: The Man behind Marvel. You can find that interview in our archives at iHeartRadio, iTunes or wherever you listen to on-demand audio.
In an era that featured names like Capone, Rothstein, Luciano, and Nucky Thompson of Boardwalk Empire fame, Remus broke the mold. A talented lawyer, pharmacist, and social-climbing doctor obsessed over his wife's affair with a G-man, he grew so powerful, he even had President Warren G. Harding in his pocket.
Bob Batchelor is a cultural historian who has written or edited more than two dozen books on popular culture and American literature, including books about John Updike, The Great Gatsby, and Mad Men. He lives in the Queen City of Cincinnati, Ohio, and teaches at Miami University.
Find him at BobBatchelor.com, on Facebook, or at the Twitter and Instagram handle @BobPBatchelor.
August 26, 2019 - Women aren't allowed to be police officers in 1908 Los Angeles, but that's never stopped Anna Blanc from catching killers. Besides, it's not her fault she keeps stumbling across corpses, or that she's the keenest legal mind this side of Sherlock Holmes. Jennifer Kincheloe joins us to chat about her latest mystery staring her whiskey-sipping fallen socialite with her third novel: The Body in Griffith Park. You can catch our chat about her debut, The Secret Life of Anna Blanc, and follow-up, The Woman in the Camphor Trunk. Find our guest at JenniferKincheloe.com, or on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Jennifer works at the consulting firm KicheloeHealth, and has been a policy researcher at UCLA. Her books have earned the Colorado Gold Award for Mystery and the Mystery and Mayhem Award, as well as spots as a finalist for the MacAvirty Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award, the Left Coast Crime "Lefty" Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel, and the Colorado Author's League Award for Genre Fiction.
August 12, 2019 - Our time machine boldly goes where no man has gone before, fulfilling President John F. Kennedy's 1961 challenge to put an American on the moon and return him safely to earth by the end of that decade. Half a century after NASA fulfilled JFK's vision in the summer of 1969, we look back at the long road of 10,000 small human steps and giant technological leaps, that led to Neil Armstrong stamping his footprint in the lunar dust.
Guiding our voyage from Mission Control is Charles Fishman, author of... One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon. Charles Fishman has earned three Gerald Loeb Awards, the most prestigious prize in business journalism. He's also the acclaimed author of The Wal-Mart Effect and The Big Thirst, as well as co-author of A Curious Mind with Academy Award-winning producer and New York Times best-selling author Brian Grazer. Find our guest on Twitter at CFishman.
If you enjoy gazing up at the stars, I highly recommend these previous interviews:
Lynn Sherr – Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space Dow Phumiruk – Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13
July 29, 2019 - What do you get when two icons of the Industrial Revolution pile into a Model T and speed off to look for America? A one-of-a kind road-trip, peppered with Jazz Age characters like Harvey Firestone, John Burroughs, President Calvin Coolidge, and hardscrabble fiddler Jep Bisbee. Gassing us up for this journey is Jeff Guinn who brings us The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip. Then as now, time spent stuck in a car brought frayed nerves and zany mishaps -- literally bumps in the road -- but there's no better way to get the cut of someone's jib. Jeff Guinn is an award-winning former investigative journalist and the bestselling author of numerous books. They include Go Down Together: The True Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, and, The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral Find more about our guest at his Simon & Schuster author page or toss him a like on Facebook.
July 15, 2019 - Meet the "indispensable man" of the American Revolution, when he was just a hot-headed 22-year-old, growing into the shoes that laid down the footsteps for all future presidents to follow. Peter Stark brings the first face on Mount Rushmore to live in Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America's Founding Father. Peter Stark is an adventure writer and historian. He's a correspondent for Outside magazine, and you've seen his work in places like Smithsonian, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Men's Journal.
Peter Stark's His previous book, Astoria, was a finalist for a PEN USA literary award. You can find our guest at PeterStarkAuthor.com, @StarkAdventurer on Twitter, Facebook.com/PeterStarkAuthor, and @PeterStark_Adventure_Historian on Instagram.
If you're in the New York City area on July 31, 2019, Peter will appear at 7pm, as part of the New-York Historical Society's "Non-Fiction at the Bryant Park Reading Room" summer series. Join him there!
July 1, 2019 - Our time machine travels back to the American Revolution, where we'll meet Nathaniel Marten, a young Post Rider tasked with the solemn duty of gathering signatures for the Declaration of Independence. Our guide on this journey is Karen A. Chase, who brings us Carrying Independence: A Founding Documents Novel. Carrying Independence has already garnered accolades, securing second place in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Unpublished Novel Competition, and rolled its way into the semis at the Screencraft Cinematic Book competition. Her first effort, Bonjour 40: A Paris Travel Log, also met with critical acclaim, earning seven independent publishing awards. Visit our guest at KarenAChase.com, or on social media via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Today, she lives in historic Virginia. But Karen A. Chase was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, and has a couple of ancestors who fought in the War of Independence -- which gained her membership in the National Society of that Daughters of the American Revolution.
Jun 17, 2019 - We welcome a familiar passenger back our time machine. It's Dr. Paul Kahan, who we last chatted with about his book Amiable Scoundrel: Simon Cameron, Lincoln's Scandalous Secretary of War. Prior to that, he entertained and enlightened us with The Bank War: Andrew Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, and the Fight for American Finance. We put together a video trailer for that book, to share some of the illustrations and political cartoons of the time.
Dr. Kahan holds a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Temple University, an M.A. in Modern American History & Literature, and B.A.s in history and English. He’s also the author of two books on Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, as well as The Homestead Strike: Labor, Violence, and American History Critical Moments in American Industry . You can learn more about today's guest at PaulKahan.com, or follow him on Twitter @Paul_Kahan.
June 3, 2019 - We find ourselves at the bleeding borders of Hitler's Third Reich, nearing the peak of its power in Europe, with Andrew Nagorski, author of 1941: The Year Germany Lost the War. We watch as Hitler's miscalculations, deteriorating mental state, and policy of terror, give the United Kingdom powerful new allies in the U.S. and U.S.S.R. But these moves didn't just sealed National Socialism's fate. They sowed the seeds of the postwar shattering of the Big Three's alliance that led to the 50-year Cold War chill.
Andrew Nagorski gives us a fuller picture of these key 12 months of the 20th Century, employing his skills as a veteran author, interviewer, and foreign correspondent. We last chatted with him about his book, The Nazi Hunters, which you can find in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com, iTunes, our iHeartRadio channel, GooglePlay, or wherever you're listening now.
Visit AndrewNagorski.com or follow @AndrewNagorski on Twitter for more on these books and other, including, Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power.
May 20, 2019 - Our time machine travels back to the Northern Ontario, Canada of 1934, to witness a unique and risky series of births. Through the eyes of fictional midwife Emma Trimpany, we'll meet the Dionne family. They're humble farmers eking a living out of the land, when they're blessed with not one but five bundles of joy -- the first identical quintuplets to survive birth.
But the story turned dark when the Canadian government separated the infants from their parents and put them on display, as the center-ring act of a bizarre, moneymaking circus. Our guide on this journey is Shelley Wood, author of her debut novel, The Quintland Sisters. Shelley Wood's work has appeared in The New Quarterly, Room, The Antigonish Review, Bath Flash Fiction, and The Globe and Mail. She earned the Frank McCourt prize for creative nonfiction, Freefall Magazine’s short prose contest and Causeway Lit’s creative nonfiction prize.
Visit our guest at ShelleyWood.ca, follow her @ShelleyWood2 on Twitter, or toss her a like at Facebook.com/ShelleyWoodAuthor.
May 6, 2019 - Our time machine travels back to the nuclear nightmare at the Soviet Union's V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station -- as destined to fail, as the political system of its namesake. On April 26, 1986, Reactor No. 4 exploded, and in the 30 years since, a name that few in the world could have placed, has become synonymous with radioactive Armageddon. What really happened?
Communist propaganda long obscured the story of the accident behind the Iron Curtain. Here with his Geiger counter to tally the cost and causes is Adam Higginbotham, who brings us, Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and recently declassified archives, Higginbotham has written the true history at last in a book that reads like a thriller.
You've seen our guest's work in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, and Smithsonian. Find him online at AdamHigginbotham.com or @HigginbothamA on Twitter.
April 22, 2019 - We welcome a familiar face back into our time machine, and travel back to a parched New York City, suffering from a drought that began in a sweltering 1949, and stretched into 1950 with no end in sight. Desperate for rain, Mayor William O’Dwyer hired Dr. Wallace E. Howell, a handsome, 35-year-old meteorologist out of Harvard who approached weather modification as a cool-headed scientist, not a Music Man-style huckster.
We meet this headline-making man with his head literally in the clouds in Howell's Storm: New York City's Official Rainmaker and the 1950 Drought, by author Jim Leeke. Jim is a contributor to the Society for American Baseball Research Baseball Biography Project, as well as the writer or editor of several books on U.S. and military history.
We chatted previously with Jim about his books, Nine Innings for the King: The Day Wartime London Stopped for Baseball, July 4, 1918, and, From the Dugouts to the Trenches: Baseball During the Great War, as well as his Civil War novel for young adults, Matty Boy. A string of appearances, which makes Jim our first four-peat guest.
Find Jim on Twitter @JimLeeke.
April 8, 2019 - Our time machine welcomes aboard book lovers live at the Meet the Author Series presented by Mayda Bosco at the Closter Public Library in New Jersey. Together, we travel back to the Brooklyn and Massachusetts of the pre- and post-World War 2 era, for a tale of sibling strife that's as old as Cain and Abel. This is the engaging, absorbing story of two very different sisters, Ruth and Millie Kaplan. Raised in Brooklyn, each carries a hope chest full of hurt and secrets from their childhood.
Although they try their best to escape it, they're forced together again as adults at the Springfield Armory, where the Arsenal of Democracy gears up to support the war effort. Many years have passed, but marriages, husbands, and even kids of their own can't stop them from sliding right back into the sandbox of roles forged in childhood.
Weaving this tale of hurt feelings, estrangement, and siblings who are just running wildly different emotional operating systems, is Lynda Cohen Loigman, author of The Wartime Sisters: A Novel. It's the sophomore offering after her critically acclaimed debut The Two-Family House, a 2016 nominee for the Goodreads Choice Awards in Historical Fiction.
Visit our guest LyndaCohenLoigman.com, follow her @LyndaLoigman on Twitter or LLoigman on Instagram, and toss a like to her author Facebook page.
March 25, 2019 - In this episode, our time machine travels back to post-World War 2 Israel. When we arrive, we'll follow its return to statehood -- beset by enemies on three sides and their back against the sea on the fourth -- through the eyes of two fictional brothers and the woman they love. Our guide on this journey is Martin Fletcher who brings us Promised Land: A Novel of Israel.
In it, we meet characters shaped in very different ways by the darkness of the Holocaust. Peter protects Israel as an agent for the Mossad, his kid brother Arie builds it as a businessman -- and then there's Tamara, an alluring Jewish refugee from Egypt, seeking a new life in the reborn nation. The love triangle of these three vivid characters spans the first twenty years of Israel's modern existence, as war, intrigues and jealousy threaten to tear their lives -- and the struggling nation -- apart.
You've seen Martin Fletcher's work as NBC News Bureau Chief in Tel Aviv and he's earned recognition with the National Jewish Book Award, a Columbia University DuPont Award, several Overseas Press Club Awards, and five Emmys. His books include The War Reporter, Jacob's Oath, and Walking Israel. His latest novel is the first in a trilogy, each covering two decades, bringing readers up to the president day.
Visit our guest at MartinFletcher.net or toss him a like at Facebook.com/MartinFletcherFPage.
March 11, 2019 - Our time machine travels back to the American Civil War for a look at the toll paid by civilians and the countryside trampled under the boots, hooves and wagon wheels of rampaging armies. We're all familiar with the devastation wrought on soldiers, but after a century-and-a-half, those sacrifices have become romanticized -- and battlefields once soaked with blood and littered with corpses, are now pristine national parks.
Here to catalog the loss of ordinary citizens who didn't wear Confederate butternut or Union blue, is Dr. Joan Cashin, noted historian and author of the first full environmental history of the conflict. It's titled War Stuff: The Struggle for Human and Environmental Resources in the American Civil War. Joan earned a B.A. from The American University and a Ph.D. from Harvard. Today, she is a Professor of History at the Ohio State University in addition to her duties as editor of Our Common Affairs: Texts from Women in the Old South.
Her previous books include A Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier and First lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War. She also edited the book War Matters: Material Culture in the Civil War Era. You can follow our guest on Twitter @JoanECashin or check out her bio page at the Ohio State University.
February 25, 2019 - We welcome a familiar face back into the passenger seat of our time machine. It's Tom Clavin, who we last chatted with about the book, Valley Forge, he co-authored with Bob Drury. Tom returns solo with the definitive true story of James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok.
A soldier in the Civil War, spy for the Union, scout, lawman, gunfighter, gambler, showman, actor, and romantic, he crossed paths with General Custer, befriended the boy who grew up into Buffalo Bill Cody, and locked horns with Calamity Jane -- which may surprise those who've grown up with Hollywood portrayals of the pair as lovers.
Wild Bill's life story is also peppered with Ben Thompson, Kit Carson, and a slew of too-slow gamblers and gunmen looking to beat the fastest gun in the West and steal the title themselves. We can enjoy all these stories in Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier's First Gunfighter. Tom Clavin is the author or coauthor of sixteen books, including the #1 best-seller Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West.
You can visit our guest at TomClavin.com.
February 11, 2019 - We welcome one of our favorite authors back into our time machine. It's Neal Bascomb. We last caught up with him in Nazi-occupied Norway for the bone-chilling tale of The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb. Neal's latest book is The Escape Artists: A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War.
It's the tale of Allied airmen set out to defeat Kaiser Wilhelm's dreaded prisoner of war camp, Holzminden, and outwit its infamous commandant, Karl Niemeyer who swore that no one would get out alive. Dipping into memoirs and letters seen for the first time here, Neal Bascomb brings this forgotten story to life, in a rare bit of encouraging news for the home front during the darkness of the Great War.
It's a legacy of innovation that not only taught captured allies escape in far greater numbers when World War 2 arrived, but that informs how we prepare military personnel for capture to this day.
Visit our guest at NealBascomb.com, follow him @NealBascomb on Twitter, or like him on Facebook at Neal R. Bascomb.
January 28, 2019 - Mark Braude, who we chatted with previously about his book: Making Monte Carlo: A History of Speculation and Spectacle, brings us the tale of a legendary military leader who's almost too big for the word legend. Napoleon Bonaparte of France. We meet the titan of France not at the peak of his power, but at his low-point: Cast out, kicked off the throne, and walking among the citizens of a tiny island as one of them.
The book is The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba from Exile to Escape. Mark Braude is a National Endowment for the Humanities 2017-2018 Public Scholar and former lecturer of history at Stanford University, having earned a Ph.D. in Modern European History from the University of Southern California, as well as a Masters in French Studies from our own New York University.
Visit him at MarkBraude.com.
January 24, 2019 - Our time machine transports us back to the Savannah, Georgia, of 1858, where we'll meet Charles Lamar. Ignoring the law of the United States, Lamar organizes the transportation of hundreds of Africans aboard the yacht Wanderer. This criminal act strikes a hammer blow on the fault lines of America society, marking the first importation of human beings as slaves in four decades. Piecing together the true story with a treasure trove of newly discovered documents is Jim Jordan who brings us The Slave-Trader's Letter-Book: Charles Lamar, the Wanderer, and Other Tales of the African Slave Trade.
Jim Jordan researches and writes about the colonial, antebellum, and Civil War South. He's the author of the novel Savannah Grey: A Tale of Antebellum Georgia, and its sequel, Penny Savannah: A Tale of Civil War Georgia. In 2018, he earned the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Counsel of the University System of Georgia's Award for Excellence in Documenting Georgia's History.
Visit him at JimJordanAuthor.com.
If you enjoy Civil War diaries that shed new light on the conflict, check out these interviews in our archives: Theodore P. Savas -- The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865. Paula Tarnapol Whitaker -- A Civil Life in an Uncivil Time: Julia Wilbur’s Struggle for Purpose Gene Barr -- A Civil War Captain and His Lady: Love, Courtship, and Combat from Fort Donelson through the Vicksburg Campaign
December 31, 2018 - Our time machine travels back to a two-mile sliver of land in New York City's East River. Since 1971, it has been known as Roosevelt Island. But the Victorians knew it as Blackwell's Island, a dreaded name synonymous with illness, insanity, poverty, prisons and purgatory. You could suffer there for a variety of crimes, or for things as simple as being a woman walking alone late at night, an immigrant who didn't speak English, or someone too poor to make bail.
Charles Dickens described the place as "a lounging, listless madhouse."
Joining us to tell the true story of those who preceded us in the great story of Gotham is Stacy Horn. She brings us, Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York. Stacy's book is the first contemporary investigative account of Blackwell's, which she delivers by digging into the records of reformers, reporters and journalists like the intrepid Nellie Bly.
Stacy Horn is the author of five nonfiction books, including Imperfect Harmony. She's the founder of the social network Echo and also works at the ASPCA, listing among her credentials "cat butler." Find her at StacyHorn.com or @StacyHorn on Twitter.
December 17, 2018 -Our time machine welcomes aboard Winston Groom, acclaimed author of Forrest Gump, for a seat at the conference table with the Big Three. The book is The Allies: Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II. It's a fresh look at the interactions between these very different men as they navigated the fight against Hitler and the inevitable stresses of a culture clash between democracy, empire, and dictatorship.
Winston Groom is a master storyteller, and it's with that eye he approaches The Allies. Born in the nation's capital and raised in Alabama, he is also a Vietnam veteran and former journalist. His novels include Shrouds of Glory, Better Times Than These and As Summers Die, as well as Forrest Gump and its sequel, Gump & Co. His non-fiction work includes Conversations with the Enemy: The Story of PFC Robert Garwood, which earned a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize.
December 3, 2018 - In this episode, our time machine turns Zamboni and hits the ice for the greatest fanned shot in sports marketing history, when the New York Islanders -- a decade removed from their four-in-a-row Stanley Cup dynasty of the early '80s -- chose a new mascot that resembled nothing so much as frozen food pitchman The Gorton's Fisherman.
Joining us to do color commentary is our friend Nicholas Hirshon who brings us We Want Fish Sticks: The Bizarre and Infamous Rebranding of the New York Islanders. We last heard from Nick when he invited me to conduct a live interview at the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Our guest that day was Ephemeral New York's Esther Crain who chatted with us about her book, The Gilded Age in New York, 1870-1910.
Nick Hirshon is assistant professor of communication at William Paterson University and a former reporter for the New York Daily News. You've seen his work in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Hockey News. His previous books are Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum -- the arena where the Islanders built that dynasty -- and Forest Hills, about his Long Island hometown, with a forward by actor Ray Romano.
Visit him online at NickHirshon.com, @NickHirshon on Twitter and Instagram, or Facebook.com/NHirshon. You meet Nick and talk hockey at these author events...
November 19, 2018 - Our time machine hauls out the big, bulky Speed Graphic camera and watches the ultimate watcher of watchers in 1930s, '40s and '50s New York City: Arthur Fellig. Helping haul the tripod around to various crime scenes and disasters is Christopher Bonanos who brings us Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous. Even if you don’t know the name, you've seen his gritty images from the 1930s through '50s.
It's an incredible body of work produced by a photographer who hammed up claims of an uncanny ability to show up at a crime scene just as the cops did -- a human Ouija board.
Christopher Bonanos is city editor at New York magazine where he covers arts and culture and urban affairs. His previous book is Instant: The Story of Polaroid. Follow him on Twitter @HeyBonanos and @PolaroidLand on Instagram.
November 5, 2018 - Our time machine soars over the Great War's trenches -- and gets down and dirty on ground level -- through the eyes of a pilot in the very early days of U.S. air power. Our guide on this journey is Patrick Gregory, co-author of An American on the Western Front: The First World War Letters of Arthur Clifford Kimber 1917-18.
Written along with his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Nurser (Kimber's niece), Patrick Gregory has produced a true labor of love, bringing to life the only Great War record of its scope from the period of America's involvement. In addition to having a family friend in former President Theodore Roosevelt, Lt. Kimber also had the distinction of carrying the first official U.S. flag to the nation's European allies, adding rich details to the story of one doughboy among so many.
Patrick spent most of his career as a journalist at the BBC, working for 20 years at Westminster and helmed a number of political and history documentaries, as well as working in journalistic democracy-strengthening initiatives in the Asia-Pacific area.
Visit him online at AmericanOnTheWesternFront.com or @AmericanOnTheWF on Twitter.
October 22, 2018 - Our time machine travels back to "the times that try men’s souls," when Thomas Payne wrote that phrase to embody the struggles of Gen. George Washington's beaten-but-not-broken army and the precarious cause of American independence.
In their new book, Valley Forge, #1 New York Times best-selling team Bob Drury and Tom Clavin provide a fresh look at the winter of 1777. In it, they introduce us to a very human George Washington who's beset on all sides by an almost comical array of existential threats -- disease, desertion, traitors, spies, bickering bureaucrats, and incompetent skinflints in a dissolving Continental Congress. Not to mention the combined military might of the British Empire.
Drury and Clavin show case not only the indispensable commander-in-chief, but the common soldiers as well as men like Baron Von Stuben, Alexander Hamilton, the Marquis de Lafayette, and infamous characters like General Charles Lee. It's a fight that culminates on the sandy plain of New Jersey, when the men who survived the privations of Pennsylvania, stand toe to toe with Great Britain's best and turn them back.
Our guests have previously co-written titles including The Heart of Everything That Is -- The Untold Story of Red Cloud, an American Legend, and, Lucky 666: The Impossible Mission That Changed the War in the Pacific. You've seen Bob Drury's work in the nine books he's authored, co-authored or edited, and in places such as the New York Times, Vanity Fair, GQ and Men’s Journal where he's a contributing editor and foreign correspondent. Tom Clavin is the author or coauthor of sixteen books, a fifteen-year veteran of the New York Times and contributor to top periodicals including Manhattan Magazine, where he's the investigative features correspondent.
October 8, 2018 - Our time machine travels back to America's experience in the Great War through the eyes of former president and hero of the Spanish-American War Theodore Roosevelt, whose four sons suited up to fight over there. Leading us through basic training is David Pietrusza, author of TR's Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, The Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy.
In David Pietrusza's book, we get a fleshed-out picture of the former Rough Rider -- older, suffering in the aftermath of his ill-fated Brazilian expedition, and blind in one eye, but still scrapping for a fight and taking on President Woodrow Wilson.
You have seen David Pietrusza's work everywhere great history is found. He has written or edited a footlocker full of best-selling, award-winning books, including those on the pivotal presidential election years 1920, 1932, 1948, 1960. He's been called one "of the best historians in the United States," "one of the great political historians of all time," and "the undisputed champion of chronicling American Presidential campaigns."
Visit him online @DPietrusza on Twitter and DavidPietrusza.com.
If you're into the Roosevelts, enjoy these features from our archives: Tim Brady - His Father's Son: The Life of General Ted Roosevelt, Jr. John J. Miller - The Big Scrum: How Theodore Roosevelt Saved Football. Kermit Roosevelt - Allegiance Doris Kearns Goodwin - The Bully Pulpit Doris Kearns Goodwin - Theodore Roosevelt’s “Wild” Fitness Regime
September 24, 2018 - Our time machine welcomes aboard infamous bank robbing-legends Bonnie and Clyde, as they tear a gash across 1930s America at the height of the Great Depression. Returning to ride shotgun with us on this crime spree is Jenni L. Walsh, who we chatted with about her debut novel, the stand-alone origin story Becoming Bonnie.
Jenni's sophomore book isn't a sequel, but the edge-of-your-seat crime spree work of fiction Side by Side: A Novel of Bonnie and Clyde. In it, we meet a very different couple in a crippled America. Instead of basking in Bonnie's love, snug in her arms, Clyde is suffering the abuse that helps harden his heart in a Texas prison.
Visit our guest at JenniLWalsh.com and follow her @JenniLWalsh on Twitter.
September 10, 2018 - Our time machine rockets to the moon -- and misses -- aboard the ill-fated Apollo 13. Saving the day is the African-American woman whose mathematical know-how guided the trio of Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise safely back home.
As a child, Katherine Johnson loved math, and triumphed with her family's support to learn despite segregated schools of the day. Bringing an out-of-this-word story to life for readers 5 to 9 years of age, is Dow Phumiruk, whose vivid illustrations blast off in Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13, written by Helaine Becker.
