History Ago Go: Recent Episodes
Rob Mellon
Before 1871, Germany was not yet a nation but simply an idea. Otto von Bismarck had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser, convincing proud Prussians, Bavarians and Rhinelanders to become Germans? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France – all without destroying itself in the process?
In a unique study of five decades that changed the course of modern history, Katja Hoyer tells the story of the German Empire from its violent beginnings to its calamitous defeat in the First World War. This often-startling narrative is a dramatic tale of national self-discovery, social upheaval and realpolitik that ended, as it started, in blood and iron.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Copper Legend Octoberfest, Jack's Abby Craft Lagers, Framingham, Massachusetts
BOOK: Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Iron-German-Empire-1871-1918/dp/0750998598/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2W28Z4OL447V6&keywords=blood+and+iron+katja+hoyer&qid=1665249853&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjk3IiwicXNhIjoiMS43NyIsInFzcCI6IjEuODAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=blood+and+iron%2Caps%2C597&sr=8-1
MUSIC: BoneS Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
As Adolph Hitler rose to power in 1930s Germany, a growing wave of fascism began to take root on American soil. Nazi activists started to gather in major American cities, and by 1933, there were more than one-hundred anti-Semitic groups operating openly in the United States. Few Americans dared to speak out or fight back—until an organized resistance of notorious mobsters waged their own personal war against the Nazis in their midst. Gangland-style. . . .
Packed with surprising, little-known facts, graphic details, and unforgettable personalities, Gangsters vs. Nazis chronicles the mob’s most ruthless tactics in taking down fascism—inspiring ordinary Americans to join them in their fight. The book culminates in one of the most infamous events of the pre-war era—the 1939 Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden—in which law-abiding citizens stood alongside hardened criminals to fight for the soul of a nation. This is the story of the mob that’s rarely told—one of the most fascinating chapters in American history and American organized crime.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Almost Famous New England IPA, Torch and Crown Brewing Company, New York, New York
BOOK: Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in WW2 Era America
https://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-vs-Nazis-Mobsters-Battled/dp/0806541792/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2LJYOXW8FOQYF&keywords=gangsters+vs+nazis+michael+benson&qid=1664750956&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjI3IiwicXNhIjoiMS4wMiIsInFzcCI6IjEuMjMifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=gangsters+vs+%2Caps%2C158&sr=8-1
MUSIC: BoneS Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Dr. Patrick Hotle discusses the ill-fated and disastrous Fourth Crusade. Starting with a lively medieval tournament to the Crusader army working with the Venetians to the palace intrigue of the Byzantine Empire. The story includes interesting characters, twists and turns, fights against other Christians, and spoiler alert the journey never made it to the Holy Land - if that was ever the target to begin with.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Lost Lager, BrewDog Brewery, Columbus, Ohio
MUSIC: BoneS Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
On the morning of November 4, 2019, an unassuming caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen on a desolate stretch of road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Firing semi-automatic weapons, the attackers killed nine people and gravely injured five more. The victims were members of the LeBaron and La Mora communities―fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears broke from the LDS Church and settled in Mexico when their religion outlawed polygamy in the late nineteenth century. The massacre produced international headlines for weeks, and prompted President Donald Trump to threaten to send in the US Army.
In The Colony, bestselling investigative journalist Sally Denton picks up where the initial, incomplete reporting on the attacks ended, and delves into the complex story of the LeBaron clan. Their homestead―Colonia LeBaron―is a portal into the past, a place that offers a glimpse of life within a polygamous community on an arid and dangerous frontier in the mid-1800s, though with smartphones and machine guns. Rooting her narrative in written sources as well as interviews with anonymous women from LeBaron itself, Denton unfolds an epic, disturbing tale that spans the first polygamist emigrations to Mexico through the LeBarons’ internal blood feud in the 1970s―started by Ervil LeBaron, known as the “Mormon Manson”―and up to the family’s recent alliance with the NXIVM sex cult, whose now-imprisoned leader, Keith Raniere, may have based his practices on the society he witnessed in Colonia LeBaron.
A mesmerizing feat of investigative journalism, The Colony doubles as an unforgettable account of sisterhood that can flourish in polygamist communities, against the odds.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Sucker Punch Watermelon Sour, Three Nations Brewing Company, Carrollton, Texas
BOOK: The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land
https://www.amazon.com/Colony-Faith-Blood-Promised-Land/dp/163149807X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=sally+denton&qid=1663638544&s=books&sr=1-1
MUSIC: BoneS Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, his papers were sealed in the Vatican Secret Archives, leaving unanswered questions about what he knew and did during World War II. Those questions have only grown and festered, making Pius XII one of the most controversial popes in Church history, especially now as the Vatican prepares to canonize him.
In 2020, Pius XII’s archives were finally opened, and David I. Kertzer—widely recognized as one of the world’s leading Vatican scholars—has been mining this new material ever since, revealing how the pope came to set aside moral leadership in order to preserve his church’s power.
Based on thousands of never-before-seen documents not only from the Vatican, but from archives in Italy, Germany, France, Britain, and the United States, The Pope at War paints a new, dramatic portrait of what the pope did and did not do as war enveloped the continent and as the Nazis began their systematic mass murder of Europe’s Jews. The book clears away the myths and sheer falsehoods surrounding the pope’s actions from 1939 to 1945, showing why the pope repeatedly bent to the wills of Hitler and Mussolini.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Pope's Imperial Pumpkin Ale, Millersburg Brewing Company, Millersburg, Ohio
BOOK: The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler
https://www.amazon.com/Pope-War-Secret-History-Mussolini/dp/0812989945/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=david+kertzer&qid=1663123186&s=books&sr=1-2
MUSIC: BoneS Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Every president has had a unique and complicated relationship with the intelligence community. While some have been coolly distant, even adversarial, others have found their intelligence agencies to be among the most valuable instruments of policy and power.
