Off the Deaton Path: Recent Episodes
Stan Deaton
Stan Deaton is the Senior Historian and The Dr. Elaine B. Andrews Distinguished Historian at the Georgia Historical Society, and the Emmy-winning writer and host of Today in Georgia History. The Off the Deaton Path podcast includes Stan's thoughts on books, sports, movies, people, beer, and more, especially as they relate to Georgia history.
Stan’s guests this week are three members of the Whitfield Remembrance Project, a community remembrance initiative in Dalton, Georgia, inspired by the Equal Justice Initiative. Their mission is to honor victims of racial injustice in Whitfield County, beginning with efforts to memorialize the last known lynching in Whitfield. Their current project focuses on honoring Juliette Derricotte, a gifted speaker, educator, and peacemaker who died in 1931 after a car accident near Dalton, when segregation prevented her from being taken to a whites-only hospital.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/7-30-26.mp3
As part of GHS’s ongoing commemoration of the US250, Stan’s guest this week is acclaimed historian H.W. Brands, talking about his new book, American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington (Doubleday, 2026). The biographer of American luminaries Ben Franklin, Andrew Jackson, U.S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, and Reagan, turns his attention to Washington, from his early military career in the French and Indian War and his rise among the Virginia gentry, to his leadership during the American Revolution and the Constitutional Convention, to his reluctant return to public service as the first president of the United States.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/7-16-26.mp3
As part of GHS’s ongoing US250 commemoration—and just in time for July 4—Stan’s guest is author and historian Michael Auslin, talking about his new book, National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 2026), the inspiring story of the Declaration from the Philadelphia boardinghouse where Jefferson drafted it to its removal from Washington in 1814 to its evacuation to Fort Knox during World War II, its ink fading until it was painstakingly preserved and enshrined. Through it all, Jefferson’s words have inspired immigrants to become American and fueled a multitude of causes, from abolitionists to suffragists and Civil Rights leaders to groups waging war on the US government. As Jefferson hoped, the Declaration became a beacon to the world. But what lessons should we take from the Declaration today?
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/7-2-26.mp3
As part of GHS’s ongoing US250 commemoration, Stan and GHS President & CEO Todd Groce discuss Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s historical classic, The Imperial Presidency, first published in 1973. Writing In the shadow of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, Schlesinger ominously argued that the presidency had become uncontrollable, king-like, and unaccountable to Congress or the people, exceeding its Constitutional authority in war-making and foreign policy, governing instead through executive orders and secrecy, ultimately threatening American democracy.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/6-18-26.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is historian John Garrison Marks, discussing his new book, Thy Will Be Done: George Washington’s Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory (University of North Carolina Press, 2026), which tells the story of Americans’ long struggle to come to terms with Washington’s legacy of slavery. He traces how politicians, abolitionists, educators, activists, Washington’s former slaves and their descendants, and others have remembered, forgotten, and manipulated slavery’s place in Washington’s story, and how they have wielded versions of that story in the political and cultural fights of their time. Marks shows how generational struggles over our collective memory of Washington and slavery have always been part of a bigger conversation about defining the United States and its people.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/6-4-26.mp3
Former AJC sports writer Mark Bradley returns as Stan’s guest this week to share his memories about two Atlanta legends who died earlier this month. Bradley covered the Braves during all of Cox’s remarkable and record-breaking second tenure as manager from 1990 to 2010, including 14 consecutive division titles, 5 National League championships, and the 1995 World Series title.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/5-21-26.mp3Photo by Wally Gobetz
Stan’s guest this week is historian Glenn McNair, talking about his life and career in law enforcement—as a Savannah police officer, Secret Service agent, with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms—his 25 years as teacher and historian at Kenyon College, and his 16-year tenure as editor of the Georgia Historical Quarterly, the scholarly journal of the Georgia Historical Society.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/5-7-26.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is UGA professor Daniel Rood, talking about his new book, In the Shadow of the Great House: A History of the Plantation in America (W.W. Norton, 2026), a new history of American slavery and American capitalism. The plantation traces its roots to the Portuguese conquest of an island in the Atlantic in the 1500s and reached its most powerful manifestation in the United States. But Rood argues in this provocative new history that plantations did not end with the Civil War but metastasized across space and time and can still be found today, touching nearly every aspect of our lives.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/4-23-26.mp3
How is it that a country founded in fear of a standing army would come to think of its military as a bulwark of democracy? Why has there never been a military coup in the United States? As part of GHS’s ongoing US250 commemoration, Stan’s guest this week is Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute, talking about her new book, The State and the Soldier: A History of Civil-Military Relations in the United States (Polity, 2025).