Dow Phumiruk is a pediatrician with a passion for art who enjoys adventures at home, hiking on the trails of Colorado. Visit her online at ArtByDow.com or follow her @DowPhumiruk. We previously discussed Dow's illustrations when we chatted with Jeanne Walker Harvey about their book, Maya Lin: Artist – Architect of Light and Lines.
A special Happy Birthday to Katherine Johnson, who turned 100 years old just a couple of weeks before this episode's air-date!
August 27, 2018 - Our time machine whirls us back to the Civil War sickbed of 12-year-old LeRoy Wiley Gresham. This young voice of the Old South in Macon, Georgia -- rendered an invalid after a mysterious accident, and ignorant of the tuberculosis marching him towards an early grave -- left us the only diary of a male, teenage non-combatant.
Savas Beatie LLC, "Publisher of Historical Titles of Distinction," brings us this poignant, insightful and witty diary for the very first time, edited by Janet E. Croon. The book is The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865. Our guest is Theodore P. Savas -- attorney, author, publishing consultant, agent, and the managing director of Savas Beatie. Ted acquired the diaries and did what historians thought impossible: Added a fresh new voice to our understanding of the Civil War.
On top of The War Outside My Window, LeRoy's first-person description of spinal tuberculosis is also the only record of its kind in the world. You can deliver into that story in the companion book, I Am Perhaps Dying: The Medical Backstory of Spinal Tuberculosis Hidden in the Civil War Diary of Leroy Wiley Gresham, by Dennis A. Rasbach MD FACS and Janet Croon. You can also visit the Gresham home where LeRoy lived, wrote, and died at The 1842 Inn.
Visit SavasBeatie.com for details, follow them on Twitter at SavasBeattieLLC, and find Janet Croon's reflections at TheWarOutsideMyWindow.blogspot.com or Facebook.com/LeRoyWileyGresham.
Check out our interviews with these other fine Savas Beatie authors: · Gene Barr -- A Civil War Captain and His Lady: Love, Courtship, and Combat from Fort Donelson through the Vicksburg Campaign. · Noah Andre Trudeau -- Lincoln’s Greatest Journey: Sixteen Days that Changed a Presidency, March 24 – April 8, 1865. · Stephen Davis -- A Long and Bloody Task: The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton through Kennesaw to the Chattahoochee, May 5-July 18, 1864, and its companion paperback, All the Fighting They Want: The Atlanta Campaign from Peach Tree Creek to the City’s Surrender, July 18-September 2, 1864.
August 13, 2018 - We welcome Fiona Davis back into our time machine, where she'll be painting a fresh story of art, mystery, intrigue, lies and love. The book is . If you enjoyed Fiona Davis's previous works -- The Dollhouse, about the famed Barbizon Hotel for Women, and The Address, which stars the legendary Dakota apartment complex -- you'll want to hop a train for The Masterpiece: A Novel.
It's set in the Grand Central Depot of its 1920's heyday and the 1970s, In those dark days, wrecking balls threatened obliteration, a fate avoided through the efforts of Jackie Kennedy and a group of dedicated New Yorkers.
You can enjoy my chat with Fiona about that sophomore novel, The Address, in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com or wherever you're listening. Visit Fiona online at FionaDavis.net, Facebook.com/FionaDavisAuthor or @FionaJDavis on Twitter.
July 30, 2018 - Our time machine travels back to the Western Front of the Great War, and enlists with the 60th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, which captured the villages of Vimy and Petit Vimy, in the pivotal battle for Vimy Ridge.
Author Rick Pyves contacted 2,500 living relatives of the soldiers through Ancestry, uncovering 86 personal recollections and letters as well as over 200 photos for Courage, Sacrifice and Betrayal - The Story of the Victoria Rifles of Canada, 60th Battalion in the First World War. One of those relatives is our own resident genealogist, Catherine, who offers her research services through HistoryAuthor.com/FamilyHistory. Her grandfather's first cousin, Private Charles Henry Mainwaring, gave his life in the 60th Battalion at only 20 years old.
Rick Pyves is an avid historian and a genealogist who, like Catherine, also hails from Canada. His first book -- Night Madness: A Rear Gunner’s Story of Love, Courage, and Hope in World War II -- weaves his father’s tale into a touching love story in one man’s very personal war.
Visit RichardPyves.com or follow @RichardPyves on Twitter for more on this view of the First World War War from the nation Winston Churchill called "The Great Dominion."
July 16, 2018 - In this episode, we witnesses a pivotal moment in world history and the evolution of European monarchies: The massacre of the Romanov family, ending the family's 400-year reign at Czar Nicholas II. Our guide on this journey is Helen Rappaport who brings us The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue the Russian Imperial Family.
Amidst the carnage of the Great War and Russian Revolution, myths and out-right lies about the family have clouded the popular view of the Czar's end. But here for the first time -- thanks in part to the opening of post-Soviet archives and DNA testing -- we have the true story of what happened to the Czar, Czarina and their children, closing the book at last.
Helen F. Rappaport is a British historian, best-selling author, and former actress who studied Russian at Leeds University. Her previous books include The Romanov Sisters, Victoria, The Last Days of the Romanovs, and Conspirator: Lenin in Exile. Visit her at HelenRappaport.Com or at Helen Rappaport on Twitter.
July 2, 2018 - Our time machine strikes gold in Nevada’s Comstock Lode — a world-record vein so immensely valuable that it changed the destiny of the United States as the Civil War loomed. Our guide on this journey is Gregory Crouch who brings us: The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle over the Greatest Riches in the American West.
It's the history-making, rags-to-riches story of an Irish immigrant who made his fortune, won the love of his adopted country -- and then fell from the national memory in part because nobody had a bad word to say about him. Gregory Crouch's previous books include the World War II flying adventure China's Wings and the alpine memoir Enduring Patagonia. He studied history at the United States Military Academy at West Point, completed U.S. Army Airborne and Ranger schools, and led two infantry platoons.
Visit him at GregCrouch.com, Facebook.com/GregoryCrouchAuthor, @GregoryCrouch on Twitter, or Gregory.Crouch on Instagram.
June 18, 2018 - Our time machine travels back to the days of poodle skirts, I Like Ike and I Love Lucy. Once there, we'll meet Kitty Tessler -- a saucy, scheming socialite out to settle scores with snobs.
Our guide on this whirlwind tour of Manhattan, Miami, and parts of Havana brewing with an anti-Batista revolution, is Amber Brock, author of Lady Be Good: A Novel.
Amber Brock teaches British literature at an all-girls' school in Atlanta, and Publishers Weekly described her debut novel, 2016's A Fine Imitation, as "An absorbing tale of art, deception, romance, and forbidden desire." She holds an MA from the University of Georgia and lives in Smyrna with her husband, also an English teacher, and their three rescue dogs.
Visit her at AmberBrock.net or at AmBrockWrites on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Also referenced in this episode: This 2002 C-Span interview with Tom Clancy.
June 4, 2018 - Our time machine travels back to the Tudor and Stuart period of the British monarchy, to meet a prince on track to be the great King Henry the IX, had his life not been cut short. Our guide on this royal journey is Sarah Fraser, author of The Prince Who Would Be King: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart. Henry Stuart’s life -- subject of the BBC 2 documentary The Best King We Never Had -- is the last great forgotten Jacobean tale, lost in the turmoil of the Thirty Years’ War and sweeping changes taking place across Europe at the turn of the 17th Century.
Sarah Fraser won the 2012 Saltire First Scottish Book of the Year for her acclaimed debut The Last Highlander, which in 2016 also became a New York Times ebook bestseller. She's a writer and regular contributor on TV and radio, with a PhD in ribald Gaelic poetry.
Visit her online at SarahFraser.co.uk, where you can find her speaking schedule and regular blogs about the tumultuous Stuart era. You can also follow her on Twitter @Sarah_FraserUK.
May 21, 2018 - In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard the daughter of an American national treasure: Rod Serling. Best known for his ominous exposition in TV's groundbreaking anthology, The Twilight Zone, Serling also produced landmark screenplays such as Planet of the Apes, Seven Days in May, Playhouse 90's The Velvet Alley, and Requiem for a Heavyweight.
He was a World War Two veteran, jokester, animal-lover, social commentator, prolific writer and -- unfortunately -- a heavy smoker, which contributed to his early death at only fifty years old in 1975. But perhaps the credit Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling could boast with the greatest pride, is that of loving father. This is the man we'll meet thanks to his younger daughter, Anne Serling, in As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling.
Far from the dark, brooding, tortured character many have portrayed, this intimate portrait introduces us to a writer, thinker and teacher we would all be proud to know.
Visit our guest online at AnneSerling.Com, @AnneSerling on Twitter, or Facebook.com/AnneSerlingBooks.
May 7, 2018 - Our time machine travels back to meet rival Cherokee chiefs in the decades leading up to and through the American Civil War, when the supporters of John Ross and The Ridge engaged in a blood feud that led to war, the infamous Trail of Tears, and the devastation of a once-proud nation encompassing what today is several southern states.
Our guide on this journey is John Sedgwick who brings us Blood Moon: An American Epic of War and Splendor in the Cherokee Nation. John Sedgwick is the bestselling author of thirteen books, including War of Two -- his acclaimed account of the Alexander Hamilton-Aaron Burr duel -- two novels, and the family memoir In My Blood. You've seen his work in GQ, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and The Atlantic.
You can find him online at JohnSedgwick.biz.
April 23, 2018 - Our time machine travels back 100 years, to witness the split-second explosion that blew a chunk of Halifax, Nova Scotia off the map. On December 6, 1917, this key city in supplying the Allies in the Great War, suffered the largest man-made explosion prior to the bombs that ended World War Two -- something that caught the attention of physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb."
On the shore in Canada to witness the collision in the harbor is John U. Bacon, author of The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism. John U. Bacon teaches at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and the University of Michigan. He's written five New York Times bestsellers, including Three and Out, Fourth and Long, and, Endzone.
You can catch him often on NPR and national TV, as well as JohnUBacon.com, @JohnUBacon on Twitter, or Facebook.com/JohnUBaconAuthor.
April 9, 2018 - Our time machine travels back to 1931 to conclude the Durant Family Trilogy. Moving on from the Gilded Age, we'll catch up with William and Ella, the adult children of Union Pacific Railroad tycoon Dr. Thomas C. Durant, in the final years of their complicated lives.
Our guest, Sheila Myers, first introduced us to the family in her novel, Imaginary Brightness, as they had their comfortable lives in London shattered by an economic panic. Book 2, Castles in the Air, saw the William and Ella locking horns, as their father continued to exert influence on their lives from beyond the grave. In the conclusion, The Night Is Done, William and Ella cast their eyes back on their lives, and confront the stark truth about their legacy and long-gone fortune.
Sheila Myers is an associate professor at Cayuga Community College, which feeds her passion for the Durant family in upstate New York's Adirondack Mountains. You can follow her on Twitter @SheilaMMyers or visit her online at WWDurantStory.com. And you can listen to our previous interviews on both Imaginary Brightness and Castles in the Air in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com, or wherever you're listening.
March 26, 2018 - It's a special episode, recorded live on the campus of New York University at the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference, co-sponsored by the American Journalism Historians Association and the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
The spot at No. 20 Bowery is in sight of the Cooper Union where Abraham Lincoln gave the 1860 speech that launched him into the presidency, and steps from 114 Bowery, where Steve Brodie bragged about jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. It's also just a few blocks from Manhattan's oldest bar, McSorley's Old Ale House, familiar to those of you who enjoyed my chat with Rafe Batholomew on his memoir Two and Two: McSorley's, My Dad, and Me.
Joining me at NYU is of my all-time favorite time-travelers, Esther Crain, the great and powerful Oz behind the wildly popular blog, Ephemeral New York, which runs under the tagline: "Chronicling an ever-changing city through faded and forgotten artifacts." Esther is also the author of 2014's New York City in 3D In The Gilded Age, a box set that not only offered a book with Esther's sharp writing and rare images compiled by the New-York Historical Society, but also a Stereoscopic Viewer to bring the turn of the last century to life in three dimensions.
Esther has spent 15 years writing and editing for top consumer magazines and health/lifestyle websites including Cosmopolitan, Self, Shape, Glamour, Women's Health, and Health magazines. Now she's back on our bookshelf with The Gilded Age in New York, 1870-1910. Visit her blog at EphemeralNewYork.Wordpress.com, where you can sign up for emails of each new article she posts. You can also follow her @EphemeralNY on Twitter or like her on Facebook page.
Special thanks for this installment goes to Nick Hirshon of William Paterson University and Pamela Walck of Duquesne University for inviting us to close out the JJCHC.
March 12, 2018 - Our time machine travels back to the Philippines during the Japanese occupation the Second World War. Once in the South Pacific, we'll bear solemn witness to crimes against women who have been denied the justice and compensation for the atrocities they suffered in the name of the emperor.
Our guide on this journey is M. Evelina Galang who brings us Lolas' House: Filipino Women Living with War. The Imperial Japanese Army kidnapped over 1,000 Filipino women and girls, part of a staggering 400,000 women across forced Asia into sexual slavery. Incredibly, and to Japan's shame, to this day their government denies the crimes of its wartime regime, unlike the heirs of their fascist Axis allies in Germany, where denying the Holocaust is a crime.
M. Evelina Galang is the author of several books and the editor of Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian-American Images. She directs the M.F.A. Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami and is core faculty and board member of Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA). She wrote the novel, Her Wild American Self, which The New York Times Book Review praised and named a notable book.
You can find our guest online at MEvelinaGalang.com, or follow her on Twitter at the handle HerWildAmSelf.
February 26, 2018 - Our time machine travels to 1960 and pulls over at a secluded bridge on a lonely Colorado road. We're there to witness a crime of greed and envy, when a bitter escaped convict with delusions of high IQ snatches the 44-year-old CEO of Coors as he makes his way to the family brewery.
We follow this tale of true crime in the new book: The Death of an Heir: Adolph Coors III and the Murder That Rocked an American Brewing Dynasty. Sitting beside us in our squad car as the kidnapper pounces is attorney Philip Jett, who brings us this chilling account of the Coors family’s gilded American dream that turned into a nightmare.
Find our guest online at PhilipJett.com or @PhilipJett on Twitter.
February 12, 2018 - For Black History Month, our time machine piles readers 4 to 8 years old into their car seats, and introduces them to a hero who overcame segregation and many other obstacles, to pursue his artistic dream -- and that's after being a star NFL player.
Returning to the show is Sandra Neil Wallace, who last joined us with her husband and co-writer Rich Wallace to discuss their books Bound by Ice: A True North Pole Survival Story and Blood Brother: Jonathan Daniels and His Sacrifice for Civil Rights. You can hear those conversations in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com or wherever you catch the show.
Sandra's latest book is titled Between the Lines: How Ernie Barnes Went from the Football Field to the Art Gallery. In it, young readers will find the story of a pro-football player, brought to life with by Sandra's prose and Bryan Collier's watercolors. Bryan Collier is an award-winning illustrator, whose art won first place in a 1985 congressional competition and later earned him a scholarship to New York City's Pratt Institute.
Watch him draw at this Facebook Live event or check out his work at BryanCollier.com.
You've seen Sandra Neil Wallace's work as a news anchor and ESPN sportscaster, and you'll recall that she was the first woman to host an NHL show on network television. Visit her at SandraNeilWallace.com, @SandraNWallace on Twitter and Facebook.com/SandraNeilWallace.
January 29, 2018 - Our time machine heads south to the other land down under for a chilly Jazz Age adventure. Our guide on this journey is Laurie Gwen Shapiro who brings us the story of a scrappy Polish-American kid from Manhattan's Lower East Side, who explores the Roaring '20s final frontier. Her book is The Stowaway: A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica. It's the spectacular, true story of Billy Gawronski who snuck onto the flagship of famed explorer Richard E. Byrd, demanding a place among the crew and on the pages of history.
Laurie Gwen Shapiro is a native of Billy Gawronski's corner of Manhattan, and you've seen her writing in New York Magazine, Slate, Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as in her history column The Forward, focusing on unsung heroes. She is also a documentary filmmaker who won an Independent Spirit Award for directing IFC’s Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale and an Emmy nomination for producing HBO’s Finishing Heaven.
Visit her online at LaurieGwenShapiro.com, follow her @LaurieStories on Twitter and Instagram, or toss a like to Facebook.com/LaurieGwenShapiro.
January 15, 2018 - Our time machine travels back to the Union-occupied city of Alexandria, Virginia, to get an abolitionist woman's perspective during America's Civil War. Our guide on this journey is Paula Tarnapol Whitaker, author of A Civil Life in an Uncivil Time: Julia Wilbur's Struggle for Purpose. Paula met up with us in Virginia at the Lyceum, Alexandria's History Museum, where we felt close to this woman ahead of her time.
In the fall of 1862, with the Civil War raging, 47-year-old Julia Wilbur said goodbye to the family farm near Rochester, New York, and boarded a train to the capital of a divided nation. An ardent abolitionist, Wilbur spent most of the next several years in Alexandria, Virginia, just across the river from Washington, D.C.
Pushing back against the limitations women faced at the time, Julia Wilbur aided escaped slaves and hospitalized Union soldiers, later serving in the Freedman's bureau as African-Americans made their first steps to full citizenship. Based on diaries, letters, and other primary sources, A Civil Life in an Uncivil Time introduces us to a woman who threw herself into a changing society, and helped bend it in the direction of liberty.
You can find our guest online at PaulaWhitacre.com, @PTWhitacre on Twitter, or Facebook.com/PTWhitacre.
*According to our new schedule, our next episode will be on January 29th.
January 1, 2018 - Happy New Year, history lovers! To kick off 2018, we welcome thriller author Tom Grace to discuss the sixth novel in his series featuring ex-Navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny: Undeniable. Tom's novels feature cutting-edge technology, and we discuss how DNA science is solving historical mysteries. Did Adolf Hitler have a son? Was Warren G. Harding our first black president?
What sinister uses will criminal minds cook up when editing DNA is as easy as editing a Word document? Ancestry.com is set to double their database to 12 million people in the New Year. Our trained genealogist can help you unlock the history written in your chromosomes at HistoryAuthor.com/Family-History.
Find Tom online at TomGrace.net, on Twitter @Tom_Grace, or like him as Facebook.com/AuthorTomGrace. All his novels are available in paperback from Regnery Fiction.
Tom has guest hosted on the History Author Show three times. Jeanne Walker Harvey: Maya Lin: Artist - Architect of Light and Lines. Hugh Howard: Architecture's Odd Couple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson. Gerald Posner: God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican.
December 25, 2017 - This week, our time machine visits 1939, clicks on the radio, and listens to The Campbell Playhouse production of A Christmas Carol hosted by Orson Welles and staring Lionel Barrymore as Ebenezer Scrooge. When Charles Dickens published the story in 1843, he did so as what we'd call social commentary, reflecting the soul-searching of his fellow Britons about the true meaning of Christmas.
Even 175 years later, we can see the importance of Dickens' central themes in our own world, where so many TV shows have parodied the tale. Like the WPIX Yule Log here in New York City, Lionel Barrymore's Christmas Eve performances grew into a tradition from the first in 1934 to his final appearance in 1953, a year before his death. Barrymore also features in a great television Christmas tradition, as the miserly Mr. Potter in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, written by a fellow Rutgers alumnus: Philip Van Doren Stern.
We hope you enjoy listening to this radio play and the interview with Mr. Welles that follows, as much as we enjoyed researching the stories behind it. As Tiny Tim says, "God bless us, everyone."
December 18, 2017 - This week -- just in time to get stuffed into your young reader's stocking -- we travel back to a familiar location, at a pivotal moment in the American Revolution. The year is 1780, when one of the greatest heroes of the Continental Army -- General Benedict Arnold -- decides to betray the patriot cause by surrendering West Point to the British with the help of British spymaster Major John André.
We talked about these infamous men when we interviewed Robert Norden, tavern keeper at the Old '76 House in Tappan, New York, where patriots kept the captured Andre locked up after his capture and before his execution. You can enjoy that episode in the archives at HistoryAuthor.com or your favorite on-demand audio outlet.
Our guide on this journey is award-winning young adult novelist and nonfiction author Selene Castrovilla who brings us: Revolutionary Rogues: Revolutionary Rogues: John André and Benedict Arnold. It's the real history behind heavily dramatized stories such as AMC's Turn: Washington's Spies and the smash Broadway musical Hamilton.
Selene's third YA novel Melt, Book One of the Rough Romance Trilogy, racked up six honors including the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Spark Award. Revolutionary Friends, her third nonfiction picture book, earned four awards including Booklist Top Ten Biography for Youth.
Visit our guest at SeleneCastrovilla.com, like her at Facebook.com/Selene.Castrovilla, follow @SCastrovilla on Twitter and SeleneCastrovilla on Instagram. You can also check out the artist behind the images half of Revolutionary Rogues at JohnOBrienIllustrator.com. Lovers of the Marquis de Lafayette can also honor his legacy of Franco-American friendship by joining The American Friends of Lafayette, which Selene spoke about so passionately in this episode.
December 11, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back to the American Civil War in All the Fighting They Want: The Atlanta Campaign from Peach Tree Creek to the City's Surrender, July 18-September 2, 1864. Our guide on this journey is Stephen Davis, a longtime Atlantan and Civil War enthusiast since the fourth grade. All the Fighting They Want serves as a companion to his previous paperback, A Long and Bloody Task: The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton through Kennesaw to the Chattahoochee, May 5-July 18, 1864.
The books are part of the Emerging Civil War Series, published by Savas Beatie LLC. Learn more about their titles at SavasBeatie.com or on Twitter @SavasBeatieLLC.
Stephen Davis has served as Book Review Editor for Blue & Gray magazine for more than twenty years, and you've seen his many articles in scholarly and popular journals. His previous books are 2001's Atlanta Will Fall: Sherman, Joe Johnston and the Yankee Heavy Battalions, and 2012's What the Yankees Did to Us: Sherman’s Bombardment and Wrecking of Atlanta.
December 4, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back 50 years to one of the Vietnam War's massive set pieces: The Tet Offensive. This series of simultaneous attacks by the communist North on 36 cities, aimed to weaken support both within the Vietnamese republic in the South and across the Pacific in the United States.
Our guest, Doug Stanton, embeds his readers with 46 fresh, young American soldiers in Echo Company: An Army reconnaissance platoon of the 101st Airborne Division. Some of those men had only been in country for a few weeks when they found themselves facing waves of battle-hardened Viet Cong guerrillas, often in hand-to-hand combat, at the point of a bayonet.
Doug Stanton captures their story through the eyes of 20-year-old Stanley Parker in The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War. Mr. Stanton is a journalist, lecturer, screenwriter, and the author of New York Times bestsellers In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors. He also brought us Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan, which is the basis for a Jerry Bruckheimer film coming in 2018.
Doug Stanton's work has appeared in a wide number of top publications, and he's been a contributing editor at Outside. He's also a founder of the National Writers Series. For more, visit DougStanton.com or follow him on Twitter @DougStantonBook.
Also mentioned in this episode is author/illustrator Marcelino Truong's graphic memoir on growing up in the ultimately doomed Republic of Vietnam: Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63.
November 27, 2017 - This week, our time machine visits the Gilded Age to witness William McKinley's rise to the White House. Little remembered or misremembered today, at the time of his assassination in 1901, the Civil War veteran was the most popular president since Abraham Lincoln, and nothing like the caricature portrayed by mid-20th Century authors.
Robert W. Merry sets the record straight in President McKinley: Architect of the American Century. You've seen Mr. Merry was editor of The National Interest from 2011 to 2013, and previously served as a Washington correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and executive editor of the Congressional Quarterly. He's now editor at The American Conservative.
You've seen his work everywhere from the New York Times to National Review, and seen his appearances on shows like Meet the Press. His previous book resurrected another overlooked president: A Country of Vast Designs, on James K Polk, and Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians.
Also mentioned this week: Our interview with Candice Shy Hooper, author of Lincoln's Generals' Wives: Four Women Who Influenced the Civil War--for Better and for Worse.
November 20, 2017 - This week -- just in time for Thanksgiving in America -- we set sail with the intrepid Pilgrims on The Mayflower. Once aboard, we'll meet the Winslow family, and gain a perspective that links the broader experience -- from Native American contacts to intrigues back home in Europe.
Tracing the voyage with us is reviewer and broadcaster Rebecca Fraser author of The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America. The daughter of noted British historian Lady Antonia Fraser and former president of the Brontë Society in the U.K. Her previous books include The Story of Britain.
You can find her on Twitter at R Fraser Author.