The details of most PDBs are highly classified, and will remain so for many years. But the process by which the intelligence community develops and presents the Book is a fascinating look into the operation of power at the highest levels. David Priess, a former intelligence officer and daily briefer, has interviewed every living president and vice president as well as more than one hundred others intimately involved with the production and delivery of the president's book of secrets. He offers an unprecedented window into the decision making of every president from Kennedy to Obama, with many character-rich stories revealed here for the first time.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Singel Belgian-style Blonde Ale, Hardywood Park Craft Brewery, Richmond, Virginia
BOOK: The President's Book of Secrets: The Untold Story of Intelligence Briefings to American Presidents
https://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Book-Secrets-Intelligence-Briefings/dp/161039769X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
The outlandish, hilarious, terrifying, and almost impossible-to-believe story of the legendary, dangerous amusement park where millions were entertained and almost as many bruises were sustained, told through the eyes of the founder's son.
Often called "Accident Park," "Class Action Park," or "Traction Park," Action Park was an American icon. Entertaining more than a million people a year in the 1980s, the New Jersey-based amusement playland placed no limits on danger or fun, a monument to the anything-goes spirit of the era that left guests in control of their own adventures--sometimes with tragic results. Though it closed its doors in 1996 after nearly twenty years, it has remained a subject of constant fascination ever since, an establishment completely anathema to our modern culture of rules and safety. Action Park is the first-ever unvarnished look at the history of this DIY Disneyland, as seen through the eyes of Andy Mulvihill, the son of the park's idiosyncratic founder, Gene Mulvihill. From his early days testing precarious rides to working his way up to chief lifeguard of the infamous Wave Pool to later helping run the whole park, Andy's story is equal parts hilarious and moving, chronicling the life and death of a uniquely American attraction, a wet and wild 1980s adolescence, and a son's struggle to understand his father's quixotic quest to become the Walt Disney of New Jersey. Packing in all of the excitement of a day at Action Park, this is destined to be one of the most unforgettable memoirs of the year.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: A Sunny Day American IPA, Five Dimes Brewery, Westwood, New Jersey
BOOK: Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park
https://www.amazon.com/Action-Park-Andy-Mulvihill/dp/0143134515/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3U2KWYLUVD7SQ&keywords=action+park&qid=1661136252&sprefix=action+park%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-2
MUSIC: BoneS Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
His comrades called him “Killer.” Of the elite paratroopers who served in the venerated “Band of Brothers” during the Second World War, none were more enigmatic than Ronald Speirs. Rumored to have gunned down enemy prisoners and even one of his own disobedient sergeants, Speirs became a foxhole legend among his troops. But who was the real Lieutenant Speirs?
In Fierce Valor, historians Jared Frederick and Erik Dorr unveil the fuller story of Easy Company’s longest-serving commander. Tested by trials of extreme training, military rivalry, and lost love, Speirs’s international odyssey begins as an immigrant child in Prohibition-era Boston and continues through the bloody campaigns of France, Holland, and Germany. But 1945 did not mark an end to Speirs’s military adventures. Uncovered by sharp scholarship, his lesser-known exploits in Korea, the Cold War, and embattled Laos also come to light for the first time.
Packed with groundbreaking research, Fierce Valor unveils a compelling portrait of an officer defined by boldness on the battlefield and the inherent costs of war. His story serves as a telling reminder that few soldiers escape the power of their own pasts.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Paratrooper Porter, Veterans United Craft Brewery, Jacksonville, Florida
BOOK: Fierce Valor: The True Story of Ronald Speirs and his Band of Brothers
https://www.amazon.com/Fierce-Valor-Ronald-Speirs-Brothers/dp/1684511992/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DOBN07CXN24B&keywords=jared+frederick&qid=1660187675&sprefix=jared+freder%2Caps%2C449&sr=8-1
MUSIC: https://bonesfork.com/
The heroic story of the founding of the U.S. Navy during the Revolution has been told many times, yet largely missing from maritime histories of America’s first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels that truly revealed the new nation’s character―above all, its ambition and entrepreneurial ethos.
In Rebels at Sea, best-selling historian Eric Jay Dolin corrects that significant omission, and contends that privateers, as they were called, were in fact critical to the American victory. Privateers were privately owned vessels, mostly refitted merchant ships, that were granted permission by the new government to seize British merchantmen and men of war. As Dolin stirringly demonstrates, at a time when the young Continental Navy numbered no more than about sixty vessels all told, privateers rushed to fill the gaps. Nearly 2,000 set sail over the course of the war, with tens of thousands of Americans serving on them and capturing some 1,800 British ships. Privateers came in all shapes and sizes, from twenty-five foot long whaleboats to full-rigged ships more than 100 feet long. Bristling with cannons, swivel guns, muskets, and pikes, they tormented their foes on the broad Atlantic and in bays and harbors on both sides of the ocean.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: SeaQuench Ale, Dogfish Head Brewery, Milton, Delaware
BOOK: Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution
https://www.amazon.com/Rebels-Sea-Privateering-American-Revolution/dp/1631498258/ref=sr_1_1?crid=OCQS2IIHBF3J&keywords=rebels+at+sea&qid=1658348628&sprefix=rebels+at%2Caps%2C96&sr=8-1
MUSIC: boneS Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Known as the “Father of the Nuclear Navy,” Admiral Hyman George Rickover (1899–1986) remains an almost mythical figure in the United States Navy. A brilliant engineer with a ferocious will and combative personality, he oversaw the invention of the world’s first practical nuclear power reactor. As important as the transition from sail to steam, his development of nuclear-propelled submarines and ships transformed naval power and Cold War strategy. They still influence world affairs today.
His disdain for naval regulations, indifference to the chain of command, and harsh, insulting language earned him enemies in the navy, but his achievements won him powerful friends in Congress and the White House. A Jew born in a Polish shtetl, Rickover ultimately became the longest-serving U.S. military officer in history.