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/4-9-26.mp3Version 1.0.0
As part of GHS’s ongoing commemoration of the US250, Stan’s guest this week is author and historian Ryan L. Cole, discussing his new book, The Last Adieu: Lafayette’s Triumphant Return, the Echoes of Revolution, and the Gratitude of the Republic (Harper Horizon, 2025). The Marquis de Lafayette arrived in America in 1777 to fight in Washington’s army, becoming a major general at age 19. In 1824, the “Hero of Two Worlds” returned on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the American Revolution, one of the last living links to that momentous event. Lafayette traveled more than 6,000 miles across all 24 states, reminding Americans of their Revolutionary heritage just in time for the country’s Golden Jubilee.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/3-26-26.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is Larry Thompson, former Deputy Attorney General of the United States during the administration of President George W. Bush, and author of a recently published memoir, Quiet Counsel: Looking Back on a Life of Service to the Law (Disruption Books, 2024). Larry—who also serves on the GHS Board of Curators—discusses his childhood in segregated Missouri, his remarkable parents, attending law school at the University of Michigan, his service as United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, his work at the Justice Department, his memories of 9/11, and the importance of the rule of law as we approach the US250.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/3-12-26.mp3
As part of GHS’s ongoing US250 commemoration, Stan’s guest this week is author and historian Andrew Burstein, talking about his new book, Being Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (Bloomsbury, 2026). Burstein is a nationally recognized authority on Jefferson, the author of ten books, co-author of two others, recently retired as Charles P. Manship Professor of History at LSU. He advised and served as on-air commentator on Ken Burns’ acclaimed 1997 film, Thomas Jefferson. His new book is “the deepest dive yet into the heart and soul, secret affairs, unexplored alliances, and bitter feuds of this generally worshipped, intermittently reviled American icon.” Perhaps no founding father is as mysterious as Thomas Jefferson. What did it feel like to be Thomas Jefferson?
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/2-26-26.mp3
As part of GHS’s ongoing US250 commemoration, Stan’s guest this week is historian and British native Richard Bell, talking about his new book, The American Revolution and the Fate of the World (Penguin/Riverhead, 2025), which offers a global perspective on the American independence movement. Bell puts the Revolution at the center of an international web, and his narrative ranges from Canada to the Caribbean, from India to Central America, and from West Florida to Australia. As his lens widens, the War of Independence becomes a sprawling struggle that upended the lives of millions of people on every continent and fundamentally transformed the way the world works, disrupting trade, restructuring penal systems, stirring famine, and creating the first global refugee crisis.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/2-11-26.mp3
As part of GHS’s ongoing commemoration of the US250, Stan’s guest this week is author and historian Edward J. Larson, discussing his new book, Declaring Independence: Why 1776 Matters (WW Norton, 2026). At the beginning of 1776, virtually no one in the American colonies advocated for independence: Americans based their grievances against Parliament on their rights as British subjects. By the mid-point of 1776, the United States was an independent republic. How did it happen, why did they choose a republic and not another king, and what does it mean for us now, 250 years later?