November 13, 2017 - This week, we'll see a familiar face in the passenger seat of our time machine under a big cartwheel hat, as we travel back to 1908 Los Angeles. Our guest is Jennifer Kincheloe, here to chat about her second novel, The Woman in the Camphor Trunk -- An Anna Blanc Mystery.
Since we last spoke, Jen has earned the Colorado Gold Award for Mystery, and spots as a finalist for the MacAvirty Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award, the Left Coast Crime "Lefty" Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel, and the Colorado Author's League Award for Genre Fiction.
You can catch our interview on her acclaimed debut novel, The Secret Life of Anna Blanc, in the archives at HistoryAuthor.com or wherever you're listening, and find our guest online at JenniferKincheloe.com, on Twitter @JenKincheloe, or Facebook.com/TheSecretLifeOfAnnaBlanc -- where she shares all the great Gilded Age images you could ever want and then some.
November 6, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back to a time when the United States fought its first major overseas conflict, joining a fight idealized as making the world safe for democracy. Our guide on this journey is Margaret E. Wagner, a senior writer/editor in the Library of Congress Publishing Office. She brings us America and the Great War: A Library of Congress Illustrated History.
This book is almost an art history museum sitting on your coffee table, offering up over 250 images, along with 4-color illustrations -- many never seen before. Margaret Wagner has applied the talents she put into her previous books, The Library of Congress Illustrated Timeline of the Civil War; The American Civil War: 365 Days, and, World War II: 365 Days. She's also co-author of The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference and The Library of Congress World War II Companion.
October 30, 2017 - This week, our time machine bolts on its studded snow tires for a freezing journey to the North Pole -- a trip we'll make long before GPS, cell phones, or Gortex gloves -- with Gilded Age explorers aboard the schooner USS Jeannette. Returning to the show are husband-and-wife writing team Rich Wallace and Sandra Neil Wallace. They last joined us to discuss their book Blood Brother: Jonathan Daniels and His Sacrifice for Civil Rights. You can hear that chat in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com, or wherever you're listening. Their book today is a world away from the sweltering Alabama heat of the 1960s. It's Bound by Ice: A True North Pole Survival Story, and it's aimed at readers nine to eighteen years of age, although I enjoyed it even at a good distance beyond my high school graduation. You've seen Sandra's work as a news anchor and ESPN sportscaster, and Rich has written over three dozen novels for children and teens, including such as Babe Conquers the World co-written with Sandra. The Young Adult Library Services Association named his novel Wrestling Sturbridge, one of the 100 Best of the Best for the Twenty-First Century. You can visit our guests at SandraNeilWallace.com, and RichWallaceBooks.com, and follow them on Twitter @SandraNWallace and @RWallaceBooks.
October 23, 2017 - This week, our time machine shuttles back and forth between the 1880s and the 1980s, with a story anchored at the ends of family trees and DNA strands. Our guide on this journey is Fiona Davis, author of The Address: A Novel. It builds a bridge between two women, united across a century by the legendary Dakota apartment building.
Famous today as the home to celebrities and artists -- and infamous as the spot John Lennon met his doom -- it was originally a Guided Age an enigma, plopped in the middle of Upper Manhattan's muddy fields, still dotted with ramshackle farmhouses. By the 1980s, the Dakota had fallen into sooty disrepair, and found its grand apartments suffering architectural indignities like lime green shag carpets, bamboo walls, and mirrored closets.
The Address follows on the heels of Fiona Davis's acclaimed first book, The Dollhouse, about the famed Barbizon Hotel for Women. Born in Canada and raised in places as far-flung as Utah, Texas, and New Jersey, our guest worked for years as an actress on Broadway, and attended both the College of William & Mary and the Columbia University School of Journalism.
Find her online at FionaDavis.net, Facebook.com/FionaDavisAuthor, or @FionaJDavis on Twitter.
October 16, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back to a date of infamy: September 9, 1971, when inmates seized control of Attica Correctional Facility in Western New York State. A four-day standoff resulted, ending when police and corrections officers stormed Attica, leaving 29 inmates and 10 guards dead and dying. In the immediate aftermath, newspapers and television reported the state-sanctioned version of events: The prisoners had murdered the hostages.
The medical examiner debunked that narrative the next morning, stating that police bullets had killed those held captive. From that point on, New York officials from Governor Nelson Rockefeller on down kicked into high gear to suppress the full truth -- a truth that remained buried and scoffed at for half a century.
Malcolm Bell -- hired by New York State in 1973 to prosecute any cases that might arise out of its investigation -- reveals what really happened when the state retook the prison. His book is The Attica Turkey Shoot: Carnage, Cover-Up, and the Pursuit of Justice. While serving as a New York State prosecutor, Bell blew the whistle on the Empire State’s refusal to hold law enforcement officers accountable for the extensive torture and murder that they committed during the riots.
You can find our guest at Facebook.com/MalcolmBellAuthor
October 9, 2017 - This week, our time machine flies up to the Great White North -- the very heart of Canada -- for a road trip to Brandon, Manitoba's Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum, a national historic site dedicated to the memory of the men who fought and died in the skies during the Second World War.
It's the only museum of its kind in the world, marking where crews from Australia, New Zealand, England and Canada trained. Prime Minister Winston Churchill called Canada "the Great Dominion," and said the Commonwealth Air Training Plan was its greatest contribution to Allied victory over the Axis powers, specifically Germany and Italy in the European Theater.
Our guest is Museum president John McNarry. Visit the museum at AirMuseum.ca, join their Facebook group, or find them @CATPM_Brandon on Twitter.
October 2, 2017 - Today, our time machine follows professional baseball players, onto the battlefields of Europe in World War One a century ago. We hear the story about how the game, players, fans and the War Department clash in From the Dugouts to the Trenches: Baseball During the Great War, by author Jim Leeke. Jim is a contributor to the Society for American Baseball Research Baseball Biography Project, as well as the writer or editor of several books on U.S. and military history.
We chatted a previously with Jim about his Civil War novel for young adults: Matty Boy, and talked about a single, special game along the lines of today's topic in his book: Nine Innings for the King: The Day Wartime London Stopped for Baseball, July 4, 1918. Which makes Jim, our three-peating guest.
Find Jim on at AABaseball.org or on Twitter @WW1Baseball.
September 25, 2017 - This week, our time machine follows one woman's modern quest to recover property stolen by Nazi Germany. It was only a single theft in the National Socialist State's vast, systematic plundering of Jewish wealth, but the Wolff family's story quickly becomes our story, and we find ourselves rooting for justice.
Author Dina Gold's grandmother, Nellie Wolff, told her stories of the glamorous life she had led in pre-war Berlin, and how she dreamed of reclaiming the majestic building that had housed the family business. Grandma Nellie didn't live to see the fall of the Berlin Wall, but when Germany reunified, Dina marched into a German government ministry and declared: “I’ve come to claim my family’s building.”
Dina tells the story in her book, Stolen Legacy: Nazi Theft and the Quest for Justice at Krausenstrasse 17/18, Berlin. Raised in the U.K. and is now an American citizen living in the nation's capital, she sits on the board of the Jewish Community Center and just completed her stint as co-chair on the council of the Washington Jewish Film Festival. A senior editor at Moment magazine, she started her career in London as a financial journalist after postgraduate studies at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Later, at the BBC, she worked as an investigative reporter and television producer.
Learn more about this story of a generational quest for restoration online at StolenLegacy.com, and follow her on Twitter @Dina_Gold and at @Stolen_Legacy for the book.
Myst Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
September 18, 2017 - Hello, true believers! This week, we meet a national treasure who serves as a bridge from the Golden Age of comic books to today's blockbuster, multi-film CGI universes. It's the origin story of the man who -- along with talented co-creators like artists Jack Kirby and Joe Simon -- created such iconic characters as Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man.
Filling in speech balloons is Bob Batchelor who brings us Stan Lee: The Man behind Marvel. Bob is a cultural historian who has written or edited more than two dozen books on popular culture and American literature, including books about John Updike, The Great Gatsby, and Mad Men. He lives in Oxford, Ohio, and teaches at Miami University.
Find him at BobBatchelor.com, on Facebook, or at the Twitter and Instagram handle @BobPBatchelor.
September 11, 2017 - his week, our time machine travels back to 1840 for a belt of hard cider courtesy of presidential candidate -- William Henry Harrison. A hero in the War of 1812, "Old Tippecanoe" and served in a variety of public offices, before winning the Whig nomination and making a bid for the presidency with Virginia Democrat John Tyler.
In 2017, we expect the atmosphere of a Coney Island summer to surround our campaigns. We demand style and charisma. Well, 1840 is when it all began. The big money, wild rallies, self-promotion, slogans and stagecraft. Pulitzer Prize-nominated reporter Ronald G. Shafer tells this colorful story in his book, The Carnival Campaign: How the Rollicking 1840 Campaign of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" Changed Presidential Elections Forever.
You can check out our guest online at CarnivalCampaign.com or follow @Ron Shafer1 on Twitter.
Thanks to everyone who joined us for an Author's Evening with Eva Stachniak at the Kosciuszko Foundation on Sept. 12, 2017.
September 4, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back to early 20th Century Eastern Europe, where we'll meet ballerina Bronislava Nijinsky. Bronia was a remarkable dancer and woman, who charted a course for greatness despite the upheavals outside and inside her family. The Chosen Maiden blends fiction and fact seamlessly, while including cameos by giants of the period such as prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, Coco Chanel, and Pablo Picasso.
Bronislava Nijinsky was born in the last decade of the Victorian Era, and the inspiration for her brother Valaslav's play which gives the novel its title: The Chosen Maiden.
Our guide on this journey of historical fiction is Eva Stachniak. The Nijinskys inspired her with their lives as Polish dancers in a Tsarist Russia, that gave way to war and revolution. Born in a Poland still behind the Iron Curtain, Eva emigrated to Canada in 1981, and is the bestselling author of The Winter Palace, Empress of the Night, Necessary Lies, and Garden of Venus.
Visit her online at EvaStachniak.com, @EvaStachniak on Twitter, or Facebook.com/EvaStachniakAuthor.
August 28, 2017 - This week, our time machine takes us into Nazi-occupied France, to meet a bold patriot with a famous Uncle Charles. Her name was Genevieve de Gaulle, and she did the hard work of resistance behind enemy lines, that the general urged from exile.
Paige Bowers tells Genevieve's story in The General's Niece: The Little-Known de Gaulle Who Fought to Free Occupied France. It taps a rich historical well of interviews with family members, former associates, prominent historians, and never-before-seen papers written by de Gaulle herself, exploring her relationship as confidante and daughter figure to the legendary French patriot. This week, our time machine takes us into Nazi-occupied France, to meet a bold patriot with a famous Uncle Charles. Her name was Genevieve de Gaulle, and she did the hard work of resistance behind enemy lines, that the general urged from exile.
Paige Bowers tells Genevieve's story in The General's Niece: The Little-Known de Gaulle Who Fought to Free Occupied France. It taps a rich historical well of interviews with family members, former associates, prominent historians, and never-before-seen papers written by de Gaulle herself, exploring her relationship as confidante and daughter figure to the legendary French patriot.
For more on our guest, visit PaigeBowers.com, @PaigeBowers on Twitter, or Facebook.com/PaigeBowersAuthor.
August 21, 2017 - This week, our time machine heads back 100 years, to a time when surging numbers of women were demanding the right to vote. Our guest is Deborah Kops, who has written more than twenty nonfiction books for children and young adults, including her latest for ages 11 to 18. It's Alice Paul and the Fight for Women's Rights: From the Vote to the Equal Rights Amendment.
Alice's name may not spark recognition and appreciation in the minds of today's Americans, but Alice Paul's bravery and dedication -- her willingness to take on policemen, presidents, and even those in her own movement -- make her a person worth remembering, and one that can inspire today's young people.
Visit DeborahKops.com, or follow our guest @DeborahKops on Twitter.
August 14, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back to the Gilded Age and pre-World War Two America, to hear the voices of those who held crowds enthralled. Our guide on this journey is Jeremy C. Young, and his book is, The Age of Charisma: Leaders, Followers, and Emotions in American Society, 1870–1940. In it, Jeremy traces the modern relationship between leaders and supporters, back to a unique group of charismatic social movements prominent in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.
It was the age of magnetism, of dramatic gestures, of Christian revivals led by riveting preachers -- and it laid the groundwork, for today's mass media. Jeremy is Assistant Professor of History at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah. You have seen his editorials in many newspapers including the Chicago Sun-Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Seattle Times.
You can find him at JeremyCYoung.com, at @JeremyCYoung on Twitter, or Facebook.com/TheAgeOfCharisma.
August 7, 2017 - This week, our time machine takes to the skies of Germany as war clouds gather on the horizon, to meet two very different women, united in history by their determination to soar in the brand new -- and male-dominated -- world of human flight.This week, our time machine takes to the skies of Germany as war clouds gather on the horizon, to meet two very different women, united in history by their determination to soar in the brand new -- and male-dominated -- world of human flight. Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg shared talent and courage, but held very different views on the Nazi state -- partly because Melitta had a Jewish grandfather, which led her to support the Valkyrie plot, which very nearly succeeded in killing Hitler. Clare Mulley joins us from the U.K. to introduce The Women Who Flew for Hitler: A True Story of Soaring Ambition and Searing Rivalry. Her previous books are The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb, which won the Daily Mail Biographers’ Club Prize -- and -- The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville. Granville was Britain's first female special agent of the Second World War.
For more on our guest, visit ClareMulley.com, follow @ClareMulley on Twitter, or toss a like to Facebook.com/ClareMulleyAuthor. Special thanks to M.C. Fontaine of The Bletchley Park Podcast for connecting us with this accomplished author.
July 31, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back to the twenty-sixth year of Augustus Caesar's reign, where we'll sit down for countless scrumptious meals. Serving up this unique tale is debut author Crystal King who brings us Feast of Sorrow: A Novel of Ancient Rome. In it we meet infamous gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, credited as author of the oldest cookbook known to exist.
I packed a lot of history into the recipes when I wrote Regional Greek Cooking, so Crystal's idea made my stomach growl when it landed on my plate. Readers seem to agree, with Barnes & Noble naming it one of their 8 Fictional Beach Reads for Foodies.
Crystal has taught writing, creativity and social media at UMass Boston, Boston University, Mass College of Art, and Harvard Extension School. She also teaches classes on social media for authors at Grub Street. Hungry for seconds after Feast of Sorrow? Look forward to her serving up a second novel that's in the oven right now: The Secret Chef, featuring famous Italian Renaissance chef, Bartolomeo Scappi.
Visit CrystalKing.com, follow our guest @CrystalLyn on Twitter, or toss her a like at Facebook.com/CrystalLynKing.
July 24, 2017 - This week, we introduce children to the woman behind the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. The book (for young readers ages 4 to 8) is Maya Lin: Artist-Architect of Light and Lines, by San Francisco children's author Jeanne Walker Harvey. Just how did a college student managed to win the design competition for what's now the most frequently visited monument in the nation's capital?
To answer that question, we called up a pinch hitter to conduct the interview: Thriller author, practicing architect and father of five Tom Grace. You'll recall Tom's chats with best-selling author Gerald Posner on his book God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican and with Hugh Howard on his book Architecture's Odd Couple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson. You can enjoy those interviews in our archives wherever you're listening now, or stream it at those HistoryAuthor.com pages.
Visit our guest at JeanneWalkerHarvey.com or @JeanneWHarvey on Twitter. You can also check out her weekly blog, True Tales & a Cherry on Top, where Jeanne has reviewed over 140 picture-book biographies.
July 17, 2017 - This week, the old-time machine leads a funeral procession, starting at George Washington's crypt at Mount Vernon and ending over 200 years later paying out respects to Gerald R. Ford in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Returning for a second time-travel adventure is Louis Picone, author of: The President is Dead! The Extraordinary Stories of the Presidential Deaths, Final Days, Burials, and Beyond.
We previously caught up with Louis on Presidents Day at the Church of the Presidents in Long Branch, N.J. to talk about his book, Where the Presidents Were Born: The History & Preservation of the Presidential Birthplaces. This time, we met at another gem of presidential Jersey Shore history: The Township of Ocean Historical Museum, which calls itself "an open door to history."
If love walking in the final steps or baby steps of our presidents, be sure to like Louis Picone at Facebook.com/LouisLPicone, where he actively shares his enthusiasm for the men who've served in America's highest office.
July 10, 2017 - This week, infamous bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde carjack our time machine, and take us back to the days of jazz and Prohibition, years before their bullet-riddled fate in 1934. Just who were those two people as individuals, before they melted into an infamous and romanticized duo swaddled in myths? We'll dive into Bonnie Parker's origin story, by riding shotgun with debut novelist Jenni L. Walsh, author of Becoming Bonnie: A Novel, a book that boasts about, quote, "the crash of the century, when Bonnie met Clyde."
We'll get to know Bonnie during her wholesome, hardscrabble upbringing, leading up to the day Clyde enters the picture, and she becomes a gangster's moll. It's a fun, vivid account that adds to the myth of Bonnie, while keeping us grounded in history. The book has gotten such rave reviews by the way, that there's already a sequel in the works: Being Bonnie hits in 2018.
Visit our guest at JenniLWalsh.com or follow her on Twitter at Jenni L Walsh.
July 3, 2017 - This week, our time machine enlists in the U.S. Navy with a trio of my fellow Garden State natives -- brothers Bill, Benny and Barton -- who serve in every corner of the World War Two fight in the Pacific. FDR taps Bill to run his first Map Room. Benny serves as the gunnery and anti-aircraft officer aboard the legendary USS Enterprise, which served in all but two Pacific engagements after Pearl Harbor.
Barton, the youngest, ended up a prisoner of war under cruel, brutal conditions, after the Imperial Japanese overran his post in the Philippines, and the family never learned his true fate. Our guest this week is Bill's daughter, Sally Mott Freeman, who solves the mystery in her debut book, The Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family's Quest to Bring Him Home.
These three brothers are seemingly everywhere in the Pacific fight, from Pearl Harbor all the way through Bill briefing President Harry S. Truman on casualty projections for a U.S. invasion of Japan, solidifying the decision to drop the atomic bombs to bring a swift end to the conflict. Sally Mott Freeman is a former speech writer who's currently Board Chair of The Writer’s Center. You can follow her @MottFreeman on Twitter or toss her a like at Facebook.com/MottFreeman.
Watch our visit to the stern plate of the USS Enterprise, which is preserved next to the public library in River Vale, NJ.
June 26, 2017 - This week, our time machine visits New York City's oldest bar, McSorley's Old Ale House. Our theme song, "New York Ain't New York Anymore," laments the loss of places where "the sawdust is gone from the floor." Well in this East Village landmark, where the clock has literally stopped, and that means still spreading the sawdust every morning -- and that they refused to admit women until a federal court forced them to in 1970 (or build them their own bathroom until 1986).
Founded in 1854 by John McSorley and carried on by his son Bill, this saloon serves only two kinds of ale -- light or dark -- and always by the pair. Our guest this week, author Rafe Bartholomew, grew up in the bar like Old Bill before him. Rafe's father is Geoffrey "Bart" Bartholomew, who has spent half a century behind the taps and had thousands of New York Moments, from serving the New York Rangers ale out of the Stanley Cup in 1994, to bringing U2's Bono down to earth with a curt, "Boner who?"
Rafe's book is titled: Two and Two: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me, and it's as an heir to Joseph Mitchell's famous 1940 piece in the New Yorker: "The Old House at Home." Rafe is also the author of Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball, and was one of the original editors of Grantland. Find Rafe at Rafeboogs on Twitter or RafeBartholomew.com, and check out Bart's works of saloon-inspired verse in The McSorley Poems: Voices from New York City's Oldest Pub, as well as Volume 2: Light or Dark, at TheMcSorleyPoems.net.
June 19, 2017 - This week, our time machine joins up with legendary explorers Lewis and Clark, and traces the clash of cultures between the Europeans and Native American Nez Perce tribe through William Clark's son, Daytime Smoke. Our guide on this journey is David Osborne, who shares his ambitious debut novel, The Coming.
David has five nonfiction books to his credit, and you've seen his work in the Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, Harper's, and many other places popular opinion writing is found. He is also a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, directing the Reinventing America's Schools Project. Find him on Twitter at Osborne David.
June 12, 2017 - This week, we'll visit the turbulent 1960s after President John F. Kennedy's assassination. Once there, we'll witness his younger brother and attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, charting his own political path forward. With his foe LBJ in the White House, and only 38 years old, Bobby no longer has JFK's career to put first, but his own.
Our guide on this journey of discovery is reporter, historian, and television news producer John R. Bohrer, who's here to share his book: The Revolution of Robert Kennedy - From Power to Protest After JFK. You can follow him on Twitter @JRBOH, or visit JohnRBohrer.com.
June 5, 2017 - This day after this episode airs is June 6th, the anniversary of the D-Day landings in 1944. This week, our time machine hits those bloody beaches of Normandy, where we'll meet the oldest man and highest-ranking officer to go ashore with the first wave: General Ted Roosevelt, Jr.
As the oldest son of President Theodore Roosevelt, Ted had the name, the looks, the expectations -- and the pressure that literally gave him headaches as a young man. So how did Ted avoid the pitfalls of that upbringing, to attain success in business, laurels in the First World War, and that crowning moment on D-Day, actions which earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor?
Here to introduce us to the younger Theodore Roosevelt is Tim Brady, author of His Father's Son: The Life of General Ted Roosevelt, Jr. Tim Brady is a Peabody Award-winning writer whose works include Twelve Desperate Miles and A Death in San Pietro. He has written a number of PBS documentaries, and helped develop the series Liberty! The American Revolution. Check out his author pages at Amazon and Penguin Random House.
May 29, 2017 - We're uploading this episode for Memorial Day 2017, to pay tribute to the men and women who gave their lives in service to the United States. Leading us on this trip into the past, is Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, a licensed New York City Sightseeing Guide, United States Marine veteran, and author of World War I New York: A Guide to the City's Enduring Ties to the Great War.
World War I has deep roots in the Empire State, which sent more men to fight than the other stars on the flag. Next-door New Jersey played a big role, as well, including Dean's hometown of Cresskill, which was home to the sprawling Camp Merritt. When those men shipped out, they rode the rail line to Hoboken, a prime embarkation point for the doughboys, leading to General Pershing's slogan that they'd be in "Heaven, Hell or (back home in) Hoboken" by Christmas.
The area remained an important hub for men, prisoners of war, and recruiting throughout the conflict. Following the Armistice in 1918, the city sought to remember those who lost their lives over there, and erected more memorials for this event than any other. To mark the centennial of the fight against the Central Powers, we'll explore the legacy of the War to End All Wars, in 21st Century Gotham.
You can find this week's guest at FitzpatrickAuthor.com, or at K72ndSt on Twitter. His previous books including The Governors Island Explorer’s Guide and The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide.
May 22, 2017 - This week, our time machine visits a small Jersey Shore town with big White House history. The spot is The Church of the Presidents in Long Branch, a spot where seven commanders-in-chief vacationed in the Gilded Age.
They started coming to the beach with the man who crushed the Confederacy, General Ulysses S. Grant, and continued through five of the next six -- Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley. The last man to attend services, also served as New Jersey governor: Thomas Woodrow Wilson.
In the Victorian Era, the sea air was believed to have such rejuvenating powers, that President Garfield was brought to a cottage across from the Church of the Presidents, after being shot by the unhinged Charlie Guiteau. Unfortunately, the cure failed, and Garfield died nearby on September 19, 1881.
Presiding over this week's journey is Jim Foley, president of the Long Branch Historical Museum Association, headquartered at the Church of the Presidents. You can read more about their work to preserve the history of this New Jersey history gem, at ChurchOfThePresidents.org, and keep tabs on their historical events such as their cocktail party fundraiser in August 2017, by liking their Facebook page.
May 15, 2017 - This week, for our 100th interview, our time machine visits some of the most heated fighting -- political and on the battlefield -- during the American Civil War. We'll experience the great conflagration through the eyes of a soldier and his young love, whose father just happens to be a Democratic state senator, who begins to doubt Lincoln's war effort as it drags on year after year.
Letters aren't rare from the American Civil War. But what is rare -- very rare -- is to have both sides of a correspondence preserved. Into this historical void steps today's guest, Gene Barr, who benefited from the chance discovery of love letters from young Jennie Lindsay and her soldier in Union blue, Irish immigrant Josiah Moore. This treasure-trove also included pictures, and gives us a full picture of a romance that adds tremendously to the historical record.
Gene Barr's book is, A Civil War Captain and His Lady: Love, Courtship, and Combat From Fort Donelson through the Vicksburg Campaign. You can find him on Twitter @GeneBarr_55, or at Facebook.com/JosiahAndJennie.