In this exciting new biography, historian Marc Wortman explores the constant conflict Rickover faced and provoked, tracing how he revolutionized the navy and Cold War strategy.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Sea Hag IPA, New England Brewing Company, Woodbridge, Connecticut
BOOK: Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power
https://www.amazon.com/Admiral-Hyman-Rickover-Engineer-Jewish/dp/0300243103/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2K5836S72R4IB&keywords=marc+wortman+rickover&qid=1657245199&sprefix=marc+wort%2Caps%2C204&sr=8-1
MUSIC: BoneS Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
When Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the 48 percent who wanted to stay and the 52 percent who wanted to go each accused the other of stupidity, fraud, and treason. In reality, the Brexit debate merely reran a script written ten thousand years earlier, when the rising seas physically separated the British Isles from the European continent. Ever since, geography has been destiny―yet it is humans who get to decide what that destiny means.
Ian Morris, the critically acclaimed author of Why the West Rules―for Now, describes how technology and organization have steadily enlarged Britain’s arena, and how its people have tried to turn this to their advantage. For the first seventy-five hundred years, the British were never more than bit players at the western edge of a European stage, struggling to find a role among bigger, richer, and more sophisticated continental rivals. By 1500 CE, however, new kinds of ships and governments had turned the European stage into an Atlantic one; with the English Channel now functioning as a barrier, England transformed the British Isles into a United Kingdom that created a worldwide empire. Since 1900, thanks to rapid globalization, Britain has been overshadowed by American, European, and―increasingly―Chinese actors.
In trying to find its place in a global economy, Britain has been looking in all the wrong places. The ten-thousand-year story bracingly chronicled by Geography Is Destiny shows that the great question for the current century is not what to do about Brussels; it’s what to do about Beijing.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Laughing Monk Holy Ghost Pilsner, Rose and Crown Pub, Palo Alto, California
BOOK: Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History
https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Destiny-Britains-000-Year-History/dp/0374157278/ref=sr_1_1?crid=R24C7TCGUGOM&keywords=ian+morris+geography+is+destiny&qid=1655264272&sprefix=ian+morris+geo%2Caps%2C433&sr=8-1
MUSIC: BoneS Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
What would Willa Cather's widely read and cherished novels have looked like if she had never met magazine editor and copywriter Edith Lewis? In this groundbreaking book on Cather's relationship with her life partner, author Melissa J. Homestead counters the established portrayal of Cather as a solitary genius and reassesses the role that Lewis, who has so far been rendered largely invisible by scholars, played in shaping Cather's work. Inviting Lewis to share the spotlight alongside this pivotal American writer, Homestead argues that Lewis was not just Cather's companion but also her close literary collaborator and editor.
Drawing on an array of previously unpublished sources, Homestead skillfully reconstructs Cather and Lewis's life together, from their time in New York City to their travels in the American Southwest that formed the basis of the novels The Professor's House and Death Comes for the Archbishop. After Cather's death and in the midst of the Cold War panic over homosexuality, the story of her life with Edith Lewis could not be told, but by telling it now, Homestead offers a refreshing take on lesbian life in early twentieth-century America.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Transcendental Cloudscape, Boiler Brewing Company, Lincoln, Nebraska
BOOK: The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather & Edith Lewis
https://www.amazon.com/Only-Wonderful-Things-Creative-Partnership/dp/019065287X/ref=sr_1_6?crid=XANO588EXJF1&keywords=willa+cather+homestead&qid=1654314701&sprefix=willa+cather+homestead%2Caps%2C97&sr=8-6
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind’s military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. Bodies were battered, gouged, hacked, and gassed. The First World War claimed millions of lives and left millions more wounded and disfigured. In the midst of this brutality, however, there were also those who strove to alleviate suffering. The Facemaker tells the extraordinary story of such an individual: the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who dedicated himself to reconstructing the burned and broken faces of the injured soldiers under his care.
Gillies, a Cambridge-educated New Zealander, became interested in the nascent field of plastic surgery after encountering the human wreckage on the front. Returning to Britain, he established one of the world’s first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction. There, Gillies assembled a unique group of practitioners whose task was to rebuild what had been torn apart, to re-create what had been destroyed. At a time when losing a limb made a soldier a hero, but losing a face made him a monster to a society largely intolerant of disfigurement, Gillies restored not just the faces of the wounded but also their spirits.
The Facemaker places Gillies’s ingenious surgical innovations alongside the dramatic stories of soldiers whose lives were wrecked and repaired. The result is a vivid account of how medicine can be an art, and of what courage and imagination can accomplish in the presence of relentless horror.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Dark Matter, Hoyne Brewing Company, Victoria, British Columbia
BOOK: The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I
https://www.amazon.com/Facemaker-Visionary-Surgeons-Disfigured-Soldiers/dp/0374282307/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1TJ250O6VH0FZ&keywords=the+facemaker&qid=1653953986&sprefix=the+facemaker%2Caps%2C116&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
The Supreme Court is usually seen as protector of our liberties: it ended segregation, was a guarantor of fair trials, and safeguarded free speech and the vote. But this narrative derives mostly from a short period, from the 1930s to the early 1970s. Before then, the Court spent a century largely ignoring or suppressing basic rights, while the fifty years since 1970 have witnessed a mostly accelerating retreat from racial justice.
From the Cherokee Trail of Tears to Brown v. Board of Education to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, historian Orville Vernon Burton and civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the Court’s race record―a legacy at times uplifting, but more often distressing and sometimes disgraceful. For nearly a century, the Court ensured that the nineteenth-century Reconstruction Amendments would not truly free and enfranchise African Americans. And the twenty-first century has seen a steady erosion of commitments to enforcing hard-won rights.
Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the Court’s race jurisprudence. Addressing nearly two hundred cases involving America’s racial minorities, the authors probe the parties involved, the justices’ reasoning, and the impact of individual rulings. We learn of heroes such as Thurgood Marshall; villains, including Roger Taney; and enigmas like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Hugo Black. Much of the fragility of civil rights in America is due to the Supreme Court, but as this sweeping history also reminds us, the justices still have the power to make good on the country’s promise of equal rights for all.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Lowcountry Lager, Palmetto Brewing Company, Charleston, South Carolina
BOOK: Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court
https://www.amazon.com/Justice-Deferred-Race-Supreme-Court/dp/0674975642/ref=sr_1_1?crid=30T9ZFZCXRMRL&keywords=vernon+burton+justice&qid=1653778788&sprefix=vernon+burton+justic%2Caps%2C185&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
The past few years have seen relations between China and the United States shift, from enthusiastic economic partners, to wary frenemies, to open rivals. Americans have been slow to wake up to the challenges posed by the Chinese Communist Party. Why did this happen? And what can we do about it?
In America Second, Isaac Stone Fish traces the evolution of the Party’s influence in America. He shows how America’s leaders initially welcomed China’s entry into the U.S. economy, believing that trade and engagement would lead to a more democratic China. And he explains how—although this belief has proved misguided--many of our businesspeople and politicians have become too dependent on China to challenge it.
America Second exposes a deep network of Beijing’s influence in America, built quietly over the years through prominent figures like former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, Disney chairman Bob Iger, and members of the Bush family. And it shows how to fight that influence–without being paranoid, xenophobic, or racist. This is an authoritative and important story of corruption and good intentions gone wrong, with serious implications not only for the future of the United States, but for the world at large.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Golden Dragon Asian-style Golden Ale, Asian Brothers Brewing Company, Isleton, California
BOOK: America Second: How America's Elites Are Making China Stronger
https://www.amazon.com/America-Second-Americas-Elites-Stronger/dp/0525657703/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1AYG8EKNNIK8D&keywords=america+second&qid=1652841634&sprefix=america+se%2Caps%2C785&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Detailed profiles of ten amazing women who lived in the Old West. They dared to step outside the traditional roles of wife and mother, and left society’s conventions behind them. These women engaged in a wide range of interests and professions, and their stories will inspire and entertain. They overcame incredible odds to make a place for themselves in their chosen world, despite the sometimes strong objections of both men and women. Each blazed new trails for women who would come after them. We all owe them a debt of gratitude for their strong will and perseverance.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Freestyle Pilsner, Santa Fe Brewing Company, Santa Fe, New Mexico
BOOK: Scandalous Women Of The Old West: Women Who Dared To Be Different
https://www.amazon.com/Scandalous-Women-Old-West-Different/dp/B08JRP1TLH/ref=sr_1_2?crid=6NHKH1X5COAK&keywords=pedace&qid=1651453268&sprefix=ped%2Caps%2C1071&sr=8-2
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Mostly hidden from public view, like an embarrassing family secret, scores of putative locks of George Washington’s hair are held, more than two centuries after his death, in the collections of America’s historical societies, public and academic archives, and museums. Excavating the origins of these bodily artifacts, Keith Beutler uncovers a forgotten strand of early American memory practices and emerging patriotic identity.
Between 1790 and 1840, popular memory took a turn toward the physical, as exemplified by the craze for collecting locks of Washington’s hair. These new, sensory views of memory enabled African American Revolutionary War veterans, women, evangelicals, and other politically marginalized groups to enter the public square as both conveyors of these material relics of the Revolution and living relics themselves.
George Washington’s Hair introduces us to a taxidermist who sought to stuff Benjamin Franklin’s body, an African American storyteller brandishing a lock of Washington’s hair, an evangelical preacher burned in effigy, and a schoolmistress who politicized patriotic memory by privileging women as its primary bearers. As Beutler recounts in vivid prose, these and other ordinary Americans successfully enlisted memory practices rooted in the physical to demand a place in the body politic, powerfully contributing to antebellum political democratization.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Elusive Memory New England Style IPA, Good City Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
BOOK: George Washington's Hair: How Early Americans Remembered the Founders
https://www.amazon.com/George-Washingtons-Hair-Americans-Remembered/dp/0813946506/ref=sr_1_1?crid=10OH3SXX5E0X3&keywords=washington%27s+hair&qid=1650320153&sprefix=washington%27s+hair%2Caps%2C106&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins to recast the way in which we view the Second World War and its origins and aftermath. As one of Britain’s most decorated and respected World War II historians, he argues that this was the “last imperial war,” with almost a century-long lead-up of global imperial expansion, which reached its peak in the territorial ambitions of Italy, Germany and Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s, before descending into the largest and costliest war in human history and the end, after 1945, of all territorial empires.
Overy also argues for a more global perspective on the war, one that looks broader than the typical focus on military conflict between the Allied and Axis states. Above all, Overy explains the bitter cost for those involved in fighting, and the exceptional level of crime and atrocity that marked the war and its protracted aftermath—which extended far beyond 1945.
Blood and Ruins is a masterpiece, a new and definitive look at the ultimate struggle over the future of the global order, which will compel us to view the war in novel and unfamiliar ways. Thought-provoking, original and challenging, Blood and Ruins sets out to understand the war anew.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Spitfire English Brown Ale, Tailspin Brewing Company, Coldwater, Ohio
BOOK: Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Ruins-Last-Imperial-1931-1945/dp/067002516X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3GXUJI9NJ8P5F&keywords=blood+and+ruins+the+great+imperial+war%2C+1931-1945&qid=1650139198&sprefix=blood+and+%2Caps%2C129&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
What causes people to forsake their country and take arms against it? What prompts their neighbors, hardly distinguishable in station or success, to defend that country against the rebels? That is the question H. W. Brands answers in his powerful new history of the American Revolution.
George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were the unlikeliest of rebels. Washington in the 1770s stood at the apex of Virginia society. Franklin was more successful still, having risen from humble origins to world fame. John Adams might have seemed a more obvious candidate for rebellion, being of cantankerous temperament. Even so, he revered the law. Yet all three men became rebels against the British Empire that fostered their success.
Others in the same circle of family and friends chose differently. William Franklin might have been expected to join his father, Benjamin, in rebellion but remained loyal to the British. So did Thomas Hutchinson, a royal governor and friend of the Franklins, and Joseph Galloway, an early challenger to the Crown. They soon heard themselves denounced as traitors--for not having betrayed the country where they grew up. Native Americans and the enslaved were also forced to choose sides as civil war broke out around them.