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/1-29-26.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is GHS President and CEO Dr. Todd Groce, talking about the 250th anniversary of the United States, upcoming this year on July 4, 2026. What does this anniversary mean for our country and its people, especially given the divisive times in which we live? We’ll discuss the ongoing legacy of the Revolution and what GHS is doing to commemorate this important anniversary.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/1-15-26.mp3
This week Stan kicks off the new year by reviewing his reading in 2025: how many books and pages, fiction and non-fiction, as well as the other ways he works reading into his life: audiobooks, podcasts, blogs, newspapers, and magazines. He also revisits and offers tips on age-old reading problems, including: setting reading goals (or not), how to get more reading into your life, reading in a distracted age, suffering from reading guilt and how to conquer it, and more.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/1-2-26.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is Marci Pelzer, Dan Pelzer’s daughter, who talks about her father, his reading habits, and what it was like growing up with the man whose now-famous reading list of 3,599 books has inspired a whole new generation of readers across the world.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/12-4-25.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is author and former This Old House host Steve Thomas, discussing the revised and expanded version of his book, The Last Navigator: A Young Man, an Ancient Mariner, the Secrets of the Sea (Abbeville Press). Steve hosted PBS’s This Old House for fourteen years, from 1989 through 2003, during which the show rose to the top of PBS’s list of most-watched ongoing series. He was honored with a 1997-1998 Daytime Emmy Award and in 2022 received a Lifetime Achievement Emmy for his work. A lifelong sailor, Steve developed a fascination with ancient methods of navigation. For thousands of years, the peoples of Oceania sailed across the Pacific without compass or charts, guided only by the stars, waves, and the flight paths of birds. In search of this secret knowledge, Steve traveled to the tiny island of Satawal in Micronesia, and his book he tells the story of how he convinced one of the last surviving navigators to accept him as his student and teach him the closely guarded Talk of Navigation. Forty years after his original journey, Steve has worked with a new generation of researchers and natives of Satawal to publish a revised edition of The Last Navigator.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/11-20-25.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is author Leo Damrosch of Harvard University, discussing Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson (Yale University Press), his new biography of the author of Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Kidnapped. Stevenson’s short but adventurous life matched the magic of his writing. Damrosch discusses how Stevenson in his 44 years wrote 11 novels and hundreds of essays and poems, while creating some of the most memorable characters in literature: Long John Silver, Jim Hawkins, Dr. Livesay, Squire Trelawny, Billy Bones, Ben Gunn, David Balfour, Alan Stewart, Henry Jekyll, Edward Hyde, and scores of others.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/11-6-25.mp3Version 1.0.0
Stan’s guest this week is Georgia native and journalist Tom Johnson, whose remarkable career took him from Macon, where he worked for legendary newspaperman Peyton Anderson, to UGA’s Grady College of Journalism, to White House Fellow during President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, to publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and finally as president of CNN during the crucial years of the 1990s during the invasion of Kuwait and the fall of the Soviet Union. Tom talks about his new memoir, Driven: A Life in Public Service and Journalism from LBJ to CNN, published this month by the University of Georgia Press.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/10-8-25.mp3Version 1.0.0
Stan’s guest this week is journalist and author Guy Gugliotta, discussing his new book, Grant’s Enforcer: Taking Down the Klan, published on April 15 of this year by the University of Georgia Press. It’s the story of how Amos T. Akerman, a Georgian, was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1870 to become the Attorney General of the United States, the first to lead the newly created Department of Justice, and how he waged war against and defeated the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan.
Please note, due to a recording equipment glitch, portions of the audio may sound distorted. Even still, we think you’ll enjoy this conversation!
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/9-25-25.mp3Version 1.0.0
Dan Pelzer died in July at age 92 and left behind a detailed list of every book he read from 1962 to 2023, totaling 3,599 books across 62 years—all of them checked out of his local library. His list went viral after his children wanted to print it and hand it out at his funeral, choosing to post it online instead. Stan explores Dan’s impressive reading list and many of the titles he read, and how it’s inspired him and so many others to “read a good page turner.”
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/9-11-25.mp3
Did Hernando De Soto travel near what is now DeSoto Falls in North Georgia? Or Desoto, Georgia, in Sumter County? Why don’t we know where he went and why is the evidence so hard to find? Stan’s guest this week is Dennis Blanton, professor of anthropology at James Madison University, author of Conquistador’s Wake: Tracking the Legacy of Hernando De Soto in the Indigenous Southeast (UGA Press, 2020). Dr. Blanton discusses the myths and realities of De Soto’s 16th-century expedition, based on his years of painstaking archaeological research—and how his current finds in southwest Georgia may re-define what we know about the infamous Conquistador’s entrada.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/8-6-25.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is long-time Atlanta Journal-Constitution sports columnist Mark Bradley, who retired from the AJC last December after 46 years as a sports journalist. Mark shares some of his favorite moments in Georgia sports history across nearly five decades, including the joys of two Braves World Series championships, the crushing Falcons Super Bowl loss, as well as the ups and downs of tight deadlines, covering lousy teams, and why the current Braves are painful to watch.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/7-17-25.mp3