May 8, 2017 - This week, our time machine hoists the Jolly Roger, that notorious black flag with a skull and crossbones that sent shivers down the spine of God-fearing men and woman on the high seas. Shortly after we set sail, we'll meet Massachusetts fisherman Philip Ashton, whose capture and escape from pirates, earned him status as America’s real-life Robinson Crusoe.
We'll also cross swords with Ashton's nemesis, the pirate Edward Low. He's forgotten today, but in the 1720's, Low surpassed even the infamous Blackbeard, capturing more plunder and killing more people -- often after horrifically torturing them first.
Our captain on these treacherous seas is Greg Flemming, author of Boston Globe bestseller, At the Point of a Cutlass: The Pirate Capture, Bold Escape, and Lonely Exile of Philip Ashton. You can get to know him by paying a visit to GregFlemming.com, @Flemming_Greg, or Facebook.com/Point of the Cutlass.
May 1, 2017 - This week, our time machine touches down at the height of the Red Scare, in the Oval Office of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose public stance of ignoring Senator Joseph McCarthy's descent into demagoguery -- refusing even to mention his name -- has long been cited by historians as proof that the old World War Two general just didn't care.
Some even dared call the former Supreme Allied commander, a coward.
After his death, Ike's strategy would be revealed and dubbed "the hidden hand." He felt that to attack McCarthy straight-on would raise his statue within the Republican party and the nation, and ultimately be counterproductive. The book that sets the record straight is Ike and McCarthy: Dwight Eisenhower's Secret Campaign against Joseph McCarthy, by David A. Nichols, a leading expert on the Eisenhower presidency.
You can dig into our guest's other works and thoughts on history, on Twitter @DavidANichols8.
April 24, 2017 - This week's episode airs on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and features debut novelist Barbara Stark-Nemon's ambitious novel, Even in Darkness. Spanning a century and three continents, Barbara tells the story of her real-life great-aunt, Kläre Kohler, from early years in a prosperous German-Jewish family, through an adulthood of love, two World Wars, a concentration camp, and an unconventional life in post-war Germany.
Barbara earned an undergraduate degree in English literature and Art History -- and a Masters in Speech-language Pathology -- from the University of Michigan, which led to a teaching and clinical career. But all along, she's wanted to tell a story -- and readers are fortunate that she did, as evidenced by the stack of awards Even in Darkness has racked up since publication.
You can find our guest at BarbaraStarkNemon.com, @BStarkNemon on Twitter, and Facebook.com/StarkNemon.
April 17, 2017 - This week, our time machine attends the Gilded Age performances of a man who heralded the Borscht Belt, Vaudeville, and paved the way for performers from Mel Brooks to Barbra Streisand and Jerry Seinfeld. He did so by performing Jewish characters -- for the first time -- with dignity, humor, and emotional depth.
Born in 1849, M.B. Curtis gained worldwide fame -- and as an immigrant himself, reached into his own pocket to illuminate the Statue of Liberty when the U.S. government wouldn't foot the bill. Our guide on this journey is Richard Schwartz, author of the previous works Earthquake Exodus, 1906; Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley; The Circle of Stones: An Investigation of the Circle of Stones in Stampede Valley, Sierra County, and, Berkeley 1900.
Visit him at RichardSchwartz.info.
Thanks to singer-songwriter Val Hovik for supplying the original song Liberty Shine off his Listen to Me Now Album. If you dig the tune, pick up the single or the Album on Amazon, visit ValHovik.com.
April 10, 2016 - This week, our time machine visits the era of silent film stars with Laini Giles, author of The It Girl and Me: A Novel of Clara Bow. Even if you've never heard of Clara Bow, you'll stop and take notice the moment you saw her. She had "it," which is something more than sex appeal, more than talent -- an undefinable and mysterious quality that you can't create, borrow, or steal.
But Clara's stardom didn't erase her hardscrabble upbringing in Brooklyn, or ensure her transition to the talking pictures, where she suffered from "mic fright." Nor did it spare our narrator, Daisy DeVoe, from her own wild ride in Claraworld.
Laini Giles previously joined us to chat about her novel, The Forgotten Flapper, the first in her Forgotten Actress series. Catch that interview in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com, or wherever you're listening, and visit Laini on Twitter @4GottenFlapper, or at LainiGiles.com.
April 3, 2017 - This week, our time machine compares some of the Western world's big thinkers. Centuries ago Plutarch, the Father of Biography, wrote Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans to reveal new insights about their careers by making comparisons. Robert Lloyd George applies this method to our time in A Modern Plutarch: Comparisons of the Greatest Western Thinkers, using the United States and United Kingdom, in place of Greece and Rome.
Mr. Lloyd George is the great-grandson of David Lloyd George, who served as Britain's prime minister during the Great War, was the architect of its social welfare system, and led the redrawing of maps after the Armistice. Modern listeners may have seen our guest's extensive writings on global economics across the East-West divide, and may have read his previous books including David and Winston, contrasting his great-grandfather with Churchill.
March 27, 2017 - This week, our time machine goes inside a succession of Nazi Concentration camps, and views them through the great Norwegian statesman, Odd Nansen. Editing Nansen's diaries -- written painstakingly and smuggled out of the camps -- is Timothy J. Boyce, and the resulting book is From Day to Day: One Man's Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps.
As a friend of Norway's royal family and son of a prominent anti-Quisling voice, the Gestapo snatched Odd as a hostage in an effort to keep patriot insurgents in check. If you heard my interview with Neal Bascomb, author of The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s Atomic Bomb, you know that Norway holds a special place in our hearts, especially as it relates to their valiant resistance during the war.
March 20, 2017 - This week, we meet a man born Albrecht Dittrich in East Germany, who infiltrated the U.S. as a KGB agent at the height of the Cold War -- and in the decades since, Barsky's life has taken all the twists and turns you'd expect from a fictional spy thriller. From ardent communist to patriotic American citizen. From unquestioning atheist, to agnostic, to the witnessing Christian he is today.
Jack's book is literally like no other. It's titled, Deep Undercover: My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America. Learn more about his story at JackBarsky.com.
March 13, 2017 - This week, we step into the Tardis, and travel back in time to a United Kingdom facing a rebellion in the late 1600s. The leader of this uprising to seize the crown is Charles II's illegitimate son, James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth. He's the sort of figure we love: One wronged by generations of falsehoods, until a dedicated historian tells the true story.
That author is Dr. Anna Keay, and the book that sets the record straight is The Last Royal Rebel - The Life & Death of James, Duke of Monmouth. Dr. Keay earned her PhD on court ceremonial in the reign of Charles II at the University of London, and is director of the Landmark Trust, a charity that rescues historic buildings and turns them into places for all of us to holiday among the memories of our past.
You can find her at AnnaKeay.co.uk or @AnnaLandmark on Twitter, and plan your next holiday in the past, at the Landmark Trust.
March 6, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back to the earliest days of the United States, to what's sometimes called the Second War of independence: The War of 1812. For the first time in this fight against Great Britain, Congress used the Constitution's power to declare war, and for the last time, the men doing the fighting supplied their own weapons -- an idea that seems incredible today, where the term "militia" itself is given very different connotations than national defense.
Our guest is James N. Gibson, and his book is, A War without Rifles: The 1792 Militia Act and the War of 1812. Mr. Gibson was born into the U.S. space program through his father, and is himself an Aerospace Engineer. His resume features time with such giants in the field as Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, as well as work on the International Space Station and Space Shuttle programs.
His previous books include Nuclear Weapons of the United States: An Illustrated History, and The Navaho Missile Project: The Story of the "Know-How" Missile of American Rocketry. You can learn about these and his other works at JNGibson.com, or follow him on Twitter @JNGibson55. And for more on the War of 1812, catch our interview with John McCavitt and Christopher T. George, co-authors of, The Man Who Captured Washington: Major General Robert Ross and the War of 1812.
February 27, 2017 - This week, our time machine turns Schwinn Sting-Ray bicycle. We're pedaling our way to the end of Black History Month, with a last stop on the basketball courts just off the coast of Massachusetts. Cultural critic and sportswriter Bijan C. Bayne is here to share his latest book: Martha's Vineyard Basketball: How a Resort League Defied Notions of Race and Class.
The island off Cape Cod may not conjure up the sound of a basketball thunking on asphalt, much less the Civil Rights Movement, but Bijan describes the history happening right under the Converse of players from many backgrounds and colors, perched on all rungs of the social ladder, including names as diverse as Charles Lindbergh, James Taylor, Jaleel White, and Barack Obama.
You can find our guest on Twitter at @BijanCBayne or check out his blog by clicking this link. And if you enjoy the topic of basketball history, be sure to check out Bijan's first book: Elgin Baylor - The Man Who Changed Basketball.
February 20, 2017 - This week, we mark Presidents Day by putting some serious years and miles on the old DeLorean, starting with a visit to the Tidewater region of Virginia in the mid 1700's, and ending over 200 years later across the ocean in Hawaii. In between, we'll make a bunch of stops in Ohio, a handful in New York, and others scattered across the nation.
Our guide on this journey is Louis Picone, author of Where the Presidents Were Born: The History & Preservation of the Presidential Birthplaces. From George Washington to Barack Obama, the book shares insights and history of the homes, highways and hospitals of the first 43 men who've served as our commander-in-chief.
Louis and I are both from the Garden State of New Jersey, we decided to meet up at one of the hidden presidential jewels of the Jersey Shore. It's the Church of the Presidents in Long Branch where seven commanders-in-chief worshiped, more than anywhere outside the nation's capital. In a future episode, we'll visit the chapel (now home to the Long Branch Historical Museum Association) to hear more about Presidents Grant, Hayes, Arthur, Harrison, McKinley, Wilson and Garfield -- who passed away right across the street from an assassin's bullet.
We'll also do a follow-up with Louis on his second book The President is Dead! The Extraordinary Stories of the Presidential Deaths, Final Days, Burials, and Beyond. If love walking in the baby steps of our presidents, check out LouisPicone.com, toss a like to Facebook.com/LouisLPicone, and follow this week's historian @LouisPicone on Twitter.
February 13, 2016 - This week's episode falls on the day we observe Lincoln's birthday, so our time machine travels back to the final days of the American Civil War, as Abraham Lincoln turns his weary eyes forward to ending the rebellion and pushing for his vision of a new, reunited United States. The Great Emancipator does so by leaving the White House for his longest break since the war began, and spending them with General Ulysses S Grant's command at City Point -- known today as Hopewell -- 130 miles south of the nation's capital.
Our guide on this trip is Noah Andre Trudeau who brings us, Lincoln’s Greatest Journey: Sixteen Days that Changed a Presidency, March 24 – April 8, 1865. Mr. Trudeau is the author of several books on the Civil war. His first, Bloody Roads South, which won the Civil War Round Table of New York's prestigious Fletcher Pratt Award, and his fourth, Like Men of War -- a combat history of black troops in the Civil War -- earned the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation's Jerry Coffey Memorial Book Prize.
You can browse all his works at Lincoln1865.com.
February 6, 2017 - This week, in honor of Black History Month, our time machine travels back in time to meet a forgotten American hero in the fight for equality -- a hero, with a bicycle. You may never have heard of Marshall "Major" Taylor, but this son of an Indiana Civil War veteran was the most popular athlete in America and heralded throughout the world, back at the height of the Jim Crow era in the early 20th Century.
A devout Christian who never touched alcohol (well, okay, once) and turned down massive sums of money because he refused to race on the Sabbath, Major Taylor inspired Americans of all colors, and laid the groundwork not just for superstar athletes on all fields of play. But more than that, he helped pedal the American republic, towards that more perfect union.
Our guest is Terry Kerber, who along with his brother Conrad co-authored, Major Taylor: The Inspiring Story of a Black Cyclist and the Men Who Helped Him Achieve Worldwide Fame. Check out the Major Taylor Association for more on this inspirational wheelman.
January 30, 2017 - This week, we mark the anniversary of the first Baseball Hall of Fame class on January 29, 1936. In that year, Ty Cobb earned 222 ballots, just four votes short of a unanimous decision, so the date gave us a chance to revisit one of our earliest interviews, and a book we cited often as a journalistic high water mark for history.
Joining us again to chat about the unfairly maligned Georgia Peach, is Charles Leerhsen, author of Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. Mr. Leerhsen scratched the myth of Cobb as a belligerent, dimwitted racist and dirty player, and found he'd been maligned by a hack sportswriter named Al Stump, who smeared a man who was in fact an intellectual, lover of children, and supporter of baseball's integration.
So how have baseball fans embraced the true story in the year and a half since the book's publication? How has Charles Leerhsen fared after literally rewriting history to restore perhaps the greatest player ever to pick up a bat? We'll dig into those questions, and then share the original chat for those of you who missed it.
You can find our guest @CharlesLeerhsen on Twitter and at CharlesLeerhsen.com, or like the book at Facebook.com/TyCobbBook.
January 23, 2017 - This week, our time machine turns on the four-wheel drive, as we hike into Allegheny National Forest, hunting for history. Established in 1923, the forest covers over half a million acres of the northwestern Pennsylvania foothills, and offers us the chance to experience the same sights, sounds and wildlife, as our forebears stretching back to the dawn of civilization.
Joining us with his walking stick is author Robert Hilliard, author of, A Season on the Allegheny. Rob has written on sports, history, and the outdoors for over two decades. He's formerly a contributing editor with Ohio Valley Outdoors magazine, and contributed to the history anthology, Rivers of Destiny.
You can pick up his trail by following him on Twitter @RobHilliard_66, or toss him a like at Facebook.com/ASeasonOnTheAllegheny. You can also read his piece on The Pennsylvania Tuxedo, by Woolrich, "The Original Outdoor Clothing Company." You can also check out the history behind Johnny Cash's song, "As Long as the Grass Shall Go," off his Bitter Tears Album, and how President John F. Kennedy broke a treaty with the Seneca, which dated back to George Washington, to build the Kinzua Dam.
January 16, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back to one of the past's darkest corners, to meet Victor Capesius. Before the war, he was a friendly neighborhood druggist in Romania. But as World War Two progressed, this ethnic German rose from anonymity, to infamy, standing at the side of Dr. Josef Mengele, The Angel of Death.
Patricia Posner brings us the true tale of this Nazi SS officer in, The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story. Together with her husband, Gerald Posner, our guest has authored 12 nonfiction books including Mengele: The Complete Story, Hitler's Children, and most recently, God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power. (Enjoy our interview on that title here.) We also make reference to our chat with Andrew Nagorski about his book, The Nazi Hunters.
You can find our guest online at TrishaPosner.com. Her personal Twitter account is @TrishaPosner, and the one for the book is @AuschwitzPharm1.
January 9, 2017 - This week, our time machine whisks us back the Pan-American Exposition, a Gilded Age world's fair powered by the newly harnessed power of electricity. "The Pan" covered 350 acres near Niagara Falls, and heralded the wonders of the 20th Century. But it also featured lingering stereotypes of a pre-flight world, and the tragic assassination of President William McKinley -- America's most beloved chief executive since Abraham Lincoln.
Our guide to Buffalo in 1901, is Margaret Creighton, professor of history at Maine's Bates College and author of The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City: Spectacle and Assassination at the 1901 World's Fair. You may have enjoyed her previous book, The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg's Forgotten History -- Immigrants, Women, and African Americans in the Civil War's Defining Battle, which was up for the Lincoln Prize.
You can find her online at MargaretCreighton.com or on Twitter at MCreight88. And to explore the exposition from here in the 21st Century, visit PanAm1901.org.
January 2, 2017 - Hello, Happy New Year! This week, our time machine turns tower crane, as best-selling author and historian Hugh Howard introduces us to two men whose vision for building shaped the 20th Century. His book is, Architecture's Odd Couple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson.
Conducting the interview is Thriller author and practicing architect Tom Grace, who previously interviewed Gerald Posner, author of God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican.
Mr. Howard's numerous books include Mr. and Mrs. Madison's War: America's First Couple and the War of 1812; The Painter's Chair: George Washington and the Making of American Art; Thomas Jefferson: Architect; and the classic Houses of the Founding Fathers.
You can find him online at HughHoward.com, and follow him on Twitter @HowardHistorian.
December 21, 2016 - We're uploading our Monday, December 26, 2016, episode a little bit ahead of schedule -- call it an early Christmas gift. Our guest is Peter Lion, who brings us The American St. Nick: A True Story. It's the unique tail of a World War Two G.I., who ended up playing a big role in tiny Luxembourg. In the lull between the Nazi withdrawal and the Battle of the Bulge, Corporal Richard Brookins helped bring to life the idea of his Jewish comrade, Harry Stutz. Cpl. Stutz learned that St. Nicholas Day had been banned during the occupation as un-German, meaning many children of Wiltz had never experienced it. His inspiration grew into a parade like no other, with Cpl. Brookins in the back of a Jeep, leading the procession through town.
Brookins hardly thought about his role as the war dragged on, but the people of Wiltz never forgot, even after their city was destroyed and many of the children killed in Hitler's doomed counter-offensive. The American St. Nick tells the story of how Wiltz tracked down Brookins years later, and informed him that he'd become a legend. At 93-years-old earlier this year, Luxembourg gave him their highest honor, and in the mean time he'd been back to perform his role several times -- and when he's not there, someone from Wiltz is given the honor of filling in. Not just as St. Nick. But as the American St. Nick.
You can catch the PBS documentary on this true tale of Christmas cheer, all through the month of December. It's produced by The World War II Foundation, also under the name The American St. Nick. You can learn more at AmericanStNick.com or by following Peter on Twitter @AmericanStNick.
December 19, 2016 - This week, our time machine swerves Into the Past Lane. Our guest is, Edward T. O'Donnell, host of the Into the Past Lane podcast and author of Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age. You may not know who Henry George is, but his ideas swirled around the campaign for president throughout the recent election, and his approach to solving political and economic problems are timeless.
Ed earned his Ph.D. in American History from Columbia University, and is an Associate Professor of History at Holy Cross College in Worcester, MA. You can follow him on Twitter @InThePastLane, give his show a listen at InThePastLane.com/Podcast, and find him online at EdwardTODonnell.com.
December 12, 2016 - This week, our time machine goes looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike, and finds it at the birthplace of Ben Franklin, the Constitution, and cheesesteaks. We previously visited the City of Brotherly Love for our interview at McGillin's Olde Ale House est. 1860 and Dr. Mütter's Marvels, with side trips to check out the Paoli Battlefield and to meet Simon Cameron, "Lincoln's Scandalous Secretary of War."
Now, Irene Levy Baker joins us with an eye on touring more of Philly's historic sites in her book, 100 Things to Do in Philadelphia Before You Die. And if you purchase your copy through 100ThingsToDoInPhiladelphia.com and mention you heard Irene on The History Author Show, Irene will sign your copy. It makes a great gift!
You can also find Irene @100Philly on Twitter, and Facebook.com/100ThingsToDoInPhiladelphia.
December 5, 2016 - In this episode we meet 103-year-old Lt. Jim Downing, the second-oldest survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack, who will speak at the 75th commemoration in Hawaii on December 7th, 2016. Jim not only witnessed his ship, USS West Virginia, go up in flames on that day of infamy, but he later served in the Korean War, and in 1956 stumbled into the H-Bomb test at Bikini Atoll.
A man of great faith and soon to be the oldest male author in the Guinness Book of World Records, Jim Downing is also a spiritual leader with The Navigators, a worldwide Christian ministry. This unique and inspiring veteran joins us to share his memoir, The Other Side of Infamy: My Journey Through Pearl Harbor and the World of War.
If you enjoy this first-person account of the war, check out our chat with Roger Boas, who's a few years short of 100 and a veteran of George S. Patton's Third Army. He shared many war stories and his struggles to adjust to civilian life in Battle Rattle: A Last Memoir of World War Two.
November 28, 2016 - This week, our time machine touches down during Adolf Hitler's reign in Germany, to answer a big question: How? How did this failed Austrian painter -- a little-noticed corporal in the Great War -- persuade the German people in droves to follow him into the abyss of total war?
The usual answers are charisma and a ruthless stamping out of domestic dissent. But here on the History author show, we always seek out a fuller picture than we get in most history books. Nathan Stoltzfus does just that, challenging the traditional view of the asparagus sucker's rise to power in the book, Hitler's Compromises: Coercion and Consensus in Nazi Germany. Of course, none of this is to soften the image of Hitler as evil or excuse his crimes, but to give us a deeper understanding about how he seduced a nation.
Professor Stoltzfus received his Ph.D. in Modern European history from Harvard in 1993, and is the Dorothy and Jonathan Rintels Professor of Holocaust Studies at Florida State University. His previous books include Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany, and Protest in Hitler's “National Community” -- Popular Unrest and the Nazi Response. You can follow him on Twitter at Nate_Stoltzfus.
For more on Hitler's domestic efforts to implement his will at home, check out our interview with Winston Churchill's great-grandson, Jonathan Sandys, as we chat about his book, God and Churchill: How the Great Leader's Sense of Divine Destiny Changed His Troubled World and Offers Hope for Ours.
November 21, 2016 - The Flushing Remonstrance of 1657, a precursor to our own First Amendment protections of religious liberty. The Spaldeen we discussed in Geoff Griffin's Brooklyn Bat Boy: A Story of the 1947 Season that Changed Baseball Forever. This week, New York Times Urban Affairs Correspondent Sam Roberts puts some serious miles on our Time Machine, and fills its trunk with the everyday objects that defined Gotham since it's earliest, pre-colonial days. Bagels. Subway tokens.
His book is A History of New York in 101 Objects, now in paperback.
And like the city itself, the book is an ongoing conversation. Sam Roberts encourages readers to email him at ObjectsOfNYC@gmail.com to argue for their favorite object, or against something he already included. Who knows? Maybe your object will be among the next 101 that define Greater New York.
You can catch Sam's columns in the paper, follow him @SamRob12 on Twitter, or check out one of his eight previous titles including, Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America.
November 14, 2016 - This week, our time machine may sound like it's taking a sideways journey into the fictional world of Harper Lee's iconic book, To Kill a Mockingbird. We touch down in 1930's Alabama, and find a small town rocked when a black man is charged with raping a white woman. Only one local lawyer dares to defend the accused. That man was Foster Beck, and his son, Joseph Madison Beck, joins us to tell this eerily familiar tale.
Mr. Beck's book is My Father & Atticus Finch: A Lawyer's Fight for Justice in 1930s Alabama. Like his father, Joseph Madison Beck practices law. He also teaches at Emory Law School, and has lectured at universities throughout the United States and abroad. As you'll read, the evidence against Charles White is thin, but can even Foster Beck's heroic defense and an open-minded judge save him from a death sentence? Brighten your day.
November 7, 2016 - This week, we bring you our first book in a graphic format, and our first guest time-traveling with us from France. Marcelino Truong is author and illustrator of Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63. This graphic memoir shows us America's early involvement in the Vietnam War, through the eyes of young Marcelino, the son of a Vietnamese diplomat and his French-born wife -- whose bipolar disorder adds another dimension of conflict to the family’s life.
You can learn about our guest and enjoy more of his work at MarcelinoTruong.com. Note that his website is in French, but, his illustrations speak to everyone regardless of language.
October 31, 2016 - This week, is Halloween, so we're piling into the Munsters Car, cranking up the Dark Shadows music, and talking about two books that would fit neatly Morticia Addams' nightstand. Our guest is genealogist and author Kathleen Shanahan Maca, who brings us Galveston's Broadway Cemeteries, and Ghosts of Galveston.
One of the oldest cities in Texas, Galveston has suffered many tragedies -- hurricanes, yellow fever, fires, and a major Civil War Battle -- and those who didn't survive, started to fill its cemetery, starting in 1839. It's also why people have a lot of fun with ghost stories, and use people's fascination with things that go bump in the night, to preserve their very real history.
You can visit this week's guest at KathleenMaca.com, follow her @AuthorMaca on Twitter, and like her at Facebook.com/AuthorKathleenShanahanMaca -- which you'll certainly want to do if you enjoy old photographs of this great old Texas town on the Gulf Coast.
October 24, 2016 - This week, with an eye on the upcoming U.S. presidential election, our time machine visits the childhood of the 43 bouncing baby boys who've served in the Oval Office -- which, yes, means changing Grover Cleveland's diaper on two, non-consecutive occasions.
Dr. Harold I. Gullan brings us, Cradles of Power: The Mothers and Fathers of the American Presidents. There have been so many great authors writing about first ladies, including Feather S. Foster, who you heard chat with us about her book, Mary Lincoln's Flannel Pajamas: And Other Stories from the First Ladies' Closet. Yet you'll search in vain to find a book about the mothers and fathers of our presidents. This week's guest, fills that space on our bookshelves.