After the Revolution, the Patriots were cast as heroes and founding fathers while the Loyalists were relegated to bit parts best forgotten. Our First Civil War reminds us that before America could win its revolution against Britain, the Patriots had to win a bitter civil war against family, neighbors, and friends.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Washington's Porter, Yards Brewing Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
BOOK: Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution
https://www.amazon.com/Our-First-Civil-War-Revolution/dp/0385546513/ref=sr_1_1?crid=14MCBU3L483L9&keywords=our+first+civil+war+hw+brands&qid=1649163061&sprefix=our+first+civil+%2Caps%2C120&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
In this sweeping saga that spans empires, peoples, and nations, M. Scott Heerman chronicles the long history of slavery in the heart of the continent and traces its many iterations through law and social practice. Arguing that slavery had no fixed institutional form, Heerman traces practices of slavery through indigenous, French, and finally U.S. systems of captivity, inheritable slavery, lifelong indentureship, and the kidnapping of free people. By connecting the history of indigenous bondage to that of slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic world, Heerman shows how French, Spanish, and Native North American practices shaped the history of slavery in the United States.
The Alchemy of Slavery foregrounds the diverse and adaptable slaving practices that masters deployed to build a slave economy in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, attempting to outmaneuver their antislavery opponents. In time, a formidable cast of lawyers and antislavery activists set their sights on ending slavery in Illinois. Abraham Lincoln, Lyman Trumbull, Richard Yates, and many other future leaders of the Republican party partnered with African Americans to wage an extended campaign against slavery in the region. Across a century and a half, slavery's nearly perpetual reinvention takes center stage: masters turning Indian captives into slaves, slaves into servants, former slaves into kidnapping victims; and enslaved people turning themselves into free men and women.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Freedom Tower American Amber Ale, Tank Brewing Company, Miami, Florida
BOOK: The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, 1730-1865
https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Slavery-Emancipation-1730-1865-Nineteenth/dp/0812225171/ref=sr_1_1?crid=33YTB0LB0FVI5&keywords=the+alchemy+of+slavery&qid=1649022104&sprefix=the+alchemy+of+slave%2Caps%2C656&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
A rollicking true-crime adventure about a rogue who trades in rare birds and their eggs—and the wildlife detective determined to stop him.
On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain’s Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were fourteen rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales.
So begins a tale almost too bizarre to believe, following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions—and Detective Andy McWilliam of the United Kingdom’s National Wildlife Crime Unit, who’s hell bent on protecting the world’s birds of prey.
The Falcon Thief whisks readers from the volcanoes of Patagonia to Zimbabwe’s Matobo National Park, and from the frigid tundra near the Arctic Circle to luxurious aviaries in the deserts of Dubai, all in pursuit of a man who is reckless, arrogant, and gripped by a destructive compulsion to make the most beautiful creatures in nature his own. It’s a story that’s part true-crime narrative, part epic adventure—and wholly unputdownable until the very last page.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Red Falcon Premium Ale, Falcon Brewing Company, Ajax, Ontario, Canada
BOOK: The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird
https://www.amazon.com/Falcon-Thief-Adventure-Treachery-Perfect/dp/1501191888/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1648427880&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
This book tells the history of one of America's most popular soft drinks, Mountain Dew. The 300 page book brings you from the drink's earliest beginnings in 1946 all the way through to today's newer drinks like Mountain Dew LiveWire and Code Red. Learn about the Hatfield/McCoy feud that has been brewing for years over the bragging rights to Mountain Dew. This book gives you detailed information on who invented Mountain Dew, when they did it, and the progress of the drink through the years. We start you in Johnson City, TN where you meet Charlie Gordon, Jim Archer and Bill Kilber of "Charlie, Jim and Bill" fame. Did you know that Mountain Dew started out tasting like 7Up until Bill Bridgforth changed the taste to the flavor we know today? From Tennessee we head to Marion, VA to meet Billy Jones and learn about the Tip Corporation. Then on to Lumberton, NC where you meet the massive Minges clan that still controls Pepsi in North Carolina. And then back to Knoxville on a hillbilly roller coaster ride of who did what and when. Learn about the arm wrestling match (literally) with Pepsi Corporate for fifteen million dollars to win the rights to Mountain Dew. Learn why 900 bottles have different names and how Willy the Hillbilly got his name AND you will even get to meet the real live Willy. This book and historic pictures will definitely tickle yore innards!
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Hard Mountain Dew, PepsiCo and The Boston Beer Company
BOOK: Mountain Dew: The History
https://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Dew-History-Dick-Bridgforth/dp/141966087X/ref=sr_1_2?crid=C1YQY28JICAQ&keywords=mountain+dew+dick+bridgforth&qid=1647834008&sprefix=mountain+dew+dick+bridgforth%2Caps%2C106&sr=8-2
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Simply put: Everybody came to Polly's. Pearl "Polly" Adler (1900-1962) was a diminutive dynamo whose Manhattan brothels in the Roaring Twenties became places not just for men to have the company of women but were key gathering places where the culturati and celebrity elite mingled with high society and with violent figures of the underworld—and had a good time doing it.