Stan opens Season 9 of Off the Deaton Path talking about his summer reading (so far)—books by Nina Stibbe, Jane Gardam, Leah Hager Cohen, Helene Hanff, James Hilton, Ferrol Sams—short thoughts on the Braves lousy season (so far), a sneak peek at upcoming podcasts, and AJC political writer Jim Galloway on the 1956 Georgia state flag in the summer GHQ.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/7-2-25.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is NYU professor Robert Cohen, who discusses his new book, Confronting Jim Crow: Race, Memory, and the University of Georgia in the Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2024). Cohen focuses his lens on UGA’s controversial and violent desegregation in 1961 and the ways that event has been remembered and commemorated in all the years since.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/6-20-25.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is Harvard historian Joyce Chaplin, who discusses her new book, The Franklin Stove: An Unintended American Revolution (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2025). Was Ben Franklin the first climate scientist? The Franklin stove became one of the Revolutionary era’s most iconic consumer products, spreading from Pennsylvania to Italy, and beyond. It was also a hypothesis. Armed with science, Franklin proposed to invent his way out of a climate crisis: a period of global cooling known as the Little Ice Age, when unusually bitter winters brought life to a standstill. He believed that his stove could provide snug indoor comfort despite another, related crisis: a shortage of wood caused by widespread deforestation. Joyce Chaplin demonstrates that it’s not so easy to engineer our way out of a climate crisis, an ongoing challenge as old as the United States itself.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/6-5-25.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is Pulitzer-Prize winner Rick Atkinson discussing his new book, The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780, Volume 2 of his Revolution Trilogy, published on April 29 by Crown. Rick discusses the crucial events and people—including the Siege of Savannah, Lafayette, Hamilton and Benedict Arnold—covered in his book, how he researches and writes, and his major role in Ken Burns’s upcoming Revolution documentary.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/5-22-25.mp3
May 8, 2025, marks the 80th anniversary of V-E Day, the Allied victory in Europe over Nazi Germany. Stan’s guest this week is acclaimed author Robert Edsel, talking about his new book, Remember Us, the extraordinary story of the liberation of the Dutch people and the creation of the American Netherlands Cemetery. It is a riveting account of freedom, sacrifice, and eternal gratitude. Edsel is the author of The Monuments Men, and is recognized as one of the world’s foremost advocates for art preservation and the recovery of cultural treasures missing since World War II.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/5-7-25.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is historian Judith Giesberg, discussing her riveting new book, Last Seen: The Enduring Search By Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families, published in February by Simon and Schuster. Slavery broke many families apart, and Giesberg’s book details the fascinating and often heartbreaking search for lost children, parents, and other family members in the half century after the Civil War.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4-24-25.mp3
Stan’s guest is award-winning author and GHS Dooley Distinguished Fellow Steve Oney, discussing his new book On Air (published by Avid Reader Press) on the history of National Public Radio. From “All Things Considered” to “Car Talk” and “This American Life,” from Bob Edwards to Anne Garrels to Cokie Roberts and Ira Glass, Steve covers more than 50 fascinating years of the controversial public radio network that Americans love—and love to hate.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/4-10-25.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is renowned historian John Ferling, who talks about his new (and perhaps final) book on the American Revolution, published just in time for the event’s 250th anniversary. Ferling reflects on his life and his remarkable 50-year career as one of America’s leading historians of the Founding era.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3-27-25.mp3
Will abortion be legal? Should people of the same sex be allowed to marry? Stan’s guest is UCLA law professor Stuart Banner, discussing his latest and very timely book, The Most Powerful Court in the World: A History of the Supreme Court of the United States, published in November by Oxford University Press.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/3-13-25.mp3
Do we study the deep past only to justify our present actions toward those we deem less “civilized”? Are humans fundamentally good and altruistic or mean and self-serving? Is “human nature” warlike or peaceful? Stan’s guest this week is author and historian Stefanos Geroulanos of New York University, discussing all of these issues from his new book, The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins, published in 2024 by Liveright.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2-27-25.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is renowned architect Witold Rybczynski, who discusses his new book, The Driving Machine: A Design History of the Car, published by W.W. Norton. In this wide-ranging discussion, the author reflects on why cars are reflections of our national character, from the Model T to the Range Rover, and how automotive legends like Carl Benz, Ferdinand Porsche, and Harley Earl, created the cars we love and hate, from the VW Beetle to the Mustang and the Corvette, from the SUV to the Tesla Cybertruck.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2-13-25.mp3
Do people prefer texting to face-to-face encounters? Will handwriting become obsolete? Have we lost the mental capacity for patience and boredom? And if we have, does it matter? Stan’s guest this week is author and historian Christine Rosen of the American Enterprise Institute, who tackles the impact of technology on what it means to be human in her new book, The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World (published in 2024 by WW Norton).