Hal Gullan earned a master's degree in education from St. Joseph's University and a Ph.D. in history from Temple University. He has previously touched on the subject of molding young minds into leaders in his books, First Fathers: The Men Who Inspired Our Presidents, as well as, Faith of Our Mothers. And, with an eye on Election Day 2016, you might also want to check out his title, The Upset That Wasn't: Harry S. Truman and the Crucial Election of 1948.
October 17, 2016 - This week, our time machine travels back to 1965, where we'll meet Jonathan Daniels -- a white seminary student who answered Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s call to help with voter registration in Loundes County, Alabama. After the voting rights marches, Daniels remained to assist civil rights workers -- and gave his life saving black teenager Ruby Sales from a shotgun blast. Today, you can find Dr. Sales at The Spirit House, still working for the cause of civil rights.
Rich Wallace and Sandra Neil Wallace -- like Jonathan Daniels -- live in New Hampshire, where they discovered this local hero's sacrifice through his letters, papers, taped interviews, and stunning photographs -- many, never before shared with the public. The result is the book, Blood Brother: Jonathan Daniels and His Sacrifice for Civil Rights.
You've seen Sandra Neil Wallace's work as a news anchor and ESPN sportscaster. Rich Wallace has written over three dozen novels for children and teens, and co-wrote titles such as Babe Conquers the World with Sandra. The Young Adult Library Services Association named his novel Wrestling Sturbridge, one of the 100 Best of the Best for the Twenty-First Century.
You can find our guests at SandraNeilWallace.com and RichWallaceBooks.com, and on Twitter at SandraNWallace and RWallaceBooks.
October 10, 2016 - This week, our time machine returns to the days of the Revolutionary War, and views it through the eyes of Isabel and Curzon, two of the African-American children held in slavery. Laurie Halse Anderson's trilogy, The Seeds of America, includes the books Chains, Forge, and the just-released blistering conclusion, Ashes.
Laura Halse Anderson is a New York Times-bestselling author who has earned numerous American Library Association and state awards. Not only did she talk about her own writing, but she shared her passion for inspiring young people to love history, and gave advice on how they can get their work published.
Chains was a National Book Award finalists, and also made the Carnegie Medal Shortlist in the U.K. You can enjoy her blogging at MadWomanInTheForest.com, and link up with her on Twitter, Facebook, etc. If you enjoy The Seeds of America Trilogy, you may check out our previous interview with Chris Stevenson on his book, The Drum of Destiny, which views the revolution through an orphaned indentured servant, who dreams of joining the Patriot Army.
October 3, 2016 - This week, our time machine has a familiar face in the passenger seat. It's Paul Kahan, who joined us previously to discuss The Bank War: Andrew Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, and the Fight for American Finance. You can catch that interview at History Author.com or wherever you're listening now, and you enjoy the video we produced illustrating the political and journalistic changes occurring at the time of the Bank War.
Paul joins us again to discuss his latest work, Amiable Scoundrel: Simon Cameron, Lincoln's Scandalous Secretary of War. From abject poverty to undisputed political boss of Pennsylvania -- no easy feat in the notoriously fractious Keystone State -- Simon Cameron served as senator, and ultimately Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of War as the nation tore itself apart over slavery, at the outset of the Civil War.
You can visit this week's guest at PaulKahan.com, or follow him on Twitter @Paul_Kahan, and check out his subject at the The John Harris – Simon Cameron Mansion in Harrisburg, PA.
September 26, 2016 - This week, our time machine spins us back to Boer War in the twilight of the 19th Century, when the republics that preceded today's South Africa fought the British Empire over gold and diamonds. While there, we'll see a familiar face from World War Two forty years later. The name Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill invokes the balding, cigar-chomping, British bulldog who stared down Hitler across the English Channel. So it's easy to forget that he was a soldier once, and young.
Distinguished author Candice Millard introduces us to this Churchill as he puts his foot on the first rung of the ladder to greatness in Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill. Her previous books are best-sellers The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, and Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, covering the man the President James A. Garfield National Historic Site described in our very first episode as, "The greatest president we never had."
Visit CandiceMillard.com and follow this week's guest @Candice_Millard on Twitter.
If you're fascinated by Churchill, catch our interview with Jonathan Sandys, Churchill's great-grandson and the host of Churchill Chat. His book is God & Churchill: How the Great Leader's Sense of Divine Destiny Changed His Troubled World and Offers Hope for Ours. You can also listen to our discussion with Simon Read, author of Winston Churchill Reporting: Adventures of a Young War Correspondent.
September 19, 2016 - This week, our time machine makes a return visit to 1870s, to check back in on Union Pacific Railroad tycoon Dr. Thomas C. Durant, and his children, William and Ella. We first met the Durants when we chatted about Sheila Myers' novel, Imaginary Brightness, as they had their comfortable lives in London shattered by a Gilded Age economic panic.
Book 2, Castles in the Air, finds William Durant as the uneasy head of the diminished family fortune. As he struggles to restore it in New York's Adirondack Mountains, Ella flees to London to pursue her life as a writer -- and to be pursued by a mysterious French count (or at least he says he's a count).
If you'd like to meet the Durants, you can pick up Castles in the Air for 2.99¢ on Kindle.
You can follow Sheila Myers on Twitter @SheilaMMyers, or visit her at WWDurantStory.com.
September 12, 2016 - It's important to actually walk the earth where a given historical event occurred. This week, we'll do just that at the Paoli Battlefield Historical Park & Paoli Memorial Grounds, just under an hour west of Philadelphia. Our guide is Jim Christ, vice president of the Paoli Battlefield Preservation Fund.
The Battle of Paoli, also called "The Paoli Massacre," unfolded at midnight on September 20 to 21, 1777. After General George Washington's defeat at Brandywine on September 11th, his forces retreated toward Philadelphia to regroup, and he ordered General Anthony Wayne to harass the British. But the attempt failed, and the result was the 9th deadliest battle in the American Revolutionary War.
You can surf this unique historic destination on the web at PBPFinc.org, or by following @PaoliBattle on Twitter. You can also like the Paoli Battlefield Historical Park's page on Facebook.
September 5, 2016 - This week, our time machine turns team bus, as we head back not so far into history, to the late '80s and early '90s, when your humble host was on the football field -- at least at pregame and halftime -- for the Cresskill High School marching band, and as a member of Rutgers University's Marching Scarlet Knights: The Pride of New Jersey.
Rutgers won the very first football game in 1869, but as you know from my chat with John J. Miller, author of The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football -- that game much more closely resembled rugby, with no quarterback or receivers, so therefore no passing. How did we get from that first game to the kickoff of the 2016 regular season, the Sunday after we're uploading this episode?
Well, meet Coaches Hal Mumme and Mike Leach, whose innovations transformed the aerial attack from an intermittent feature of football games, to its primary focus. Our guest is New York Times best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist S.C. Gwynne, author of, The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football. You may have caught his previous book, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson, or read Empire of the Summer Moon, which recounts the rise and fall of the Comanche.
You can find him online at SCGwynne.com, or by following @SCGwynne on Twitter.
August 29, 2016 - In this episode, our time machine sets sail in the aftermath of World War Two, on a mission to feed the hungry that endures to this day, through Heifer International -- those folks who help you give the gift of livestock. It's a storybook for kids called The Seagoing Cowboy, and it tells the story of the ships that once carried weapons and soldiers, turning to humanitarian cargo: Livestock, farmers, teachers and others, who answered the call to rebuild the devastation.
Our guest is author Peggy Reiff Miller, the granddaughter of one such cowboy, 7,000 men from the ages of 16 to 72 who pitched in under the auspices of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. The Seagoing Cowboy is illustrated by Claire Ewart, and available exclusively through Brethren Press.
You can join the effort to carry on the cowboy's work, at Heifer International by visiting Heifer.org, and learn more about this story, at SeagoingCowboys.com.
Aug 22, 2016 - For this episode, our time machine takes us back to the aftermath of the First World War, where we'll visit a defeated member of the Central Powers that targets ethnic minorities for wholesale slaughter. It's not Nazi Germany, but Ottoman Turkey -- in the final chapter of their genocide against Greeks, Armenians and other Christians, that the nation denies to this day.
Our guest, Lou Ureneck, is a professor at Boston University, and author of Smyrna, September 1922 - The American Mission to Rescue Victims of the 20th Century's First Genocide. His book was published in hardcover as The Great Fire, a fitting title since the term Holocaust itself comes from the Greek words for "whole" and "burned." The cosmopolitan, diverse city of Smyrna is long gone, and Turkey's Izmir built on its ashes. This is the story of how two men -- a low-level YMCA minister and a U.S. Navy officer, bucked the American government and a tide of indifference or outright hatred, to save over a million ethnic Greeks from certain death.
You can learn more about this tale of cruelty and heroism, by visiting SmyrnaFire.com, Facebook.com/LouUreneckAuthor, or following at @LouisUreneck on Twitter. On a personal note, both James and Argyro Karayanis, Dean's grandparents, hailed from this area of Asia Minor, and had their families wiped out by the Islamic Turks, who saw the native inhabitants of Anatolia and others like the Pontian Greeks and Assyrians, as infidels to be treated like -- as Mr. Ureneck describes it -- African-Americans in the Jim Crow South.
Visit the Greek Genocide Resource Center at Greek-Genocide.net for more on this atrocity, and check out the St. Photios Greek Orthodox Shrine in St. Augustine, Florida, founded by Greeks who migrated from Ottoman-occupied Greece in 1768 and founded the New World's first Orthodox Christian settlement: New Smyrna.
We leaned heavily on the genealogy work of Catherine Karayanis in this episode, to piece together the Karayanis Family Tree -- considered an impossible task for most who assume everything as "burned by the Turks." Hellenic listeners in particular may want to check out what's possible thanks to modern DNA technology and resources like Ancestry.com.
And, as a thank you for listening, Cathy and Dean share a favorite recipe from their book, Regional Greek Cooking. It's "Soutsoukakia Smyrnaki," or little sausages (more like meatballs) in the style of Smyrna. The city may be gone, but the history lives on in kitchens and homes all across the globe -- and with the quarter of modern Greeks who chase their roots to "The Catastrophy."
August 15, 2016 - This week, we follow the journey of the men and women who -- in the aftermath of World War Two in Europe -- dedicated themselves to visiting justice upon Hitler's Henchmen. Veteran author and foreign correspondent Andrew Nagorski brings us these stories in The Nazi Hunters, stripping away the myths and caricatures of popular fiction. The book is also an implicit call to action, breathing life into the phrase "Never Again," as the last cogs of the National Socialist Party's bloody legacy, rust away.
You can read his latest articles at AndrewNagorski.com, and check out his previous books. Those include the companion to today's title, Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power. You can also follow our guest on Twitter @AndrewNagorski, or like his Facebook page.
We also mention the documentary film, Hitler's Children, which you can check for a look into the legacy of those descended from the Third Reich's war criminals.
August 8, 2016 - This week, our time machine whisks us back to meet the great master, Michelangelo: Sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer. He was also the original brooding artist, who for the first time connected the artist to the work, a link we consider essential today.
Our guide is Miles J. Unger, here to explore what the great artist is whispering to us across the centuries with his new book, Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces. The title calls this great master down from his Renaissance perch on the scaffold and brings him to a more human level, so we can better understand his genius through: the Pietà, the Last Judgment, the David, the Medici tombs, the story of Creation on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and the soaring dome and vaults of St. Peter's Basilica.
Miles J. Unger currently writes for the Economist, and lived in Florence for five years, deepening his knowledge of Italian culture and language. He also served as Managing Editor of Art New England, and has published in numerous other places including the New York Times. You can learn more about him at Miles J. Unger.com -- that's Miles, the letter J, Unger Dot Com -- or by tossing a like to his Facebook.
August 5, 2016 – Today, we’re going to hear from author, journalist and producer Denise Kiernan. Her latest book is, The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II. Kiernan is the author of several history books, including Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence, and Signing Their Rights Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the United States Constitution.
You can follow today's History in 5 Friday author on Twitter @DeniseKiernan, and visit her online at DeniseKiernan.com, or GirlsofAtomicCity.com.
To meet the British counterparts to the Girls of Atomic City -- the code breaking WRENS who cracked the riddle of Hitler's Enigma machine -- visit Bletchley Park Trust online, and subscribe to the Bletchley Park Podcast on iTunes or Audioboom.
And remember to subscribe to the History Author Show on iTunes, like our iHeartRadio page, or make us appointment listening on your Android device, so you don’t miss an installment of History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
August 3, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly. For almost a year now, we've brought you ancient wisdom for modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee. But today -- the History Author Show's 1st Anniversary, August 3, 2016 -- represents our last midweek installment.
While Van Bryan will lend his voice to future episodes, he's focusing on all the great new content at ClassicalWisdom.com. To keep up to date on the changes there, remember to sign up for their newsletter right here. (Which will also earn you some free gifts!) We want to thank Van for all his contributions, and for giving us the greatest gift of all: The gift of the great ancient thinkers.
Since you no doubt will be negative on losing this midweek dose of wisdom, we figured it was appropriate to make this swansong show about...hate. What is it? Who do we hate? And why? In a modern context, we assume hate to be similar to prejudice. We are all familiar with “hate crimes” and “hate speech”. Aristotle, however, takes something of a contrary view. Hate, he says, can sometimes be quite virtuous.
August 1, 2016 - In this episode, our time machine takes us out to the ballgame, where we'll root, root, root for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The year is 1947, and Dem Bums just signed Jackie Robinson, the first African-American player in Major League History.
Sitting next to us in the 50¢ grandstand seats, is Geoff Griffin, author of the children's book, Brooklyn Bat Boy: A Story of the 1947 Season that Changed Baseball Forever. In it, young readers will witness the challenges Robinson faced through the eyes of 12-year-old Bobby Kelly -- the bat boy in the title.
For more, visit BrooklynBatBoyDot.com, Facebook.com/BrooklynBatBoy, @BrooklynBatBoy on Twitter and Instagram.
July 29, 2016 - Today we’re going to hear from popular historian and frequent TV news guest, Doris Kearns Goodwin. Her latest book is, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. She previously touched on the extended Roosevelt family twenty years ago, writing No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front During World War II, for which she was awarded the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for History.
The New York Times, Washington Post, Economist, Time, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, and others named The Bully Pulpit as One of the Best Books of the Year, and the Associated Press said it's "a tale so gripping that one questions the need for fiction when real life is so plump with drama and intrigue."
Remember to subscribe to the History Author Show on iTunes, like our iHeartRadio page, or make us appointment listening on your Android device, so you don’t miss an installment of History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
July 27, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly- bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
The subject of death has been a source of fascination, and unease, for philosophers and religious seekers for centuries. How exactly should we feel about our deaths? Should it be a source of concern? Should we fear it?
If you were to ask the ancient Roman, Lucretius, his answer would probably be a resounding… “eh”.
Death, Lucretius says, does not concern us. Today we find out why.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
July 25, 1016 - This week, Hildegarde Mahoney shares her memoir, Journey Interrupted: A Family Without a Country in a World at War. In 1941, seven-year-old Hillie and her family left home in New York City and set off for their native Germany. They planned to take the safe and scenic route: Across the U.S., the Pacific, and Eurasia via the Trans-Siberian Railway.
But then Hitler betrayed his alliance with Stalin, the family found themselves stranded in Yokohama, Japan -- and when the empire attacked Pearl Harbor, there was no going back.
Today, Hildegarde Mahoney has worn many hats in her life -- and one crown. She was Miss Rheingold, 1956. Today, she is the chairman of the Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute. You can sign up for their free, quarterly newsletter right here, and be on the cutting edge of brain science when you or someone you love is impacted. As Mrs. Mahoney says, "No family goes untouched."
July 22, 2016 - It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster — kicking off your modern weekend, with people from the past. Today, we meet lifelong Shakespeare fan, industrialist Henry Clay Folger, who founded the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. to serve as the leading western research and education center on the famous playwright.
We have a familiar passenger in our time machine: James Shapiro, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He’s the author of Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare, and The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. You can hear our interview (recorded in the shadow of Shakespeare’s Central Park statue), wherever you enjoy our show.
History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly- bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Have you ever wondered just how all those ancient Roman buildings are still standing even after thousands of years of wars, earthquakes, erosion, and encroaching modernity? Well, the secret to the durability of ancient Roman architecture is now out, and you won’t believe the findings.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
July 18, 2016 - This week, we strapping our time machine to a canal boat, and sail down the modern marvel of early American commerce: The Erie Canal. The 360-mile slash between Lake Erie to Albany, and down the Hudson River to New York Harbor isn't just one of engineers and back-breaking, dangerous manual labor, but of fascinating human drama and America itself. The book is Heaven's Ditch: God, Gold, and Murder on the Erie Canal. By the time the canal opened 1825, the nation had fallen in love with this man-made waterway. Now, you can fall in love with it, too, thanks to Jack Kelly -- journalist, novelist, and New York Foundation for the Arts fellow. His previous books include Band of Giants, which earned the Daughters of the American Revolution's History Award Medal. You can see him everywhere from the Wall Street Journal to the History Channel, or by clicking over to HeavensDitch.com.
July 15, 2016 - It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster. Check them out at Facebook.com/HistoryInFive.
Today, author Timothy H. Breen hits the road to trace the route of our first president. His book is George Washington’s Journey: The President Forges a New Nation. Aware of the fragile and fractured nature of the new republic after independence, Washington resolves — in a day without maps or roads worthy of the name — to take the federal government to the people. And he stays not in the finest homes, but simple inns.
You can enjoy the interview on George Washington's Journey whenever you enjoy our show, or stream it at HistoryAuthor.com. Mr. Breen can be found on Twitter @TimothyHBreen.
History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
July 13, 2016 - Classical Wisdom Weekly -- bringing you ancient wisdom for modern minds -- joins us for this special episode.
Van Bryan, Associate Editor of CWW, sits down with David Beardsley, author of The Journey Back To Where You Are: Homer’s Odyssey as a Spiritual Quest. It’s a unique book that seeks to reclaim the allegorical power of Homer’s masterpiece that was so important to the Classical Age.
July 11, 2016 - Today, we travel back in time to World War Two, and hear from a veteran who served on the front lines. Our guest is Roger Boas, and his book is Battle Rattle: A Last Memoir of World War II. It focuses not only on the fighting, but the scars it left on the inside.
Roger Boas was born in San Francisco, 1921, so he's just five years from celebrating his centennial. That long life -- denied so many of his generation -- has given him time to reflect on the meaning of his four years in uniform, including eleven months fighting in Europe as a field artillery forward observer with Gen. George S. Patton's Fourth Armored Division.
For his service, Roger Boas earned both a Silver Star and a Bronze Star. And raised a Christian Scientist but of Jewish ancestry, he was among the first American soldiers to find and enter a Nazi concentration camp. Experiencing so much brutality left scars on the young Roger Boas. The result, is what we today call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). But in the Second World War they called it, "battle rattle."
For more of Roger Boas discussing his experiences, visit BattleRattleMemoir.com. You can also follow @BattleRattleMem on Twitter, and like Facebook.com/BattleRattleMemoir.
Update: Lt. Roger Boas passed away a few months after our interview at the age of 95. It was an honor to meet him, and to play a small role in sharing his story. He is home at last, with no more nightmares of the war's horrors, which plagued him up to the end of his long life. Rest in peace, sir.
July 8, 2016 - On Monday, July 11, 2016, we'll commemorate the tragic death of one Founding Father -- Alexander Hamilton -- at the hands of another, Vice President Aaron Burr. With "Hamilton: An American Musical" racking up Tonys on Broadway, the face on the $10 bill is more popular than he has been in 200 years. But in this episode, David O. Stewart introduces us to the man who pulled the trigger.
Mr. Stewart is president of the Washington Independent Review of Books and author of American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America. And since we are looking ahead to the 212th anniversary of the Burr-Hamilton Duel, those of us in the Greater New York City area won't want to miss the annual gathering at the Hamilton Memorial overlooking the Weehawken Dueling Grounds in New Jersey, just across the Hudson from Manhattan.
The Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society (AHA!) will commemorate the event at 6PM, with the theme of Celebrating the New Generation of U.S. Currency. Douglas Hamilton, 5th great-grandson of Alexander, will speak at the Hamilton Memorial Bust, a year after his successful call to preserve Alexander's place of honor on the $10 bill.
If you can't get enough of our charismatic first Treasury Secretary, enjoy our previous interview with Stephen F. Knott, co-author with Tony Williams of Washington & Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America. You can also find the man of the hour in our previous chat with David O. Stewart about Madison's Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America. We also sat down with Daniel L. Mallock on his book, Agony and Eloquence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and a World of Revolution. And if you're still hungry for more, visit the Old '76 House with us in Tappan, New York, the oldest bar and restaurant in the U.S. where Alexander Hamilton lived upstairs and Benedict Arnold's British conspirator was held before his execution.
We also shared history news of our own: Amanda has earned a James Madison Memorial Fellowship. The scholarship that will enable her to complete a master's degree in history with a focus on Constitutional studies. She's also been noodling with producing a film series on visiting the key year of 1787. You can book your ticket at Facebook.com/PastimeSeries, and visit the period in print through David O. Stewart's: The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution.
Hamilton was so much more than the man who "wound up on the wrong end of a gun," as the Allman Brothers Band sang it, and Aaron Burr was so much more than man who pulled the trigger. Thanks to David O. Stewart for joining to paint the full picture of the man who would be American Emperor.
July 4, 2016 - On this Independence Day, our time machine takes us out to the ball game, on a July 4th neither side of the Revolutionary War could possibly have envisioned during the conflict. The place is Chelsea, England. The time: The Great War. The book is titled, Nine Innings for the King: The Day Wartime London Stopped for Baseball, July 4, 1918.
We've chatted previously with today's author, Jim Leeke, about his Civil War novel for young adults: Matty Boy. Jim is a contributor to the Society for American Baseball Research Baseball (SABR) Biography Project, the writer or editor of several books on U.S. and military history, and the creative director of Taillight Communications.
We'll also be hearing about the Anglo-American Baseball Project. It's an ambitious plan to recreate the King's Game for its centennial: July 4, 2018. Pitch in to help at AABaseball.org, or by following Jim @9Innings4King on Twitter. For more on baseball players in the Great War, enjoy our interview with Charles Leerhsen, author of the award-winning, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. Cobb -- the victim of malicious slander falsely depicting him as a selfish, belligerent racist -- not only signed up to serve his country, he enlisted in the dangerous chemical warfare unit rather than a cushy behind-the-lines job.
In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, the special relationship between the United States and Britain as trading partners will have real-world impacts on millions of people around the globe. In a small, early way, the King's Game started us off then, to where we stand now, shoulder to shoulder in good times and bad, with George Washington honored with a statue in London, gazing straight at the Parliament against which he rebelled.
July 1, 2016 - It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster. Check them out at Facebook.com/HistoryInFive.
Today, author Stephen Coss discusses the first disease mankind wiped off the face of the earth: The scourge of Smallpox. Stephen’s debut book is The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic that Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics. In it, we meet historical figures including the young Franklin laboring at his brother’s newspaper, and the Reverend Cotton Mather, seeking redemption from the debacle Salem Witch Trials by evangelizing for the scientific technique of inoculation against strenuous opposition.
You can enjoy our full interview on The Fever of 1721 whenever you enjoy our show, or stream it at HistoryAuthor.com. Today's guest can be found @Coss1Coss on Twitter, or visit him at StephenCoss.com.
History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
June 29, 2016 – It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Palmyra is an ancient city in the Syrian desert, about 100 miles north of Damascus, which was snatched up by ISIS in late 2015. On this episode, we look at the history of Palmyra. Palmyra was, in the words of the historian Edward Gibbon, “… a cultivated spot in the barren desert of Arabia that rose like an island out of the sandy ocean.”
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
June 27, 2016 - Today, we jump through the Guardian of Forever and into New York City during the American Revolution -- just in time for Independence Day 2016. Once there, we meet twelve-year-old Gabriel Cooper, an orphaned patriot who sets out to join the Continental Army.
Our guest is Chris Stevenson, and his book is The Drum of Destiny, historical fiction for readers 9-12 years of age. You can find a teacher's guide at ChrisStevensonAuthor.com, and also on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Chris also hosts a blog that focuses on the Revolution and Colonial period. You can also get the Teaching Guide at Chris's website.
June 24, 2016 – It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster — check them out at Facebook.com/HistoryInFive.