As a Jewish immigrant from eastern Europe, Polly Adler's life is a classic American story of success and assimilation that starts like a novel by Henry Roth and then turns into a glittering real-life tale straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald. She declared her ambition to be "the best goddam madam in all America" and succeeded wildly. Debby Applegate uses Polly's story as the key to unpacking just what made the 1920s the appallingly corrupt yet glamorous and transformational era that it was and how the collision between high and low is the unique ingredient that fuels American culture.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Prohibition Ale, Speakeasy Ales and Lagers, San Francisco, California
BOOK: Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age
https://www.amazon.com/Madam-Biography-Polly-Adler-Icon/dp/0385534752/ref=sr_1_1?crid=17I8OO4WXSDBG&keywords=madam+polly+adler&qid=1646960168&sprefix=madam+polly+ad%2Caps%2C893&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Amid the ravages of economic depression, Germans in the early 1930s were pulled to political extremes both left and right. Then, in the spring of 1933, Germany turned itself inside out, from a deeply divided republic into a one-party dictatorship. In Hitler’s First Hundred Days, award-winning historian Peter Fritzsche offers a probing account of the pivotal moments when the majority of Germans seemed, all at once, to join the Nazis to construct the Third Reich. Fritzsche examines the events of the period—the elections and mass arrests, the bonfires and gunfire, the patriotic rallies and anti-Jewish boycotts—to understand both the terrifying power the National Socialists exerted over ordinary Germans and the powerful appeal of the new era they promised.
Hitler’s First Hundred Days is the chilling story of the beginning of the end, when one hundred days inaugurated a new thousand-year Reich.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Desperate Measures Red IPA, Desperate Times Brewery, Carlisle, Pennsylvania
BOOK: Hitler's First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich
https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-First-Hundred-Days-Embraced/dp/1541697456/ref=sr_1_1?crid=13GI6OJIPOII0&keywords=hitlers+first+hundred+days+by+peter+fritzsche&qid=1646603021&s=books&sprefix=hitlers+first+hund%2Cstripbooks%2C1927&sr=1-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
From the 1929 Stock Market Crash to the 2008 Financial Crisis, from victory in World War II to ignominious defeat in Afghanistan, from the birth of NATO to today's Ukraine crisis, from President Reagan's "Morning in America" to President Trump's "American Carnage," WE THE PRESIDENTS, objectively and devoid of politics, tells how American presidents from Warren G. Harding to Donald Trump have shaped America and today's world.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Presidential IPA, Diamond Bear Brewing, North Little Rock, Arkansas
BOOK: We the Presidents: How American Presidents Shaped the Last Century
https://www.amazon.com/We-Presidents-American-Shaped-Century/dp/1737823101/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1FYM6ET9DY3CG&keywords=we+the+presidents&qid=1646008899&sprefix=we+the+president%2Caps%2C325&sr=8-2
MUSIC: Bones Fork
nesfork.com
The incredible true story of the women who fought America’s Undark danger
The Curies’ newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.
Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these “shining girls” are the luckiest alive — until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.
But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women’s cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America’s early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers’ rights that will echo for centuries to come.
Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the “wonder” substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives...
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEAURED BREW: Radioactive Fallout Hazy IPA, El Segundo Brewing Company, El Segundo, California
BOOK: The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women
https://www.amazon.com/Radium-Girls-Story-Americas-Shining/dp/1492650951/ref=sr_1_1?crid=M7L9YXFCEF6N&keywords=radium+girls&qid=1645142142&sprefix=radium+girls%2Caps%2C173&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Using more than a thousand eyewitness records, Liberty Is Sweet is a “spirited account” (Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution) that explores countless connections between the Patriots of 1776 and other Americans whose passion for freedom often brought them into conflict with the Founding Fathers. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes.
Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America’s unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics.
Liberty Is Sweet is a “must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation” (Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin), from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Sweet Liberty Imperial Stout, The Bruery, Placentia, California
BOOK: Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution
https://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Sweet-History-American-Revolution/dp/1476750378/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1644815180&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia—and he was certainly dead before it ended. His armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not inherit any of the spoils of war. That central role belonged to Joseph Stalin. The Second World War was not Hitler’s war; it was Stalin’s war.
Drawing on ambitious new research in Soviet, European, and US archives, Stalin’s War revolutionizes our understanding of this global conflict by moving its epicenter to the east. Hitler’s genocidal ambition may have helped unleash Armageddon, but as McMeekin shows, the war which emerged in Europe in September 1939 was the one Stalin wanted, not Hitler. So, too, did the Pacific war of 1941–1945 fulfill Stalin’s goal of unleashing a devastating war of attrition between Japan and the “Anglo-Saxon” capitalist powers he viewed as his ultimate adversary.
McMeekin also reveals the extent to which Soviet Communism was rescued by the US and Britain’s self-defeating strategic moves, beginning with Lend-Lease aid, as American and British supply boards agreed almost blindly to every Soviet demand. Stalin’s war machine, McMeekin shows, was substantially reliant on American materiél from warplanes, tanks, trucks, jeeps, motorcycles, fuel, ammunition, and explosives, to industrial inputs and technology transfer, to the foodstuffs which fed the Red Army.
This unreciprocated American generosity gave Stalin’s armies the mobile striking power to conquer most of Eurasia, from Berlin to Beijing, for Communism.
A groundbreaking reassessment of the Second World War, Stalin’s War is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the current world order.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Dosvidanya Russian Imperial Stout, Destihl Brewing, Normal, Illinois
BOOK: Stalin's War: A New History of World War II
https://www.amazon.com/Stalins-War-New-History-World/dp/1541672798/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1643939619&sr=1-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Two disparate Americas have always coexisted. In this thoroughly researched, engaging and ultimately hopeful story of our nation’s divergent roots, Seth David Radwell clearly links the fascinating history of the two American Enlightenments to our raging political division. He also demonstrates that reasoned analysis and historical perspective are the only antidote to irrational political discourse.
“Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth?” Searching for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life, Radwell’s very personal and yet broadly shared question propelled his search back to our nation’s founding for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life - and led to a surprising discovery. Today’s battles reflect the fundamentally divergent visions of our country that emerged at our nation’s founding and have been vying for prominence ever since. The founding principles that shaped the United States may be rooted in the Enlightenment era. But the origin of our dual Americas is a product of two distinct Enlightenments - Radical and Moderate.
American Schism begins with a quick reintroduction to the pre-Enlightenment Middle Ages and then takes readers on an in-depth journey through the revolutionary Enlightenment period including the eventual schism that began in Europe but then found its way to American shores. Radwell shows the impact of this schism on American history from the early expansion of the U.S. through Jim Crow and The Age of Trumpism.