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1-30-25.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is historian Bennett Parten, talking about his new book, Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation, published by Simon & Schuster on January 21, 2025. Sherman’s March has remained controversial to this day, and this book is a major new interpretation of the March and its legacy in American history. Parten focuses on how the March played a significant role in ending the Civil War, due in no small part to the efforts of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who became a part of it as the US Army marched across Georgia towards Savannah.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1-16-25.mp3
This week Stan talks to Christopher Cox, Senior Scholar in Residence at the University of California, Irvine, about his new book, Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn, published in 2024 by Simon & Schuster. Cox’s focus is on Wilson’s role in the movements for women’s suffrage and racial equality, and his open hostility to both. This is a riveting, beautifully written reassessment of the heroes who fought so hard for decades to pass the Susan B. Anthony Amendment more than a century ago—and Wilson’s legacy in our own day.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1-2-25.mp3
This week Stan reviews his reading in 2024: how many books and pages, fiction and non-fiction, and offers tips on age-old reading problems, including: how to get more reading into your life, should you write in your books, reading in a distracted age, suffering from book guilt and how to conquer it, and more. Plus you’ll get an earful about the upcoming College Football Playoffs (Go Dawgs) and what the heck is Baseball’s Golden At-Bat?
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12-19-24.mp3
Stan’s guest is historian Jane Calvert, author of Penman of the Founding: A Biography of John Dickinson, published in October by Oxford University Press. Dickinson was at the forefront of the Revolutionary movement but refused to sign the Declaration of Independence and has been largely forgotten. Calvert argues in her new book that without John Dickinson there wouldn’t be a United States of America. How and why did this happen, and who was this fascinating but forgotten founder?
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12-4-24.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is historian and journalist David Greenberg of Rutgers University, talking about his new tour-de-force biography of Civil Rights icon and longtime Georgia Congressman, John Lewis: A Life, published by Simon & Schuster. Greenberg interviewed Lewis and 275 others, including Presidents Clinton and Obama, about Lewis’s rise from Alabama poverty to Bloody Sunday to public servant, the man deemed the Moral Conscience of the Congress.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/11-21-24.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is historian Paul Pressly, discussing his new book, A Southern Underground Railroad: Black Georgians and the Promise of Spanish Florida and Indian Country, published by the University of Georgia Press. It’s a tale of how enslaved men and women found freedom and human dignity outside the expanding boundaries of the United States, crossing the borders and boundaries that separated the Lowcountry from the British and Spanish in coastal Florida and from the Seminole and Creek people in the vast interior of the Southeast.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/11-7-24.mp3
Stan interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Steven Hahn about his latest book, Illiberal America: A History, which argues that what happened on January 6, 2021, was not an aberration but has deep roots in the American past.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/10-24-24.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is historian Evan Friss, author of the bestselling new release, The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, which has been getting rave reviews in national publications. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including the Strand in New York, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, the Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. “A thoroughly engaging, delightful excursion into the wondrous world of books.”
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/10-10-24.mp3
Stan interviews veteran New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney about his recent book, The Times: How the Newspaper of Record Survived Scandal, Scorn, and the Transformation of Journalism, a sweeping behind-the-scenes look at the last four turbulent decades of “the paper of record,” as it confronted world-changing events, internal scandals, and the existential threat of the internet.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/9-25-24.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is historian Greg Brooking, discussing his new book From Empire to Revolution: Sir James Wright and the Price of Loyalty in Georgia, published on July 15 by the University of Georgia Press.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/9-13-24.mp3
Stan talks to historian Jacqueline Jones about her book, No Right to An Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era, winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in History.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/8-29-24.mp3
Join Stan as he launches a new season of Off the Deaton Path with a recap of one of the most momentous weeks in American political history, plus a deep dive into Fun Facts Known By Few (a tunnel behind Lincoln’s head on Mt. Rushmore? Are you living in a nuclear sponge? What is the mysterious Greek fire? Why was the flow of the Chicago River reversed in 1900?) Also, a sneak peek at upcoming podcast author interviews, and the 45th anniversary of the death of the King.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/8-16-24.mp3
Stan interviews author Jason Friedman about his new book, Liberty Street. Jason and his husband bought a townhouse on Liberty Street in his hometown of Savannah. But that was just the beginning of a remarkable journey: “It’s a house that came with a story: the rise and fall of a Southern Jewish family and a ghost story whose long-dead characters still haunt the present. Liberty Street chronicles my journey to understand the Solomon Cohen family and the way their lives intersected with their enslaved workers, Savannah’s Jewish community, and their Christian neighbors. I became interested in the way we talk about the Civil War, its origins, and aftermath. What do we remember? Or choose to forget? I came to know the denizens of Liberty Street 150 years before I moved there, and to understand my own story as a Jew, a Southerner, and an American.”