Today’s guest — journalist and political aide Sidney Blumenthal — casts a look back at the marriage of the Great Emancipator, and the woman who stood at his side. Through sickness, breakdowns, the Civil War, and loss, how did this couple endure?
Blumenthal is the author of the book, A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1849.
Simon & Schuster’s History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend…with people, from the past.
June 22, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Let me ask you something. Are you happy? Do you feel happy? Is there a difference? Today we discuss some classical wisdom that gives us a rather unusual take on human happiness. You see, at least according to the Athenian Solon, nobody is happy until they die!
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
June 17, 2016 - It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster.
Today, author Clint Hill shares his eyewitness accounts and recollections during his time on the Secret Service detail of our commanders-in-chief. The book is titled, Five Presidents My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. Mr. Hill previously joined us to discuss his time as the Secret Service agent assigned to protect Mrs. Kennedy on the day JFK was shot. He's the man seen leaping onto the back of the car after the fatal shots rang out in Dealey Plaza.
He tells that story in his previous book, Five Days in November, a follow-up on his previous recollections in the #1 New York Times best-seller, Mrs. Kennedy and Me. You can follow today's guest on Twitter @ClintHill_SS or check out ClintHillSecretService.com.
History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
June 15, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
What’s Greek for realpolitik? The best answer might be “Thucydides”. The man who has been given the title “Father of Political Realism” saw the greatest war of the classical age as a foregone conclusion, and endless cycle of violence and destruction.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
June 20, 2016 - Our Monday, June 20th interview is with award-winning author Neal Bascomb. We're airing our conversation a few days early because his book -- The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb -- is a perfect gift for Father's Day.
If you think the book might be right for Dad, History Author Show listeners can enjoy a free sample chapter of The Winter Fortress right here. Meet the Norwegian patriots -- from schoolteachers to plumbers -- who dared defy the Nazis, and endured starvation and harsh winter conditions, to deny Hitler the power to rain nuclear fire on London, New York, and other Allied cities.
Our thanks to author Jay Atkinson for pointing The Winter Fortress our way. You can listen to our interview with Jay on his book, Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston’s Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America.
You can follow today's guest on Twitter @NealBascomb, like him at Facebook.com/NealRBascomb, and pay him a visit at NealBascomb.com. So put on your winter camouflage suits, wax up your skis, let's head back to Nazi-occupied Norway and assault, The Winter Fortress...
June 13, 2016 - Today, we're spinning back in time to the days when America tore itself apart: The Civil War. But we'll be talking about a different sort of union, exploring the bond between the men who led the northern armies, and the women by their sides in Lincoln's Generals' Wives: Four Women Who Influenced the Civil War -- for Better and for Worse.
With 70,000 books on the war produced since its end, it's incredible that Candice Shy Hooper is the first author to map the wartime travels of Julia Grant, Nelly McClellan, Jessie Fremont, and Ellen Sherman.
But to borrow the chapter title from today's book: "The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong." Candice is just the person to give us the full picture of these engaging figures, and how they interacted with their powerful husbands and Abraham Lincoln as president. You can learn more at CandiceShyHooper.com.
June 10, 2016 - It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster. Check them out at Facebook.com/HistoryInFive.
Today, award-winning journalist and author Andrew Nagorski casts a fresh look back at the great evil of Nazi Germany, in his critically acclaimed Hitlerland, and now on shelves: The Nazi Hunters. How do we deal with the legacy of everyday Germans, who turned to monstrous acts? What do we owe to the World War Two generation and Holocaust survivors as they pass away? And what were the conflicts in vision among those who hunted Nazi war criminals themselves as they conducted their searches?
You can follow today’s author on Twitter @AndrewNagorski or visit him at AndrewNagorski.com.
History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
June 8, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
It’s the trial of the century, perhaps the millennium! Socrates is on trial for his life. His accusers would seem him dead, but the father of Western philosophy won’t go down without a fight.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
June 6, 2016 - Today, our time machine heads back to our show's past, serving up a special, all-new paperback interview with a familiar voice. Back in August of 2015, we kicked off the show with the words, "Three mules, two brothers, and a Jack Russell terrier named Olive Oyl." Our guest was Rinker Buck, and his book -- The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey -- recounted the trek he made with his brother Nick in a covered wagon, two thousand miles from Missouri to the great American Northwest.
In the months since hitting shelves, The Oregon Trail has wended its way up the New York Times best-seller list to #1, and Amazon.com named it the best non-fiction book of 2015. When completing the first mule-powered crossing of this legendary pioneer trail in over a century, Rinker met a lot of people -- and he met them, in a new light, after they'd had a chance to see the enthusiastic response to how he shared their story.
With the paperback edition of The Oregon Trail appearing in bookstores June 7, 2016, we thought, why not bring Rinker back to hear about his experiences on the tour following publication. After all, he only set out to write a book. But his pen sparked a national phenomenon, which you can share by visiting Facebook.com/RinkerBuck.
Other books discussed on this episode include: Flight of Passage, by Rinker Buck. The Road from Coorain, by Jill Ker Conway. A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, by Norman Maclean. Young Men and Fire, by Norman Maclean. Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt. America Revised, by Francis FitzGerald. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen. Also, we mentioned William L. Shirer's five books on Nazi Germany.
Jun 3, 2016 - It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster -- check them out at Facebook.com/HistoryInFive. `
This coming Sunday, June 5th, America will mark the anniversary of Ronald Reagan's death in 2004 at the age of 93. Rick Perlstein -- best-selling author of Nixonland -- looks at how the destruction of the Watergate scandal shook America to its foundations, and seemed to create a new paradigm of a smaller America -- only to see the Reagan Revolution's Morning in America dawn a short six years later, following Nixon's resignation, Gerald Ford's pardon, and Jimmy Carter's malaise.
The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan traces how the 37th president and the 40th, are connected by history. You can learn more about today's author at RickPerlstein.com, or by following @RickPerlstein on Twitter.
Simon & Schuster’s History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend…with people, from the past.
June 1, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
You might be familiar with the Trojan war and how the Trojan Horse swiftly put an end to the city of Troy. But what you might not know is what happened next. The Roman poet Virgil, picks up where Homer leaves off. And as we will see, he might not have had the purest intentions when putting pen to parchment to craft the epic, The Aeneid.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
May 30, 2016 - In this episode, we're going to cast our eyes back at how we memorialize those we lose in wars, tragedies, terrorist attacks and public outrages. It's a delicate topic, but we owe it to people who've lost their lives to get it right.
Our guest is Harriet F. Senie, author of Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11. Professor Senie is Director of the M.A. Program in Art History and Art Museum Studies at City College of New York, as well as a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of several books and articles on public art, and co-founder of the international Public Art Dialogue organization, where she serves as co-editor of its journal: Public Art Dialogue.
Also discussed in this episode was A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.
May 27, 2016 - It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster -- check them out at Facebook.com/HistoryInFive.
While it’s no secret that Abraham Lincoln didn’t have an idyllic childhood, today’s guest -- journalist and political aide Sidney Blumenthal -- noticed something in particular about young Lincoln’s experience that might have impacted the way he perceived and spoke about slavery.
Blumenthal is the author of the book, A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1849.
Simon & Schuster’s History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend…with people, from the past.
May 25, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
We might take for granted our civil liberties. Those of us living in the modern age might think that the political freedoms that we enjoy are the norm, but history buffs know that this was not always the case. When we talk about political liberty (at least in the Western, European tradition) we often think of the age of enlightenment. However, before Lock or Voltaire, the ancients were crafting, dare we say inventing, the earliest forms of political freedoms.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
May 23, 2016 - Lynn Sherr's book is titled: Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space. It includes unique insights from her friendship with the astronaut, tennis player, astrophysicist, children's book author, and genuine American legend, as well as exclusives from Dr. Ride's family, partner, and countless friends and colleagues. You can enjoy more from our guest @LynnSherr on Twitter, or Facebook.com/SallyRideBio.
And although Dr. Ride passed away in 2012, her mission to inspire young people in science, technology, engineering, and math -- and to promote STEM literacy -- endures at Sally Ride Science at UC San Diego. You can visit them at SallyRideScience.com, or follow them @SallyRideSci.
May 20, 2016 – It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster.
Today, journalist Lynn Sherr turns our time machine into a rocket ship to shatter the glass ceiling. Her new book is Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space. You can enjoy our full interview here. It's the remarkable story of humanity's first baby steps beyond earth with Sputnik, to the Space Shuttle and I.S.S. You can follow today's author on Twitter @LynnSherr.
Triumph, tragedy, and the right stuff. It's all up there in the stars.
History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
May 18, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Aristotle, Plato, the Greek drachma in 600 BC -- and spending sprees from Persia to Cathrage to Italy. How did the ancient world mint coins? What value did they put on their currency, and how did they confront the challenges of monetary policy?
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
May 16, 2016 - Our time machine drops us off in December 1892, during the planning for Chicago's Columbian Exposition -- a forerunner of the 20th Century world's fairs -- with the perfect story for the boardwalks and carnivals of Summer 2016.
At the ticket booth is Betsy Harvey Kraft, and she's sharing The Fantastic Ferris Wheel: The Story of Inventor George Ferris. You may have seen her several other nonfiction books for young readers, including Theodore Roosevelt: Champion of the American Spirit.
The Fantastic Ferris Wheel is a book aimed at children ages 5 to 9, but it's fun -- as the saying goes -- for children of all ages. And it's beautifully illustrated by Steven Salerno. You can see some of the over 20 books he's brought to life at StevenSalerno.com.
It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster.
Our guest is Douglas C. Waller, sharing some insight on several CIA Directors who had previously worked for William “Wild Bill” Donovan’s spy agency, Office of Strategic Services. Waller’s books related to this subject are Disciples: The World War II Missions of the CIA Directors Who Fought For Wild Bill Donovan and the New York Times bestselling biography Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created OSS and Modern American Espionage. Waller is a former correspondent for TIME Magazine, and you can keep up with his work at DouglasCWaller.com, and Facebook.com/DouglasWallerAuthor.
Simon & Schuster’s History in Five Friday.
It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend…with people, from the past.
May 11, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Lions, tigers, and bears- these are a few of the animals you might use to describe the devotion this one classical mother felt for her children. Clytemnestra is a controversial figure in the classical landscape. Was she an avenging mother? Or is it possible she is a crazed murderer?
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
May 9, 2016 - In this episode, our time machine door opens into the wardrobe of our First Ladies, that Narnia of fashion that trends back to the very first days of our republic, when the role of the president's wife had -- like the role of the president himself -- yet to be defined.
Our valet is Feather Schwartz Foster, a presidential historian who focuses on our First Ladies from Martha Washington to Mamie Eisenhower. She's here to share fun and little known stories from her new book: Mary Lincoln's Flannel Pajamas: And Other Stories from the First Ladies' Closet. You can find her @FeatherSFoster on Twitter, or at FeatherFoster.com, where you can sample a free chapter from today's book.
Also discussed in today's episode, a sneak peek at our summertime read: Remarkable Women of the New Jersey Shore: Clam Shuckers, Social Reformers and Summer Sojourners.
May 6, 2016 - It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster.
Our guest is Edward Brooke-Hitching, and his book is the quirky Fox Tossing, Octopus Wrestling and Other Forgotten Sports. From Flagpole Sitting (can't imagine why it ever fell out of fashion) to Hot Cockles, time-travel through the most curious, dangerous and downright bizarre sports and pastimes that mankind has ever devised, tried, and realized were quietly best forgotten.
The son of an antiquarian book dealer, Edward Brooke-Hitching became an award-winning documentary director making films that examine the eccentric side of British life. For more, visit EdwardBrookeHitching.com, or follow @FoxTosser on Twitter.
Simon & Schuster’s History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend…with people from the past.
May 4, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today we are looking at ancient athletics. They were a cultural staple, but athletics might also have been responsible for handing down a comprehensive timeline of the classical world to us here in the modern age.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
May 2, 2016 - In this episode, our time machine touches down during the months after Pearl Harbor, as Hitler's U-boats bring the Second World War to the Gulf of Mexico. On board the doomed steam merchant ship Heredia, we'll bear witness to disaster with the Downs family, through the eyes of eight-year-old Sonny.
We'll also meet the commanders of two U-Boats, dispatched by Germany's Admiral Dönitz, and see how they combine their duty to the Reich with offering mercy to survivors of their attacks. Our steward on this journey is Michael J. Tougias, co-author with Alison O'Leary of the book: So Close to Home - A True Story of an American Family's Fight for Survival During World War II.
Mr. Tougias is the New York Times bestselling author and co-author of two dozen books, including The Finest Hours, which served as basis for the Disney movie out in January 2016. He's also given us Fatal Forecast. Overboard. King Philip's War, Rescue of the Bounty, and There's A Porcupine In My Outhouse: The Vermont Misadventures of a Mountain Man Wannabe. You can find him at MichaelTougias.com, or @MichaelTougias on Twitter.
April 29, 2016 - This weekend, the Greek and Eastern Orthodox Churches take us back in time to the early days of the church, when Christ’s resurrection was celebrated after Passover in order to be historically sequential. After all, the Last Supper was a Passover Seder -- which some of you might have celebrated a few days ago.
This special episode is presented by Luke Historians, and features excerpts from Dan Arsenault’s lectures on "Messiah Factor" and "Is Jesus the Messiah?"
Additional information on the dating of the crucifixion is well-sourced and compiled in James D. Agresti's book, Rational Conclusions.
April 27, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today we are looking at a true giant from the classical age. He is a man who so popularized a method of inquiry, that it bears his very name. He is a man we are all indebted to; we are all students of this great and unusual man-Socrates.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
April 25, 2016 - In this episode, we'll step through the Guardian of Forever and meet two founding fathers who were best friends, then bitter enemies, and finally friends again: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third presidents of the United States, and the first and second vice presidents.
Our guide on this journey is Daniel L. Mallock, and his book is Agony and Eloquence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and a World of Revolution. Daniel L. Mallock grew up within walking distance of Peacefield, John and Abigail Adams' home in Massachusetts, and was also a member of the Quincy Historical Society in the Bay State. You may have seen his previous history work in North and South. But if not, check out his website: DanielMallock.com.
And if you're going to be in the New England area this summer, catch Dan at Bunker Hill Day, June 17, 2016, where he'll speak about "John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the Other Revolution" at the Adams National Historic Park in Quincy, Massachusetts.
April 22, 2016 - Today popular historian and frequent TV news guest, Doris Kearns Goodwin discusses how Theodore Roosevelt overcame serious ailments as a child to become one of our nation's most active, vigorous presidents. The insight comes in her latest book, titled, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. She previously touched on the extended Roosevelt family twenty years ago, writing No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front During World War II, for which she was awarded the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for History. You can follow her @DorisKGoodwin on Twitter.
Remember to subscribe to the History Author Show on iTunes, like our iHeartRadio page, or make us appointment listening on your Android device, so you don’t miss an installment of History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
April 20, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
You have probably heard the name “Homer” (the classical Greek, not Simpson). He is a man that we are culturally and literarily so indebted to that his epics The Iliad and The Odyssey are often considered the first true masterpieces of the Western world.
But there are so many questions about this mysterious author. Did he write? Or was he a traveling bard? Was he really only one man? Could he possibly have been a woman? Most interestingly of all, did he even really exist?
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
April 18, 2016 - Today, we're traveling back in time by rappelling down the steep face of New Jersey's Palisades Cliffs, and down to the Alpine Boat Basin, just north of the George Washington Bridge. Our destination is the historic The Kearney House, formerly called the Cornwallis Headquarters, based on the local legend that the British general stopped here for a night during the American Revolution.
The Kearney House dates back to the mid-1700s, and in the centuries since has been a home, a riverfront tavern, a police station, and a shrine to history itself -- surviving not only time and development, but Superstorm Sandy. You can tour The Kearney House, but also enjoy special events such as Punch & Pie Tavern Nights (April 23 and April 30, 2016) and Tales of the Macabre with readings from local fellow, Edgar Alan Poe. With music, mirth and libations, this is hardly your typical velvet-rope historical experience.
Our guide on this visit is Eric Nelsen, historic interpreter for the Palisades Interstate Park and co-author of the book about this 100,000 acres of open space: New Jersey's Palisades Interstate Park.
You can check out what's happening at The Kearney House and the park's many other attractions by visiting NJPalisades.org, liking their Facebook page, or following @PalisadesParks on Twitter.
April 15, 2016 - It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster. Our guest is Fergus Bordewich , and his book is, The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government. It’s the monumental story of the most productive Congress in US history, in 1789–1791, which we first explored with Fergus in our recent interview, which you can still find at HistoryAuthor.com, iTunes, iHeartRadio, or wherever you're listening.
Mr. Fergus Bordewich is the author of six previous books including, America’s Great Debate — Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and The Compromise that Preserved the Union, Washington: The Making of the American Capital, and Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America. You learn more about these and his other titles at FergusBordewich.com.
Simon & Schuster’s History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend…with people from the past.
April 13, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Cicero is remembered for posterity as a great orator and an influential philosopher. However, he was also a cunning politician and perhaps the staunchest defender of the Roman Republic. Today we look at Cicero’s time as Roman Consul, the highest elected office of the Roman world.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
April 11, 2016 - Today, our time machine will wend its way through the tight mountain passes of Southern France, and across the blue seas of the Mediterranean to the principality of Monaco. Yes, Monaco. The name itself conjures up images of glamour and gambling, of royalty and race cars. But how did it get that way? It's about half the size of Central Park, the second-tiniest nation in the world. Yet it's played a big role as a destination of gambling and vice for the world's rich and famous.
Dealing the cards today is Mark Braude, who sends us on our way with his debut book: Making Monte Carlo: A History of Speculation and Spectacle. Mark is a lecturer in history at Stanford University, having earned a Ph. D. in Modern European History from the University of Southern California, as well as a Masters in French Studies from our own New York University.
Visit him at MarkBraude.com.
April 8, 2016 - It's History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster --- kicking off your modern weekend, with people from the past. Since tomorrow is the 151st anniversary of Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, it's fitting that today's history author, former White House speech writer Jonathan Horn, introduces us to a family connection in Lee's life that might be overlooked: President George Washington. Horn's book is titled The Man Who Would Not Be Washington: Robert E. Lee's Civil War and His Decision That Changed American History. This interesting story is a reminder of how close the Revolutionary War and Civil War generations were to each other. Keep up with Horn's work at JonathanHornAuthor.com, and follow him on Twitter @JonathanDHorn.
Simon & Schuster's History in Five Friday. It's the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend...with people from the past.
April 6, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Enter the labyrinth! But beware the Minotaur. Today we relive the epic legend of Theseus, one of the classical age’s most celebrated heroes.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
April 4, 2016 - Today, our time machine is whisking us back to the very earliest days of America's republic. Our guest is Fergus Bordewich , and his book is, The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government. It's the untold story of the most productive Congress in US history, in 1789–1791.
Mr. Fergus Bordewich is the author of six previous books including, America's Great Debate -- Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and The Compromise that Preserved the Union, Washington: The Making of the American Capital, and Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America. You learn more about these and his other titles at FergusBordewich.com.
April 1, 2016 - Today on History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster, we’re going to hear from Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, co-authors who bring us: The Heart of Everything That Is -- The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend. Red Cloud was the only American Indian in history to defeat the United States Army. At the peak of Red Cloud’s reign, the Sioux held dominion over one-fifth of what are now the lower 48 states.
Men's Health Contributing Editor and Military Correspondent Bob Drury has been nominated for three National Magazine Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. He has reported from such global hot spots as including Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and Darfur. He is also the author, co-author, or editor of nine nonfiction books. Tom Clavin is a best-selling author and has worked as a newspaper and web site editor, magazine writer, TV and radio commentator, and a reporter for The New York Times.
Simon & Schuster’s History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
March 30, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Do we have any say in our lives? Or are we all just going along with fate? This has been bothering philosophers for millennia, and nobody explained the conundrum better than our old friend Aristotle.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
March 28, 2016 - Step through the Guardian of Forever and back in time to colonial North America, in the heat of King William's War. Our guide on this journey is Jay Atkinson, called "the bard of New England toughness" by Men’s Health magazine for his approach to writing and his topics. He shares the story of another tough New Englander in his new book, Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston's Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America.
Early on March 15, 1697, a band of Abenaki warriors in service to the Catholic French, raided the Puritan English frontier village of Haverhill, Massachusetts, killing twenty-seven men, women and children, and taking thirteen survivors captive. Hannah Duston and her one-week-old daughter, Martha, were among these survivors -- and it is there that our story begins.
Jay Atkinson teaches journalism at Boston University, as well as a critic, essayist, investigative journalist, and itinerant amateur athlete up in Methuen, Massachusetts. He is also the author of the author of two novels, a collection of short fiction, and five nonfiction narrative books including Ice Time and Legends of Winter Hill. You can visit his website, JayAtkinson.com, follow him @Atkinson_Jay on Twitter, or drop him a like at Facebook.com/WriterJayAtkinson.
March 25, 2016 – It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster — kicking off your modern weekend, with people from the past. Today, we offer bring you some new discoveries on one of history's greatest authors: William Shakespeare. Yes, that Shakespeare. As incredible as it may seem, we're still learning about the man who brought us Hamlet, Macbeth, The Tempest and so many other immortal plays.
The man in the driver's seat of our time machine is James Shapiro, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He's the author of Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare, and the topic of our next episode: The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. You can hear that interview recorded in the shadow of Shakespeare's Central Park statue .
History in Five Friday. It's the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend... with people from the past.
March 23, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
While most modern politicians are guaranteed gainful employment after they’ve been ousted from office, politicians in the ancient world were not so lucky. A statesman who got on the wrong side of the voting citizens could find himself out of a home for ten long years. This was the unique practice of ostracism. Maybe we should consider a modern revival.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
March 21, 2016 - Today, we time-travel back to the times after the times that tried men's souls. The date is October 19, 1781, and a combined French and rebel force defeats the Redcoats at the Battle of Yorktown, Virginia. But contrary to two centuries of grade school and academic histories, the war for independence didn't end with the surrender of General Cornwallis's sword.
The fighting dragged on for men like George Washington, Horatio Nelson, Lafayette, and Hyder Ali. This was a world war, with fighting from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean, and the Arctic to the coast of Sri Lanka.
We learn about the men who kept fighting in Don Glickstein's debut book, After Yorktown: The Final Struggle for American Independence. We also mentioned Fergus Bordewich's book, The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government.
March 18, 2016 - Today on History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster, we’re going to hear from writer/journalist Walter Isaacson. He's president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, and author of The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. He also brought us the acclaimed biography: Steve Jobs. You can like his Facebook page, or follow him @WalterIsaacson on Twitter.
This week, the focus is on how the very earliest video games inspired the personal computer revolution. From Pong, Pac Man and Defender, to Doom, Halo and Starcraft, these games were anything but child's play. They brought the computer into more vital roles, from business to medical breakthroughs.
Simon & Schuster's History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
March 16, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Let’s talk about Sparta. While that ancient civilization might be remembered for their fearsome soldiers, it was the Spartan women who kept things running while the men were away at war. These fearsome ladies might actually have been the backbone to the entire operation.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
March 14, 2016 - Today, our time machine touches down on one of America's darkest days: The capture of Washington, DC, and the burning of the White House, Capitol Building and a other public buildings. The man who lit the match? British Major General Robert Ross. A horseman, prankster, loving husband and daring commander who served under Wellington, Ross has fallen into obscurity over the two centuries since the War of 1812.
But with the bicentennial, two authors have resurrected the tale of a man they describe as a "reluctant arsonist." John McCavitt is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and neighbor of Ross in Rostrevor (a town in Northern Ireland originally owned by the Ross family), and Baltimore's Christopher T. George, Vice President of the 1812 Consortium and founding editor of the Journal of the War of 1812.
McCavitt and George are co-authors of, The Man Who Captured Washington: Major General Robert Ross and the War of 1812. You can follow them on Twitter @John_McCavitt and @CThompsonGeorge, or visit TheManWhoCapturedWashington.com.
We decided to air this episode the week of St Patrick's Day, to honor the huge numbers of Irishmen who fought on both the British and the American sides in the war.
March 11, 2016 - Today’s history author, Jan Jarboe Russell, revisits the dark period of World War Two when President Franklin Roosevelt signed the infamous Executive order 9066. You may recall that we interviewed Kermit Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt's great-great-grandson and a distant cousin to Franklin, about his novel Allegiance, covering the fight over these deportations at the Supreme Court.
From 1942 to 1948, trains delivered thousands of civilians from the United States and Latin America to Crystal City, Texas, a small desert town at the southern tip of Texas. The trains carried Japanese, German, Italian immigrants and their American-born children, who were all U.S. citizens. Ms. Russell takes a closer look at this travesty of justice in her non-fiction book: The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II.