In an optimistic and rigorous final section, Radwell lays out an analysis of our current governmental structure and a plan to move forward, demonstrating that it is only by embracing Enlightenment principles that we can build a civilized, progressive, and tolerant society - where Americans can firmly ground their different views in rationality.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Outta Line West Coast IPA, Rogue Ales, Portland, Oregon
BOOK: American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation
https://www.amazon.com/American-Schism-Enlightenments-Secret-Healing/dp/1626348618/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1643778919&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
When most people think of the prohibition era, they think of speakeasies, rum runners, and backwoods fundamentalists railing about the ills of strong drink. In other words, in the popular imagination, it is a peculiarly American history.
Yet, as Mark Lawrence Schrad shows in Smashing the Liquor Machine, the conventional scholarship on prohibition is extremely misleading for a simple reason: American prohibition was just one piece of a global phenomenon. Schrad's pathbreaking history of prohibition looks at the anti-alcohol movement around the globe through the experiences of pro-temperance leaders like Vladimir Lenin, Leo Tolstoy, Thomás Masaryk, Kemal Atatürk, Mahatma Gandhi, and anti-colonial activists across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Schrad argues that temperance wasn't "American exceptionalism" at all, but rather one of the most broad-based and successful transnational social movements of the modern era. In fact, Schrad offers a fundamental re-appraisal of this colorful era to reveal that temperance forces frequently aligned with progressivism, social justice, liberal self-determination, democratic
socialism, labor rights, women's rights, and indigenous rights. Placing the temperance movement in a deep global context, forces us to fundamentally rethink its role in opposing colonial exploitation throughout American history as well. Prohibitionism united Native American chiefs like Little Turtle and Black Hawk; African-American leaders Frederick Douglass, Ida Wells, and Booker T. Washington; suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Frances Willard; progressives from William Lloyd Garrison to William Jennings Bryan; writers F.E.W. Harper and Upton Sinclair, and even American presidents from Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
Progressives rather than puritans, the global temperance movement advocated communal self-protection against the corrupt and predatory “liquor machine” that had become exceedingly rich off the misery and addictions of the poor around the world, from the slums of South Asia to the beerhalls of Central Europe to the Native American reservations of the United States.
Unlike many traditional "dry" histories, Smashing the Liquor Machine gives voice to minority and subaltern figures who resisted the global liquor industry, and further highlights that the impulses that led to the temperance movement were far more progressive and variegated than American readers have
been led to believe.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Blah, Blah, Blah West Coast IPA, 21st Amendment Brewery, San Leandro, California
BOOK: Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition
https://www.amazon.com/Smashing-Liquor-Machine-History-Prohibition/dp/0190841575/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1BBARE9VWUYKL&keywords=smashing+the+liquor+machine+a+global+history+of+prohibition&qid=1642555938&sprefix=smashing+the+li%2Caps%2C398&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Few people are aware that John Moses Browning--a tall, modest man born in 1855 and raised as a Mormon in the American West-- invented the mechanism used in virtually all modern pistols, created the most popular hunting rifles and shotguns, and conceived the machine guns introduced in World War I and which dominated air and land battles in World War II. Yet few in America knew his name until he was into his sixties.
Now, author Nathan Gorenstein brings firearms inventor John Moses Browning to vivid life in this riveting and revealing biography. Embodying the tradition of self-made, self-educated geniuses (like Lincoln and Edison), Browning was able to think in three dimensions (he never used blueprints) and his gifted mind produced everything from the famous Winchester "30-30" hunting rifle to the awesomely effective machine guns used by every American aircraft and infantry unit in World War II. The British credited Browning's guns with helping to win the Battle of Britain.
His inventions illustrate both the good and bad of weapons.
Sweeping, lively, and brilliantly told, this fascinating book introduces a little-known American legend whose impact on history ranks with that of the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Hop Gun IPA, The Funky Buddha Brewery, Oakland Park, Florida
BOOK: The Guns of John Moses Browning: The Remarkable Story of the Inventor Whose Firearms Changed the World
https://www.amazon.com/Guns-John-Moses-Browning-Remarkable/dp/1982129212/ref=sr_1_1?crid=N7U6KEH3A7FH&keywords=gorenstein&qid=1642394882&sprefix=gorenstein%2Caps%2C823&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
The Texas Rangers came to life in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico. Nearly 200 years later, the Rangers are still going--one of the most famous of all law enforcement agencies. In Cult of Glory, Doug J. Swanson has written a sweeping account of the Rangers that chronicles their epic, daring escapades while showing how the white and propertied power structures of Texas used them as enforcers, protectors and officially sanctioned killers.
Cult of Glory begins with the Rangers' emergence as conquerors of the wild and violent Texas frontier. They fought the fierce Comanches, chased outlaws, and served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War. As Texas developed, the Rangers were called upon to catch rustlers, tame oil boomtowns, and patrol the perilous Texas-Mexico border. In the 1930s they began their transformation into a professionally trained police force.
Countless movies, television shows, and pulp novels have celebrated the Rangers as Wild West supermen. In many cases, they deserve their plaudits. But often the truth has been obliterated. Swanson demonstrates how the Rangers and their supporters have operated a propaganda machine that turned agency disasters and misdeeds into fables of triumph, transformed murderous rampages--including the killing of scores of Mexican civilians--into valorous feats, and elevated scoundrels to sainthood. Cult of Glory sets the record straight.
Beginning with the Texas Indian wars, Cult of Glory embraces the great, majestic arc of Lone Star history. It tells of border battles, range disputes, gunslingers, massacres, slavery, political intrigue, race riots, labor strife, and the dangerous lure of celebrity. And it reveals how legends of the American West--the real and the false--are truly made.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Man of Law American IPA, Southern Pines Brewing Company, Southern Pines, North Carolina
BOOK: Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers
https://www.amazon.com/Cult-Glory-Brutal-History-Rangers/dp/1101979879/ref=sr_1_1?crid=ELY0KSAJ5DP3&keywords=cult+of+glory+texas+rangers&qid=1641796663&sprefix=%2Caps%2C282&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Solider, politician, miner, pioneer, scion of a Founding Father, William Stephen Hamilton led a prolific life. Rough Diamond: The Life of Colonel William Stephen Hamilton examines the tumultuous early Republic period of American history through the life of Alexander Hamilton's son.