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/5-23-24.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond, who talks about his new book, James Oglethorpe, Father of Georgia: A Founder’s Journey From Slave Trader to Abolitionist, published by the University of Georgia Press. Michael argues that Oglethorpe has never gotten credit for his pathbreaking efforts to keep slavery out of the Georgia colony and his subsequent impact on the emerging abolitionist movement in England.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/5-1-24.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is Jerry Grillo, author of Big Cat: The Life of Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Mize. Mize was born in Demorest, Georgia, and played 15 seasons in Major League Baseball and won 5 World Series.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/4-18-24.mp3
Why do the days of the week have their own particular feeling, and how did that happen? This week Stan’s guest is historian and author David Henkin from the University of California, Berkeley, discussing his book, The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms that Made Us Who We Are. We take the seven-day week for granted, rarely asking what anchors it or what it does to us, yet weeks are not dictated by the natural order. They are, in fact, an artificial construction of the modern world.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/4-12-24.mp3
How do we hold institutions accountable for the sins of the past? In this podcast, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Blight of Yale University talks with Stan about his latest book, Yale and Slavery: A History, and how he and a team of researchers uncovered Yale’s historical involvement with slavery, the slave trade, abolition, and Jim Crow—and the important role that slavery played in the creation of one of America’s most renowned institutions of higher learning.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/4-5-24.mp3
This week Stan discusses a new book on an old legend—Bigfoot—and the hope that springs eternal with the return of the Beloved Braves and Major League Baseball.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/3-28-24.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is Clayton Trutor, talking about his recent book Loserville, the winner of the Georgia Historical Society’s 2023 Bell Award for the best book in Georgia history published in 2022. Clayton discusses how Atlanta’s quest for professional sports franchises—the Braves, Falcons, Hawks, and Flames—re-shaped Atlanta and Georgia in the second half of the 20th century.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/3-6-24.mp3
This week Stan’s guest is historian and author Elizabeth Varon from the University of Virginia discussing her latest book, Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied The South. She talks about the life and career of this most controversial Georgian, from whether “Longstreet was late” at Gettysburg, and how his post-war decision to support Radical Reconstruction, Black office-holding and voting, and his post-war criticisms of Robert E. Lee all combined to nearly destroy his reputation and his life.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2-22-24.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is best-selling author Jeryn Turner, who discusses her writing life, her upbringing, books, and the inspiration behind her fulfilling life.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/12-14-23.mp3
Stan brings out his over-used crying towel and reviews the inglorious end to the Dogs’ season, reviews the College Football Playoff mess, and looks ahead to next season.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/12-7-23.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is renowned (and recovering) sociologist John Shelton Reed, who discusses his career, what’s still southern about the South, the Campaign for Real Barbecue, and writing country music lyrics.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/11-29-23.mp3
In this episode Stan brings out the crying towel and reviews the quick end to a glorious Braves season, offers his take on how to “fix” the playoffs, and looks ahead to next season.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/10-20-23.mp3
This week Stan’s guest is Kevin Levin, author of the Civil War Memory Substack blog and one of the country’s foremost experts on the history and memory of the Civil War era, including the ongoing controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and debates concerning the teaching of slavery and race in the classroom.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/10-5-23.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is Dr. Jim Cobb of the University of Georgia, talking about his new biography of historian C. Vann Woodward, one of the most distinguished and important historians of the 20th century.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/9-28-23.mp3
Stan’s guest this week is political scientist Sidney Milkis of the University of Virginia, who discusses his new book, What Happened to the Vital Center? Presidentialism, Populist Revolt, and the Fracturing of America. This is a wide-ranging discussion about American political history and the US Constitution.
https://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/9-21-23.mp3
In this podcast Stan discusses the newly available Ed Jackson Collection at GHS, Freddie Mercury’s handwritten lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Ed Ames’ tomahawk throw, and college students giving up their cellphones to take a vow of silence.