You can learn more about her work at JanJarboeRussell.com, or by following her on Twitter @JarboeJan.
Simon & Schuster's History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
March 9, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today we are talking about the unlucky number seven. You read that right. When it comes to the ancient play Seven Against Thebes, the number seven is anything but lucky. Imagine seven warriors standing guard at seven different city gates. In the distance, a foreign army approaches. Cue the fireworks…
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
March 7, 2016 - Today, we're climbing into the Wayback Machine and setting the dial for the early 1700's, when temperatures ran high in politics, the press, and from a smallpox epidemic burning through Boston. Leading us on this journey is Stephen Coss: author, ad guy, and "close personal friend of Ben Franklin." Everything, Stephen says, that Franklin really needed to know, he learned in 1721 (and he's only half joking).
Stephen's debut book is The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic that Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics. In it, we meet historical figures including the young Franklin laboring at his brother's newspaper, and the Reverend Cotton Mather, seeking redemption from the debacle Salem Witch Trials by pioneering the technique of inoculation against the dreaded pox.
An unlikely advocate for something as revolutionary as vaccination, Mather convinces only a single doctor -- Zabdiel Boylston -- to try what we'd call a clinical trial on the controversial technique, one frowned upon in part because it had been practiced in Africa.
You can follow Stephen @Coss1Coss on Twitter, or visit him at StephenCoss.com. In this episode, we also mentioned David Pietrusza's new book, 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR - Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal, and Unlikely Destiny.
March 4, 2016 - Nicholas Griffin shares the story of how a little white ball impacted the way we live on this big, blue marble. His book is titled, Ping-Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History Behind the Game That Changed the World. Just how did the United States and communist China go from the icy pictures of Cold War adversaries, to Nixon's visit and a relationship that shocked the USSR? Well, believe it or not, table tennis helped communist China achieve a new relationship with America, and set the stage for Ronald Reagan to reach out to Mikhail Gorbachev, ultimately leading to the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and the Communist Bloc.
Simon & Schuster's History in Five every Friday morning.
It's the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend...with people from the past.
March 2, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
This week, we discuss Diogenes of Sinope. He is often considered one of the more eccentric, or at the very least untraditional, of the ancient Greek philosophers. He is credited as being one of the founders of cynicism and practiced these ideals through the eccentricities that filled his life.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
February 29, 2016 - Our time machine for this trip is tricked out like James Bond's Aston Martin, and we're speeding back to the height of the Cold War. Our driver on this journey is Paddy Hayes, who was kind enough to call into the show from Dublin, Ireland. His book is Queen of Spies: Daphne Park, Britain's Cold War Spy Master.
Until this book, no biography has been written about Daphne Park's incredible contributions to the crown at a time when the intelligence services were still very closed to women. From helping prepare for the D-Day landings to shoring up the Falkland Islands' defense, her adventures included being thrown into a pit, swimming the chilly Volga River to escape the KGB, and threats of execution. "I must have been arrested and condemned to be shot several times," she said. "It was a hazard that I got used to."
Daphne Park was Britain’s top woman spy, the most senior lady in MI6, a spitfire who people said once met, was never forgotten.
February 26, 2016 - Today’s history author, Matthew Hart, brings us...gold. No, he's not making us rich. It's the title of his latest book: Gold: the Race for the World's Most Seductive Metal. It follows in the footsteps of his previous book: Diamond - The History of a Cold-Blooded Love Affair.
History in Five Friday.
It's the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend...with people from the past.
February 24, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
When it comes to tragic love stories, there are none that compare to the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe. Well… that’s not entirely true. In fact, this ancient legend might have been the inspiration for one of the world’s most celebrated tales of love and loss.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
February 22, 2016 - This week, we sling-shot around the sun at high warp, sending us tumbling back in time to the Summer of 1832 -- and America, at war. It's not a conflict over land or of arms, but over the fiscal system of the young republic. Our guide on this journey is Paul Kahan, and his book is The Bank War: Andrew Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, and the Fight for American Finance.
The fight against the Second Bank of the United States may have been the most frustrating fight of President Jackson's life, since -- for once -- he couldn't end things by simply shooting or threatening to shoot his opponent in the face.
Dr. Kahan holds a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Temple University, an M.A. in Modern American History & Literature, and B.A.s in history and English. He's also the author of two books on Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary, and another titled, The Homestead Strike: Labor, Violence, and American History Critical Moments in American Industry.
You can visit him at PaulKahan.com, or follow him on Twitter @Paul_Kahan.
February 19, 2016 - Today’s history author, Michael Shelden, is the author of Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill. You may recall hearing praise for Young Titan in our interview with Simon Read, author of Winston Churchill Reporting: Adventures of a Young War Correspondent. The Greatest Briton's early life is often overlooked, with people understandably focusing on the image of him as a heroic figure, standing on the White Cliffs of Dover, shaking his fist in defiance at Hitler across the channel.
But Churchill's path of destiny was not a straight one. What can the way he dealt with the many bumps and curves in the road, teach us about how to deal with adversity in our own lives?
For more on the Greatest Briton life before greatness, you can also hear us catch up with Sir Winston's great-grandson, Jonathan Sandys, as he discusses the future Prime Minister's youthful sense of destiny in: God & Churchill: How the Great Leader's Sense of Divine Destiny Changed His Troubled World and Offers Hope for Ours.
Simon & Schuster's History in Five every Friday.
It's the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend...with people from the past.
February 17, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today we are looking at gladiators, and while you might be familiar with TV shows like “Spartacus” or movies like “Gladiator”, you might be interested to know that Hollywood does not tell the whole story.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
February 15, 2016 - Today's destination is America in the 1870s, and our guest is Sheila Myers, author of the novel Ephemeral Summer, and associate professor at Cayuga Community College. Her latest novel is Imaginary Brightness: a Durant Family Saga. At the dawn of what Mark Twain would later dub the Gilded Age, the economy suffered a panic -- what we'd call a depression -- brought on, in part, by over-speculation in railroads.
Dr. Thomas C. Durant, head of the Union Pacific Railroad, was one of those tycoons devastated by the crash. Imaginary Brightness tells the story of his children, William and Ella, whose world is turned upside down by the crash as they're torn away from their privileged lifestyle in high society London, and stuck in the wilderness of upstate New York's Adirondack Mountains.
You can follow Sheila @SheilaMMyers on Twitter, or visit her online at wwdurantstory.com.
February 12, 2016 - Today’s author, John Taliaferro, pans the camera lens of history just to the side of two great American presidents to focus on a man who worked for both. The book is All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt.
John Hay may not be a name that jumps out at people today, but he had a front-row seat with Abraham Lincoln in the early 1860s, and Theodore Roosevelt in the early 1900s.
History in Five Friday. It's the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend...with people from the past.
February 10, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
How many ways can you say “I love you”? There are only so many ways. But did you know that in the classical world there were more than thirty ways to express your love for another? Today we are going to look at just a few.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
February 8, 2016 - Today, we're riding in Great White Coach with the father of our country. Our teamster is author Timothy Hall Breen, and his book is George Washington's Journey: The President Forges a New Nation. Aware of the fragile and fractured nature of the new republic after independence, Washington resolves -- in a day without maps or roads worthy of the name -- to take the federal government to the people.
Staying in simple inns rather than fine houses, and suffering through terrible food and bad treatment for his horses, Washington visited every one of the thirteen states, and left a candid assessment of his opinions, as well as funny moments with the people -- and a few where he nearly died.
Mr. Breen is the James Marsh Professor at-large at the University of Vermont and the author of eleven books on American history including, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence. You can follow him @TimothyHBreen on Twitter.
February 5, 2016 - On this Friday before Super Bowl 50, we're going to focus on the name etched into the victory trophy: Lombardi. Best-selling author and historian David Maraniss shares five key facts about the NFL's greatest coach from his biography, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi.
If you'd like to hear more about the history of football this Super Bowl week, catch our interview with John J. Miller, author of The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football. It's the story of how the Rough Rider reformed the game, at a time when -- as with today's concerns about concussions -- some were calling to ban the pigskin pastime.
History in Five Friday.
It's the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend, with people from the past.
February 3, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Those of you who are familiar with ancient Greek mythology can probably name some of the Olympian deities. You might know Zeus, god of the heaven, or Poseidon, god of the seas. However, you might not know about the eldest Olympian. He was the dark and gloomy Hades, god of the underworld. Today we are going to explore why Hades was so feared and why such fear came with a healthy amount of respect.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
February 1, 2016 - An advocate of the strenuous life, President Theodore Roosevelt saw sports as essential to developing physical fitness and character. So when 18 players died playing football in 1905, and people called to ban the game, TR leaped into action to reform the pigskin pastime.
The game in those days resembled rugby much more than the game the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers will play in Super Bowl 50. Joining us to discuss how we got from a time no forward pass, neutral zone or pads to the present day, is John J. Miller. His book is titled, The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football.
John J. Miller is a correspondent for National Review, contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and author of four books including a novel, The First Assassin, and the non-fiction offering: Our Oldest Enemy -- A history of America's Disastrous Relationship with France. He's also director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College -- and a proud fan of his college team, the Michigan University Wolverines.
You can follow him on Twitter @HeyMiller, like him at Facebook.com/HeyMiller, or visit him at HeyMiller.com. He also hosts a podcast you'll want to check out if you're listening here. The show is called The Bookmonger with John J. Miller.
Also mentioned in this episode: Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children (free online), The Rough Riders, by Theodore Roosevelt (free online), Rough Riders (Film, 1997)
January 29, 2016 - Today’s history author, Richard Rhodes, has edited or authored several history books including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, winner of a Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction. His most recent book is Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War and the World it Made. The fighting took place from 1936 to 1939, and so is often lost in the catastrophe of World War Two. But the Spanish Civil War featured many of the same players, and some names from literature that may surprise you. In many ways, Spain's fighting set the stage for the carnage that was to engulf the world in flames.
History in Five Friday.
It's the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend, with people from the past...
January 27, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
You might not believe it, but if it weren’t for Cicero, the United States might never have broken away from England. And if it weren’t for the philosopher, Epicurus, it is possible that Thomas Jefferson might never have put ink to parchment and penned the words, “…that all men are created equal.” That's right, dear listener, we are going to find out just how the classics inspired the creation of America.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
January 25, 2016 - In this episode, we'll be boarding a Pullman car attached to one of the great trains connecting the North American east and west coasts, all the way up into the Alaskan and Yukon territories -- and very nearly across the Bering Strait to Siberia. Our conductor on this journey is Gordon E. Tolton, author of Healy's West: The Life and Times of John J. Healy.
Gordon is a Western Canadian historic interpreter and author of the previous books, The Cowboy Cavalry, and Prairie Warships. You can join his Facebook group, Ranger Gord's Publications, for discussions of Western Canada's history and some self-described goofball humor. Follow him guest on Twitter @RMRanger, and check out his blog: RangerGordsRoundup.Wordpress.com.
January 22, 2016 – Today’s history author, Andrew D. Kaufman, author of Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times. He's going to share how, incredibly, one of the greatest works of fiction in history... almost didn't happen. Fortunately, Leo Tolstoy married the right woman, and she helped him in ways nobody else could have.
You can also follow today's guest on Twitter @AndrewDKaufman.
History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
January 20, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today you should consider yourself warned. We are going to be discussing some adult topics. To be specific, we are going to be looking at some adult humor that sprung from the mind of one of the ancient worlds most notorious comic playwright, Aristophanes.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
January 18, 2016 - This week, we're flying our time machine across the Equator and into South America's turbulent past, where we'll meet some colorful characters, present at key moments of its history. They include Pablo Escobar, Butch Cassidy, Sundance, Charles Darwin, and a 14-year-old girl, Juanita, who the Incas sacrificed atop a twenty-thousand foot volcano.
Our tour guide to the Andes is author and filmmaker Kim MacQuarrie, who has won four Emmys for his documentaries. His latest book is Life and Death in the Andes: On the Trail of Bandits, Heroes, and Revolutionaries. You can follow him @KimMacQ on Twitter, and learn more about his work at KimMacQuarrie.com.
The F/X channel is developing Kim's previous book, The Last Days of the Incas, into a 13-part TV series: Conquistadors. Other books we discuss include Candice Millard's epic Amazon history: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey.
January 15, 2016 - Today’s history author, Jean Edward Smith, author of Grant, discusses the life and legacy of Ulysses S. Grant, from great disappointments and outright failures, to Civil War battlefields and, ultimately, the White House. The book bears a single word, the name of a modest man who became a legend. Grant. Frederick Douglas called him "the last of the radicals" and he wrote memoirs so beautiful that critics have called them some of the most beautiful works in the English language.
In this week's episode, Jean Edward Smith shares with us five things you need to know about General Grant.
History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
January 13, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today we are visiting with Plato and we are going to discuss political philosophy. This might be a bit of a controversial idea, but Plato believed that democratic government had only one logical outcome-tyranny. How does this happen? Listen in to find out.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
January 11, 2016 - In this episode, we're going to Charleston our way back to the Manhattan of our theme song, New York Ain't New York Anymore. Yes, it's the Jazz Age of speakeasies and Prohibition -- and our tour guide is none other than the Theater Districts most famous resident ghost, sighted from time to time in the New Amsterdam Theater.
Our guest, author Laini Giles, has written our ticket to one of Hollywood Land's very first scandal in The Forgotten Flapper: A Novel of Olive Thomas. You may not know Olive's name today, but a hundred years ago she was one of the loveliest girls who ever lit up the Ziegfeld Follies or the silent screen. Laini Giles' previous novel is Love Lies Bleeding. You can follow her on Twitter @4GottenFlapper and visit her online at LainiGiles.com.
Laini is also happy to share some other Jazz Age books in this episode. They are Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan. Hollywood Babylon, by Kenneth Anger. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin, by Marion Meade.
January 8, 2016 - Today, James Tobin -- winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography -- shares one of the greatest stories of defiance and overcoming infirmity in: The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency. When polio robbed Franklin Delano Roosevelt of his legs at age 39, the conventional wisdom agreed that his political career was over. Certainly nobody thought he'd rise to the office of his distant cousin, Eleanor's uncle Theodore Roosevelt.
But Roosevelt kept trying treatments, methods and exercises to cope with his disability -- a method of never giving up and continuing to try that helped him confront the Great Depression, and the Second World War.
History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
January 6, 2016 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Let me ask you something. How many friends do you have? Are they REALLY your friends? Is it possible that your friends are using you for utility or pleasure. If you’ve never thought of these things, then don’t worry. Aristotle certainly did.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
January 4, 2016 - In this episode, we're racing the time machine through a bunch of stops around the world and throughout history. Our ticket is The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley. We'll be guided along the way by Eric Weiner, author of the New York Times bestseller The Geography of Bliss, as well as the critically acclaimed Man Seeks God.
And along the way, we'll answer the question that's on the minds of every Loony Toons fan: "Was Wile E. Coyote a genius or not?"
You can sleuth out more about him @Eric_Weiner on Twitter, or at EricWeinerBooks.com.
December 30, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today, we are going to discuss creation myths. See if you can guess this man: after being warned about a deadly flood, he builds a mighty ark and escapes the ensuing deluge. If you guessed the biblical Noah, then you are only half wrong. Listen to today's show to learn about Deucalion, a man who might have been the Greek Noah.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
December 28, 2015 - Today, we're joined by Stephen F. Knott, who along with co-author Tony Williams brings us Washington & Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton's relationship has gotten renewed attention since the smash Broadway musical, ending almost 200 years of being overlooked.
From the early days of the Revolutionary War on the hills of Rutgers University -- where Hamilton's artillery covered Washington's retreat from New York City -- to victory at Yorktown, the Continental Congress and the first presidential administration, Washington and Hamilton had an often difficult, father-son relationship. But one that left a legacy that sustains America, even now into the 21st Century.
Mr. Knott is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the United States Naval War College in Newport, RI. You can follow him on Twitter @Publius57, and find his co-author Tony Williams @TWilliamsAuthor. Mr. Williams is a history teacher at the Bill of Rights Institute, as well as the Washington, Jefferson, and Madison Institute and the author of four previous books.
December 25, 2015 - Traditionally, December 25th has been celebrated as the birthday of Jesus Christ. But a variety of historic factors and scholarly discoveries indicate that He was not actually born on that date. Since this isn't really news, just how did most of the Christian world settle on this date for the big celebration?
Amanda Read digs deep into the reason for the season in a special episode brought to you by Luke Historians. You can read more about how Christianity came to peg the birth of the Messiah on this date at LukeHistorians.com: What does Christ have to do with Christmas Day?
Thank you for listening, and Merry Christmas!
December 23, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today, we are going to relive one of the most epic sea battles from the classical world. It was, at the time, the largest sea battle to every take place between ancient navies. It was the battle of Arginusae.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
December 21, 2015 - Today we sit down with Barry Strauss, professor of history and classics at Cornell University. A leading expert on ancient military history who counts Mel Brooks as his greatest living inspiration, he has written or edited several books, including The Battle of Salamis, The Trojan War, and The Spartacus War.
Visit him @BarryStrauss on Twitter or at BarryStrauss.com.
December 18, 2015 – Today, author Barry Strauss explores the political, military, and social motivations behind history's most famous murder. Mr. Strauss is professor of history and classics at Cornell University, and a leading expert on ancient military history.
Visit him @BarryStrauss on Twitter or at BarryStrauss.com. And don't miss our full interview on his book, The Death of Caesar, when we upload it on December 21, 2015.
History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
December 16, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today we are visiting with a unique character from classical history. He was a philosopher, mathematician, he might have been a cult leader, he also is the man responsible for creating one of your favorite theorems that you learned in high school algebra. He is the very interesting Pythagoras.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
December 14, 2015 - Ma and Pa McGillin opened the door to their home in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln won the presidency and just after the Liberty Bell cracked. As the decades passed, their tavern endured, tucked away in an alley, as if hiding from old Father Time.
Originally called The Bell in Hand, McGillin's has survived wars, economic panics, challenges from upstart chain restaurants and Prohibition. Visit McGillins.com to do some serious time traveling with dozens of news articles, follow the tavern @McGillins on Twitter or like it at Facebook.com/McGillins. And plan to pull up a stool as we spend an afternoon in the City of Brotherly Love, 1860 style...
December 11, 2015 – It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster — kicking off your modern weekend, with people from the past.
Today, author Dianne Hales reveals the woman immortalized by the great master, Leonardo Da Vinci. Everybody remembers Mona Lisa's smile, and has seen her face, but no one knew her full story -- until now.
You can find Dianne Hales on Twitter @DMHales, at Facebook.com/MonaLisaALifeDiscovered, or by visiting MonaLisaBook.com.
History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
December 9, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today we are discussing one of the most remarkable women to ever come out of the classical age. She had a knack for rhetoric, a taste for philosophy, and a keen interest in politics. She was Aspasia of Miletus.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
December 7, 2015 – On this Pearl Harbor Day, we mark the Japanese attack on Hawaii, and travel back 75 years to meet Aarol W. “Bud” Irish in the European Theater where he fought the Nazis. On the Memorial Day after Bud passed away in 2006, his daughter Teresa opened her father's mysterious old Army trunk and found stacks and stacks of letters from the front.
Through these, she met her father as a young man, and shared him with us in: A Thousand Letters Home. Along with over 100 pictures, the book also includes the responses from Bud's girl back home -- who would eventually become his wife and Teresa's mother.
The book has proved such an inspiration to readers, that Teresa now spends her time doing public speaking on the letters, helping new generations of veterans and their families connect with the trauma that follows when the guns fall silent. You can learn more at AThousandLettersHome.com and by following Teresa @ThousandLetters on Twitter.
December 4, 2015 – It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster — kicking off your modern weekend, with people from the past.
Today, journalist Lynn Sherr turns our time machine into a rocket ship to shatter the glass ceiling. Her new book is Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space. It's the remarkable story of humanity's first baby steps beyond earth with Sputnik, to the Space Shuttle and I.S.S. You can follow today's author on Twitter @LynnSherr.
Triumph, tragedy, and the right stuff. It's all up there in the stars.
History in Five Friday.
It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
December 2, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today we are talking about the bringers of guilt and fear. They were the bane of all criminals in the ancient world. If a man committed a terrible crime, he could expect to answer to the Furies.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
November 30, 2015 - Historian of First Ladies Betty Boyd Caroli introduces us to the diminutive, quiet woman who stood behind one of the most controversial presidents of the 20th Century through some of America's most difficult years. The book is Lady Bird & Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage that Made a President.
But Clauda "Lady Bird" Johnson was more than just the flower lady. She was a shrewd business woman, and careful political tactician. Using courtship letters made available for the first time in 2013, Betty Boyd Caroli sheds light on a figure who lived such a fascinating life in her own right, that at her funeral, her husband was barely mentioned.
Ms. Caroli's previous books include The Roosevelt Women: A Portrait In Five Generations, as well as, The First Ladies "From Martha Washington to Michelle Obama". You can learn more about her work at BettyBoydCaroli.com.
November 27, 2015 – It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster.
For the day after Thanksgiving, we're joined by historian of first ladies Betty Boyd Caroli, whose previous books include The Roosevelt Women: A Portrait In Five Generations, and The First Ladies: From Martha Washington to Michelle Obama.
Today, she introduces us to a woman who was at the center of public life for half a century, and yet who few really knew. The book is Lady Bird & Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage That Made a President. For more on this title, you can enjoy our all-new interview with Betty Boyd Caroli, when we upload it on Monday, November 30, 2015.
History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
November 25, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today we are talking about some important topics. We will be visiting with Seneca and getting his take on a “good life”. This Roman statesman and philosopher believes that too many of us are wasting our lives and that very few of us are actually engaged in the duties of life.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
November 23, 2015 - The Old '76 House in Tappan, New York, is a National Landmark, one where you can eat a meal fit for overthrowing a king. The building itself predates the American Revolution by over a century, and served an active role in the fight for independence. Every major figure including General George Washington spent time at this great American tavern. In 1780, it even served as a make-shift prison for Major John Andre, the British spy caught conspiring with America's most infamous traitor, Benedict Arnold.
And it was here that the British met Gen. Washington to officially recognize the war's end, and recognize America as a free and independent nation.
Learn more about America's oldest tavern at 76House.com, or by following them at Facebook.com/TheOld76House. And don't miss our interview with tavernkeeper, Robert Norden, who restored and preserves this unique piece of American history.
November 20, 2015 – It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster.
Today, author Clint Hill shares his eyewitness account of President John F. Kennedy's assassination fifty-two years ago on November 22, 1963. Mr. Hill was the Secret Service agent assigned to protect Mrs. Kennedy that day, and the man seen leaping onto the back of the car after the fatal shots rang out in Dealey Plaza.
His latest book is titled, Five Days in November. It's a follow-up on his previous recollections in the #1 New York Times best-seller, Mrs. Kennedy and Me.
History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past
November 18, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today we are talking about an important theme from The Odyssey. It is a theme that I’m certain you have never heard of. It’s called Xenia, and it has to do with rules of hospitality between hosts and guests. To the Homeric Greeks, Xenia was of the utmost importance. After all, you never knew when a disguised god or monster might stop by for a visit.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
November 16, 2015 - Today, we travel back 75 years to a dark period of the Second World War. But the battlefield where liberty and tyranny clash isn't Midway or Normandy Beach. It's the hallowed halls of the United States Supreme Court. Our guide into this world is Kermit Roosevelt. His novel is Allegiance, a legal thriller built around the internment of Americans with Japanese ancestry -- 62% of them American citizens -- under Franklin Roosevelt's infamous Executive Order 9066.
Kermit Roosevelt happens to be distantly related to FDR through his great-great grandfather, Theodore Roosevelt. He's also a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, winner of the Philadelphia Athenaeum Literary Award for his previous novel, In the Shadow of the Law, and a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice David Souter.
Nelson DeMille wrote, "My favorite World War II historical novel was Herman Wouk's The Winds of War. Now I have two favorites. Kermit Roosevelt's Allegiance is an instant classic." We also mentioned our interview with David O. Stewart, and his book on the Father of the Constitution: Madison's Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America.
November 13, 2015 - Today we're going to hear from writer/journalist Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute and author of The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, and the acclaimed biography: Steve Jobs.
The Innovators includes names like Grace Hopper, Lord Byron’s daughter, Bletchley Park's Alan Turing, ENIAC, John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, and many others that gave us the computer devices we find indispensable to modern life.
And remember to subscribe to the History Author Show on iTunes, like our iHeartRadio page, or make us appointment listening on your Android device, so you don’t miss an installment of History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
November 11, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today we are going to consider the legend of Atlantis. You read that right, dear listener, we are talking about THAT Atlantis. While it is often considered legend, there is one classical writer who tells us otherwise. Prepare to suspend your disbelief, because we are going to consider the possibility that Atlantis was real.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
November 9, 2015 - In honor of Veterans Day and Remembrance Day on November 11th, Bristol writer Jacqueline Wadsworth takes us back to "the war to end all wars" in Letters from the Trenches: The First World War by Those Who Were There. We hear from soldiers on the Western Front, Mesopotamia, Gallipoli, Italy, Northern Russia -- and, of course, from the women and children suffering through the Great War back home.
In addition to the book, you can visit SoldierLetters.Blogspot.com for tons of additional content, and follow Jacqueline Wadsworth on Twitter @SoldiersLetters.
Discover Your History magazine calls Letters from the Trenches, "A warm evocation of how ordinary people's lives were affected by a devastating conflict," and they highly recommend it. But Jacqueline's book is more than a pile of letters, more than another poetic retelling of the romance and tragedy of the war. It's a book where real people speak for themselves, as war upends their daily lives.
November 6, 2015 – Today, we’re going to hear from author, journalist and producer Denise Kiernan. Her latest book is, The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II. Kiernan is the author of several history books, including Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence, and Signing Their Rights Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the United States Constitution.
You can follow today's History in 5 Friday author on Twitter @DeniseKiernan, and visit her online at DeniseKiernan.com, or GirlsofAtomicCity.com.
To meet the British counterparts to the Girls of Atomic City -- the code breaking WRENS who cracked the riddle of Hitler's Enigma machine -- visit Bletchley Park Trust online, and subscribe to the Bletchley Park Podcast on iTunes or Audioboom.
And remember to subscribe to the History Author Show on iTunes, like our iHeartRadio page, or make us appointment listening on your Android device, so you don’t miss an installment of History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
November 4, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today we are visiting with Aristotle, a man who is often considered to be the most influential philosopher to ever live. We are looking at Aristotle’s Poetics and we will talk about how the idea of a “good story” has remained essentially unchanged for over two thousand years! Then we will consider the notion that reading tragic literature might actually contribute to our health and well-being.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
November 2, 2015 - For our first historical fiction author, we're pleased to introduce Jennifer Kincheloe's debut novel: The Secret Life of Anna Blanc. Join us in 1907 Los Angeles, where Anna Blanc chafes under the thumb of her controlling father and yearns for a life of crime -- solving them that is.
Inspired by the wild Santa Anna winds, Anna joins a suffragette protest, lies to everyone in her life, and takes a job as an LAPD police matron -- under a not particularly convincing fake name.
"If the police find out, she'll get fired; if her father finds out, he'll disown her; and if her fiancé finds out, he'll cancel the wedding and stop pouring money into her father's collapsing bank."
And so the stakes are set, in the secret life of our spunky heroine: Anna Blanc.
You can follow Jennifer Kincheloe @JenKincheloe on Twitter, or like the novel's Facebook page. And if you're hungering for more of LA at the dawn of the 20th Century, check out Jennifer Kincheloe's Pinterest page. It features over 35,000 images from her extensive research on the period.
Additional books discussed on this episode:
October 30, 2015 - Today we’re going to hear from popular historian and frequent TV news guest, Doris Kearns Goodwin. Her latest book is, "The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism." She previously touched on the extended Roosevelt family twenty years ago, writing "No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front During World War II," for which she was awarded the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for History.
The New York Times, Washington Post, Economist, Time, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, and others named The Bully Pulpit as One of the Best Books of the Year, and the Associated Press said it's "a tale so gripping that one questions the need for fiction when real life is so plump with drama and intrigue."
Remember to subscribe to the History Author Show on iTunes, like our iHeartRadio page, or make us appointment listening on your Android device, so you don’t miss an installment of History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
October 29, 2015 - In this special, Halloween episode, we're traveling back to the days before the American Civil War, when doctors would take their scalpels to fully awake patients -- the pre-microbial era when the causes of common diseases remained a mystery, and when oil lamps and flammable clothing combined to engulf a staggering number of people in flames.
This, was the age of monsters. Yes, monsters. Not costumed Groovie Goolies, but human beings so scarred and broken, that they often longed for death. And so they were called... monsters.
Enter the brilliant surgeon who gave these monsters hope, and made it his life's work to piece their lives back together. His name, was Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter. Poet and author Cristin O'Keefe Aptowitcz tells the story of his amazing medical breakthroughs in Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine. Cristin is an award-winning writer and the author of seven books. You can visit her website, Aptowicz.com and follow her on Twitter @COAptowicz.
We're also giving away two tickets to the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia on our Facebook page, courtesy of the author. To enter, just listen to the show, visit the page and leave a comment.
Because the only thing better than a trip into the past, is a free trip into the past for you and a friend.
Additional books discussed on this episode:
October 28, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee. Today we are looking at the Battle of Thermopylae, an ancient military engagement that has been immortalized in popular, modern media like the film “300”. The battle took place in 480 BC. The Greeks, lead by King Leonidas and his 300 Spartan royal guard, stand fast at the pass of Thermopylae. They prepare to defend the pass from the oncoming Persian invading army, lead by King Xerxes I. It is this battle that would cement the Spartan reputation for valor and ferocity through all of time.
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
October 26, 2015 - What if John Wilkes Booth's gun had misfired? And what if we could blast off to a Mars colony founded by the Carthaginians, or head 250,000 years into the past when a race of giants dominate Africa? Writer and archaeologist Jordan Harbour, explores stories like these at the Twilight Histories podcast. And like a David Lynch film, things keep getting weirder.
The Twilight Histories is a podcast, Jordan says, that should be listened to in the dark. So turn out the lights, lower the brightness on your smart phone, and enjoy our upcoming interview with Jordan Harbor... if you dare.
October 23, 2015 - Today we're going to hear from Harold Holzer, one of America's leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln's life and the politics of the Civil War era. His book is, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion. Mr. Holzer shows us an activist Lincoln through journalists who covered him from his start through to the night of his assassination — when one reporter ran to the box where Lincoln was shot and emerged to write the story covered with blood.
Remember to subscribe to the History Author Show on iTunes, like our iHeartRadio page, or make us appointment listening on your Android device, so you don’t miss an installment of History in Five Friday.
It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.
October 21, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.
Today we are looking at ancient mythology and the story of Prometheus, the creator of man and the original benefactor of mankind.
Originally penned by the ancient poet, Hesiod, in about 700 BC, Prometheus is more than just a popular legend. He has become a symbol of human advancement and the sacrifices that are often made in the name of progress. You might just be surprised at some of the authors who borrow from the legend of Prometheus to make such a point!
Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
October 19, 2015 - On this episode, you'll meet five legends -- George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Monroe, and Dolley Madison -- as viewed through their relationships with James Madison. Often overlooked in death as he was in life (and having the White House burned out from under him in the War of 1812 didn't help), David O. Stewart reveals a founding father and president uniquely adept at what we today call "networking."
The book is Madison's Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America. Just as Gen. Washington was indispensable in winning the war, so was Madison indispensable in winning the peace and setting up the first self-governing republic since Rome.
David O. Stewart is also president of the Washington Independent Review of Books. His other books include: The Wilson Deception (A New Fraser and Cook Mystery). The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution. American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America.
Additional books discussed on this episode:
October 16, 2015 – It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster — kicking off your modern weekend, with people from the past. Today, historian David O. Stewart focuses on James Madison, Father of the Constitution and fourth president of the United States. Overlooked in death as he was in life, Madison was the indispensable man in peace as General George Washington was in the Revolutionary War.
On Monday, October 19, 2015, we'll share an all-new interview with David O. Stewart on his new book, Madison's Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America. Don't miss it!
Additional books discussed on this episode:
October 14, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee. Today we visit with one of the greatest minds to ever be produced by the classical world-Plato. It's "Plato's Symposium: Always Change for Love."
We will examine one of his more popular pieces of philosophy, The Symposium. Specifically, we are going to consider Plato’s assertion that we should, in fact, always change for love!
Your guide to through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
Classical Wisdom Wednesday. It’s ancient wisdom for modern (midweek morning) minds.
October 12, 2015 - On this episode, we'll visit a key period in Winston Churchill's life, half a century before World War Two. In the late 1800s, Churchill chased adventure in the Sudan, South Africa, India and Cuba, filing dispatches that helped build his resume, and fill his empty wallet.
Simon Read describes a Winston Churchill who's part Indiana Jones, part Ernie Pyle, and part Audie Murphy. It's hard to overstate just how important these years were to creating the Churchill who grew into the Greatest Briton. His command of the English language, his views of war, his respect for enemies and ideas about creating a lasting peace through victory, all started here.
You can follow Simon @SimonReadBooks on Twitter, or visit WinstonChurchillReporting.com for more on this exciting adventure.
Additional books discussed in this episode:
October 9, 2015 – It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster — kicking off your modern weekend, with people from the past. Today, we offer up legendary history author David McCullough on his latest #1 New York Times best-seller: The Wright Brothers. It's a tale that Mr. McCullough calls quintessentially American in its power to inspire, and to set an example for us in 2015. Orville and Wilbur Wright -- along with their impressive sister Katharine -- showed the world that man could fly, changing that world forever. And they did it all for just a thousand bucks.
Additional books discussed in this episode:
October 7, 2015 - It's Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly -- bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee. This week, we dive into the book that kicked it all off -- the first true classic in the history of Western literature -- Homer's The Iliad.
Along the way, we examine the epic's leading man, Achilles, and his pursuit of kleos (eternal glory). What does it mean to be a hero? The answer might just surprise you.
Your guide to through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.
Classical Wisdom Wednesday. It's ancient wisdom for modern (midweek morning) minds.
Read the Full Story: Kleos: Death and Glory.
October 6, 2015 - How did Winston Churchill overcome so many personal, financial and professional setbacks to lead the United Kingdom to victory during its darkest hour, when the Empire nation stood alone against Hitler? The answer may surprise you, and that's the focus of a new book. It's God & Churchill: How the Great Leader's Sense of Divine Destiny Changed His Troubled World and Offers Hope for Ours.
More than a spiritual biography, God & Churchill recounts a deeply personal quest for Jonathan Sandys, Winston Churchill's great-grandson. Along with co-author and former White House staffer Wallace Henley, Jonathan discovers how again and again, Churchill turned his eyes up to find strength here on earth. Previous books have ignored the role of faith in the Greatest Briton's life, or dismissed his invocations on behalf of "Christian civilization" as mere rhetoric.
Now, for the first time, God & Churchill debunks that myth and inspires us with a Sir Winston who remains a role model today, as we seek to unite the world in the face of the heirs to Hitler's nihilistic creed.
UPDATE: It's with a heavy heart I report that Jonathan Sandys -- a man I was proud to call friend -- passed away a few days after Christmas 2018. He is survived by his wife, Sara, as well as their children Jesse and Arizona Jane. Not to mention his family in the U.K. and so many who met him once, twice, or a thousand times. When the news hit me, I thought of the line from Watership Down: "My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today," for I will miss running with him, on to the next adventure.
Additional books discussed in this episode:
October 5, 2015 - On this episode, we visit the theaters, throne rooms and taverns of London 400 years ago, as seen through the eyes of William Shakespeare. History Author Show correspondent Stephen Bedford met our guide to Jacobian London in the shadow of the immortal bard's statue in Central Park. He is renowned Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, professor of English of Columbia University.
His book is The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. That was a particularly chaotic year in England with King James’ ascension and the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot. But this atmosphere of crisis inspired Shakespeare, and he went on to produce three of his greatest tragedies that year: King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra.
Professor Shapiro is historical adviser at New York City’s Public Theater, Governor of the Folger Shakespeare Library, and frequent BBC commentator. He is also the author of Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? You can find him at JamesShapiro.net.
October 2, 2015 – It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster — kicking off your modern weekend, with people from the past. Today, we offer bring you some new discoveries on one of history's greatest authors: William Shakespeare. Yes, that Shakespeare. As incredible as it may seem, we're still learning about the man who brought us Hamlet, Macbeth, The Tempest and so many other immortal plays.
The man in the driver's seat of our time machine is James Shapiro, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He's the author of Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare, and the topic of our next episode: The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. You can hear that interview -- recorded in the statue of Shakespeare's Central Park statue -- when we upload it Monday, October 5, 2015.
History in Five Friday.
It's the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend... with people from the past.
September 28, 2015 - Even casual baseball fans can name the game's greatest heroes, and its most infamous villain: Ty Cobb. Yes, it's something that even Yankees and Red Sox fans can agree on: "The Georgia Peach" wasn't a very nice fellow. But what if everyone is wrong? What if, like Ulysses S. Grant, Ty Cobb's enemies were just more prolific writers than his friends? What if by accepting the view of Ty Cobb as a belligerent racist and dirty player, we're smearing baseball's all-time great, and abetting a century of shoddy reporting?
If so, then someone should set the historical record straight. Well, that's exactly what Charles Leerhsen set out to do in his New York Times best-seller, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. In it, Mr. Leerhsen questioned all the accepted truths about Cobb and found the facts striking out.
And Mr. Leerhsen is not just a sports fan, but a journalist trained in facts. You've seen his work everywhere from Sports Illustrated and Esquire to The New York Times Magazine and People. He has also been an editor at SI, Us Weekly, and Newsweek. You can find him @CharlesLeerhsen on Twitter and at CharlesLeerhsen.com.
We hope you'll pour yourself a cold one, tear open a box of Cracker Jacks, and play ball with Charles Leerhsen and Ty Cobb ... A Terrible Beauty.
Meet Buster - Mascott of New Jersey's Lakewood BlueClaws
September 25, 2015 – It's History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster -- kicking off your modern weekend, with people from the past. Today, we offer up Charles Leerhsen's incredible book: Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. It exposes the cruel smear of baseball's most exciting player, debunking the caricature of him as a dimwitted, belligerent, drunken racist. You can enjoy our full interview on or after Monday, September 28, 2015. For more, follow our H5F author on Twitter @CharlesLeerhsen or visit his website, CharlesLeerhsen.com.
September 24, 2015 - This is a special, Pope-in-America edition of the History Author Show. Pope Francis began his visit to the United States on September 22, 2015 with stops in Washington, D.C., New York City and Philadelphia. Top on his agenda were calls for Americans to spend more on the poor. But what about the church's finances? How did a humble ministry started by St. Paul two thousand years ago, grow into the largest and wealthiest on earth?
Attorney, best-selling author, and award-winning investigative journalist Gerald Posner explores that question in his book: God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican. It's a book not about faith, but about finances. And it begs the question: Can the man called the people's pope, Francis, overcome the resistance to change in the Vatican’s inner court, and rein in its excesses? Can the new pontiff, in short, succeed where all his predecessors failed?
The Providence Journal called God's Bankers "As exciting as a mystery thriller." So I thought, who better to interview Gerald Posner than thriller author Tom Grace. Among Tom's best-selling novels in the Nolan Kilkenny series is, The Secret Cardinal. It's an adventure that races from the grandeur of the Vatican across the vastness of Asia, ultimately involving China, the Mafia, and the conclave of cardinals that will elect the next pope.
Tom has vast knowledge of the Catholic Church, so he and Gerald had a lot to talk about in this bonus episode.
Additional books discussed in this episode:
September 21, 2015 - Join us in Manhattan's Madison Square Park -- next to the statue of President Chester A. Arthur -- as we travel back to the days when Latin was very much a living language. Our tour guide is Van Bryan, associate editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly: "Ancient Wisdom for Modern Minds." It's an online publishing house that shares information, commentaries, and opinions on literature of antiquity with iPad-enabled readers like us.
You can also follow them @ClassicalWisdom on Twitter or get their newsletter via email, just by signing up right here. When you do, you'll get three free books: The Guide to the Greek Gods and Goddesses, an introduction to ancient ethical philosophy, and a guide to the Peloponnesian War. You have nothing to lose and so much wisdom to gain, why not give it a try?
Visit "The Thirsty Philosopher," Dr. Frank McCluskey's blog.
September 18, 2015 - One of the most acclaimed political biographies of our time, Jeffrey Frank’s Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage takes you inside the strained and complex relationship of two fascinating American leaders—hailed as "top-drawer as political history" by the New York Review of Books and "one of the best books ever written about Richard Nixon" by the New Yorker."
September 14, 2015 - From Thomas Edison to Dr. Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters, the idea of the quirky, driven scientist working in solitude is a popular one in the American imagination. But today, you need big machines like particle accelerators, electron microscopes, and super computers to advance human knowledge.
So how did we get from Alexander Graham Bell in his lonely lab to Robert Oppenheimer assembling and leading a massive team to beat Hitler to the atom bomb, or the U.S. racing the Soviets to the moon? Today's book introduces us to the man behind this revolution, one that touches all aspects of our modern life. It's called, Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex.
The author is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik. He's a graduate of Colgate and the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia, and has written previous books on the Hoover Dam and The New Deal. You can follow him on Twitter @HiltzikM and visit his website, MichaelHiltzik.com.
Additional books discussed in this episode:
September 11, 2015 - End your week with a taste of the past. It's History in Five Friday! Here's Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik, author of Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex. You can enjoy our full interview on or after Monday, September 14, 2015. You can follow him on Twitter @HiltzikM or visit his website, MichaelHiltzik.com. And enjoy more of Simon & Schuster's History in Five shorts at Facebook.com/HistoryInFive.
September 7, 2015 - This journey into the past is our tastiest yet. Our guest is Dan DeMiglio, heir to a legendary Callahan's hot dog shop, a landmark in Fort Lee, New Jersey, just across the George Washington Bridge. Our goal is to do more than books here on the program, to remind people that we're all the author of our own chapter in the great human story, so Callahan's -- which closed in 2006 after fifty years serving the "so big, so good" best --seemed like a natural.
In 1950, Leonard "Artie" Castrianni didn't know it, but he was writing history -- not with ink, but with ketchup and mustard. The story began when he opened a road-side food stand and gas station on the Palisades cliffs. From it, he served deep-fried hot dogs, hand-cut fries, Birch Beer and more to hungry families -- first from the nearby Palisades Amusement Park, and later to anyone who wanted a taste of the past.
Callahan's was an institution in Fort Lee, and from age 7, Daniel DeMiglio -- Artie Castrianni's grandson -- had a single goal in life: To carry on the family legacy. Even when his dad and uncle sold the old place in 2006, Daniel -- then just out of college -- refused to let the delicious dog dream die. How could he? "Callahan Dan" had relish in his blood.
You can follow the reborn Callahan's @EatCallahans on Twitter. You can also like them at Facebook.com/CallahansHotDogs, and find out when their food truck ("The Yellow Beast") will be in your neighborhood. It travels all around the New York/New Jersey area and like many of our locals entering their 60s, the truck has set its sights on Florida for the winter. You can also visit CallahansHotDogs.com from more on this historic family business.
August 31, 2015 - In our last episode of August, we introduce you to our first History Author Show correspondent: Amanda Read. Amanda Read grew up across the States and overseas as an Army brat before her family settled on Fair Hill Farms in Alabama. She graduated from Troy University Magna Cum Laude in 2013 with a Bachelor of Science in History and a minor in Political Science. She's done voice-over work on previous shows, performing dramatic readings from war diaries and the letters of First Lady Dolley Madison.
Amanda has a love of old fashioned things, from dipping pens to vintage dresses. She even dresses her horse in period tack. She is passionate about two historical figures in particular: Isaac Newton and Harvey Wiley. Keep up with Amanda’s wide range of work at AmandaRead.com, LukeHistorians.com, or on Twitter @SincerelyAmanda.
While we're meeting Amanda, we also enjoy her first interview: A chat with Jim Leeke, author of Matty Boy: A Civil War Novel for Young Readers. Amanda seemed perfect for this conversation. She not only counts both Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee as ancestors, but she's the eldest of nine children. We'll also hear from Jim Leeke again on a book for adults: Nine Innings for the King: The Day Wartime London Stopped for Baseball, July 4, 1918. You can follow Jim on Twitter @9Innings4King, or visit his website at SamsLeague.Blogspot.com.
Additional Books discussed in this episode:
August 24, 2015 - "What is worse? A confederate con man claiming he was Lincoln's spy throughout the Civil War, or the Union veteran who pursed his claim all the way to the Supreme Court?" That's the central question of Jane Singer's book, Lincoln's Secret Spy: The Civil War Case that Changed the Future of Espionage. In it, she introduces us to William Alvin Lloyd. Con man, bigamist, charlatan, Lloyd hobbled out of the defeated Confederacy and into the capital of the newly re-United States with a claim that made people listen: The government owed him money for serving as Abraham Lincoln's covert operative.
John Wilkes Booth had shot down the Great Emancipator just a month earlier in April 1865, and couldn't refute the story. So, armed with Lincoln's signature on a travel pass and a skill for duping people -- including no less than Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who was at the president's side when he died -- Lloyd teamed up with lawyer Enoch Totten, who'd served in the Union Army during the conflict.
The story of their conspiracy to defraud the American people is brought to us by my guest, Jane Singer, and her co-author, John Stewart. Jane is a Civil War scholar and author of The Confederate Dirty War: Arson, Bombings, Assassination and Plots for Chemical and Germ Attacks on the Union, the basis of the History Channel special, Civil War Terror. You can follower her at Facebook.com/JaneSingerAuthor or @JaneBSinger1 on Twitter. Her book is more than a tale of a long-ago fraud. The Supreme Court's ruling in Totten v. United States is a legal precedent that affects our clandestine operatives to this day. Here's my conversation with Jane about this intricate tale of espionage and lies.
August 17, 2015 - You're familiar with our theme song, 1925's New York Ain't New York Anymore. It's the perfect segue into today's book, Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America. The story of speakeasies, Flappers and radio is brought to us by Donald L. Miller. He's the John Henry MacCracken Professor of History at Lafayette College and also authored City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America. You can learn about these and his other projects at DonaldMillerBooks.com, and even take a spin around Jazz Age Manhattan on an interactive map.
If you have an eye for history -- and you do, or why else would you be here -- you'll run into a lot of old friends reading Supreme City. Names that still generate excitement and nods of recognition a hundred years later. Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Tex Rickard, E.B. White, Elizabeth Arden. Ziegfeld, Chrysler, LaGuardia, Lindbergh, Sarnoff. But how did New York City get from there to here? How did it become, as Duke Ellington called it, "the capital of everything"?
August 10, 2015 - Three mules, two brothers, and a Jack Russell terrier. Together they rattle 2000 miles from Missouri to the great American Northwest in a covered wagon. That isn't the setup for a Vaudeville joke, but there are plenty of laughs found on the ruts, roads and interstates. That's right, interstates. The trip doesn't take place before the Civil War, but in our time.
We can go along for the ride from the comfort of our reading chairs thanks to author Rinker Buck's New York Times best-seller: The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey. It's the first such crossing in a century, which meant our unlikely group of pioneers had to reinvent the lost art of wagon travel along the way.
Mr. Buck grew up on the family farm in historic Morristown, New Jersey, and attended Bowdoin College in Maine. His career in journalism earned him the Eugene S. Pulliam Journalism Writing Award and other accolades. In his 1997 book, Flight of Passage, he shared another adventure: Piloting a Piper PA-11 across the United States in 1966. Just 15 at the time, he became the youngest airmen ever to complete the trip. You can follow his continuing adventures by liking him at Facebook.com/RinkerBuck.
Additional books discussed in this episode:
August 3, 2015 - Welcome to the pilot episode of the History Author Show, a weekly program that uploads a new episode every Monday morning on iHeartRadio, iTunes, tunein Radio or your favorite personal audio outlet. We're everywhere! If you've ever felt a rush of nostalgia when reading about the way things used to be, then you’ve come to the right place -- our time machine high above Radio City Music Hall in Midtown Manhattan.
There's something magical about the craft of writing, and if you want to learn to do something, the best way is to study people who do it well. That brings us to our very first guest, Stephen Bedford, Imprint Marketing Manager for publishing legend Simon & Schuster, specializing in U.S. History and current events. You can follow him on Twitter @SimonBooks, and check out his History in 5 series online.
So join us as we hear from Simon & Schuster authors and others who'll join us on the show in the coming months.
Books discussed in this week's episode:
Links of Interest: ClassicalWisdom.com - Ancient Wisdom for Modern Minds Negro Leagues Baseball Museum ArtGarfunkel.com: Every Book That Art Garfunkel Has Read James A. Garfield National Historic Site, Mentor, Ohio