Do unexpected calls on your smart phone send you into panic mode? Should people text before calling? Do you hate text messages too? Is AI the end of the world as we know it? Stan discusses these pressing issues and more, including this year’s Pulitzer Prize winners, the travails of our beloved Braves, and the goings-on in the Fraternal Order of Tall People in Shorts.
http://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/S6E4.mp3
In this episode, Stan looks at what happened to Hitler and his top henchmen—Goebbels, Himmler, Goring, Bormann, and others. How do we know so much about the Nazis despite the lack of physical remains, monuments and statues?
http://www.deatonpath.georgiahistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2-17-23.mp3
In this episode Stan interviews Dr. Johann Neem, historian and author, whose research focuses on the history of American democracy. They discuss history in the public realm, why history has become so controversial in recent years, and where it’s all headed.
This week Stan looks back at one of the most popular TV shows ever, a Mad magazine cartoonist who left his mark on the holidays, a critical day in the American Civil War, a milestone birthday of a legendary football coach, one of the most momentous days in Olympic history, Travis McGee novels, and much ...Continue Reading »
Dayton Duncan has worked with Ken Burns for more than 30 years writing and producing some of the most important and critically acclaimed documentaries in history. In this podcast he talks about his career with Burns and Florentine Films, living part-time in Georgia, and what comes next.
Once again this year, in celebration of the spooky season Stan reads a favorite ghost story, “Rats” by the master of the genre, M.R. James, first published in 1929. Also, this week in history and a dark day in Mayberry. Draw near the fire, dim the lights, and enjoy…..
This week Stan remembers the birth and death of two iconic musicians from the 20th century, and the recent deaths of five historians whose work over the past 60 years helped redefine several eras of American history.
This week Stan revisits the death of the King, the birth of the phonograph, Buck Owens, the Aztec empire, Alfred Hitchcock, Napoleon, Margaret Mitchell, and one of the darkest episodes in Georgia history. He also remembers Rosalyn Carter’s birthday, a hero from Iwo Jima, and shares new additions to the Off the Deaton Path bookshelf.
For Independence Day, Stan talks about This Week in History (including Elvis, the CDC, the Beatles, Sherlock Holmes, Thomas Jefferson & John Adams), notes the birthday of a celebrated historian, remembers a segregationist southern governor from the Civil Rights Movement, highlights new additions to the Off the Deaton Path bookshelf, and revisits one of his ...Continue Reading »
Stan talks about This Week in History (including King George III, AIDS, RFK, Mount Everest, & Charles Dickens), remembers a record-breaking baseball player, highlights new additions to the Off the Deaton Path bookshelf, and spotlights an incredible and historic collection of golden-age comic books about to hit the auction block–and the influence of comics in ...Continue Reading »
Stan talks about This Week in History (the Stamp Act, James Jackson, Spike Lee, the first Black graduate of West Point, the Masters, Tomochichi, & Houdini), says goodbye to a pathbreaking historian and actor, spotlights new additions to the Off the Deaton Path bookshelf, and welcomes the opening of Major League Baseball.
Stan looks at the history of this quadrennial event that goes back 232 years, from the Bible Washington used to the only inauguration held on an airplane, the only president sworn in by a woman, two inaugurals almost cancelled by cold weather, and why there have been 9 "non-scheduled extraordinary" inaugurations.
This week’s guest is Keith Mason, a Gwinnett County native who served as Governor Zell Miller’s Chief of Staff and in President Bill Clinton’s administration. He was instrumental in the passage of the Georgia Lottery and the Hope Scholarship. Keith discusses political figures past and future, including Zell Miller, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, James Carville, ...Continue Reading »
For Halloween, Stan tells four of his favorite stories of people who simply vanished into thin air: The story of one of our Founding Fathers who vanished while mailing a letter; the most famous maritime missing persons mystery ever; the story of a man who literally was there one minute and gone the next; and finally ...Continue Reading »
This week Stan interviews Pulitzer Prize-winner Rick Atkinson about the first volume of his new Revolution trilogy, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Volume 1: Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777. Rick discusses researching at Windsor Castle, George III’s handwriting, walking the battlefields, Washington’s leadership, and plays “Overated/Underated.” All this plus another edition of the ever-popular This Week in History.