Born in New York in 1797, the fifth son of Alexander Hamilton, he was only seven when his father was infamously killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr. After resigning from West Point, Hamilton moved to frontier Illinois in 1817. The famous name of Hamilton that may have acquired him rank and prestige at one time was meaningless in a Midwestern frontier society driven by the Jacksonians. Yet, despite being hurled into a clash of economic, political, and cultural cultures, Hamilton determined to live his life by his own rules. A veteran of the Winnebago and Black Hawk Wars, Hamilton was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives before moving to the Wisconsin territory, where he founded the mining town of Hamilton's Diggings (Wiota, WI). When gold was discovered in California in 1848, he traveled west, where he would die in Sacramento in 1850.
In Rough Diamond: The Life of Colonel William Stephen Hamilton, author A. K. Fielding expands the story of the Hamilton family. Hamilton's life offers a firsthand account of the formation of the Midwestern states, the realities of life on the frontier, and mass migration caused by the California Gold Rush.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Rise Up Rye Farmhouse Ale, Gun Hill Brewing Company, Bronx, New York
BOOK: Rough Diamond: The Life of Colonel William Stephen Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton's Forgotten Son
https://www.amazon.com/Rough-Diamond-Alexander-Hamiltons-Forgotten/dp/0253053943/ref=sr_1_1?crid=XMT3IUUPSDZB&keywords=ak+fieldings&qid=1640812916&sprefix=ak+fielding%2Caps%2C119&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Comics have conquered America. From our multiplexes, where Marvel and DC movies reign supreme, to our television screens, where comics-based shows like The Walking Dead have become among the most popular in cable history, to convention halls, best-seller lists, Pulitzer Prize–winning titles, and MacArthur Fellowship recipients, comics shape American culture, in ways high and low, superficial, and deeply profound.
In American Comics, Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes readers through their incredible but little-known history, starting with the Civil War and cartoonist Thomas Nast, creator of the lasting and iconic images of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus; the golden age of newspaper comic strips and the first great superhero boom; the moral panic of the Eisenhower era, the Marvel Comics revolution, and the underground comix movement of the 1960s and ’70s; and finally into the twenty-first century, taking in the grim and gritty Dark Knights and Watchmen alongside the brilliant rise of the graphic novel by acclaimed practitioners like Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel.
Dauber’s story shows not only how comics have changed over the decades but how American politics and culture have changed them. Throughout, he describes the origins of beloved comics, champions neglected masterpieces, and argues that we can understand how America sees itself through whose stories comics tell. Striking and revelatory, American Comics is a rich chronicle of the last 150 years of American history through the lens of its comic strips, political cartoons, superheroes, graphic novels, and more.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Buzzman Mutant American Ale, Unsung Brewing Company, Orange County, California
BOOK: American Comics: A History
https://www.amazon.com/American-Comics-History-Jeremy-Dauber/dp/0393635600/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1FHZA7LKG90GU&keywords=jeremy+dauber+american+comics&qid=1640730901&sprefix=jeremy+dauber%2Caps%2C478&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
New York Times bestselling author Steve Sheinkin presents a follow up to his award-winning book Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon, taking readers on a terrifying journey into the Cold War and our mutual assured destruction.
As World War II comes to a close, the United States and the Soviet Union emerge as the two greatest world powers on extreme opposites of the political spectrum. After the United States showed its hand with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, the Soviets refuse to be left behind. With communism sweeping the globe, the two nations begin a neck-and-neck competition to build even more destructive bombs and conquer the Space Race. In their battle for dominance, spy planes fly above, armed submarines swim deep below, and undercover agents meet in the dead of night.
The Cold War game grows more precarious as weapons are pointed towards each other, with fingers literally on the trigger. The decades-long showdown culminates in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world's close call with the third―and final―world war.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Thespian Espionage IPA, Weathered Ground Brewery, Cool Ridge, West Virginia
BOOK: Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown
https://www.amazon.com/Fallout-Spies-Superbombs-Ultimate-Showdown/dp/1250149010/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3AMRT7ISNMB9N&keywords=fallout+sheinkin&qid=1640120467&sprefix=fallout+sheinkin%2Caps%2C276&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Elbridge A. Colby was the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the most significant revision of U.S. defense strategy in a generation. Here he lays out how America’s defense must change to address China’s growing power and ambition. Based firmly in the realist tradition but deeply engaged in current policy, this book offers a clear framework for what America’s goals in confronting China must be, how its military strategy must change, and how it must prioritize these goals over its lesser interests.
The most informed and in‑depth reappraisal of America’s defense strategy in decades, this book outlines a rigorous but practical approach, showing how the United States can prepare to win a war with China that we cannot afford to lose—precisely in order to deter that war from happening.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Cold Snap White Ale, Samuel Adams, Boston
BOOK: The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict
https://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Denial-American-Defense-Conflict/dp/0300256434/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=elbridge+colby&qid=1639445311&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
The Oxford Handbook of Christmas provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of all aspects of Christmas across the globe, from the specifically religious to the purely cultural.
The contributions are drawn from a distinguished group of international experts from across numerous disciplines, including literary scholars, theologians, historians, biblical scholars, sociologists, anthropologists, art historians, and legal experts. The volume provides
authoritative treatments of a range of topics, from the origins of Christmas to the present; decorating trees to eating plum pudding; from the Bible to contemporary worship; from carols to cinema; from the Nativity Story to Santa Claus; from Bethlehem to Japan; from Catholics to Baptists; from secularism to consumerism.
Christmas is the biggest celebration on the planet. Every year, a significant percentage of the world's population is draw to this holiday—from Cape Cod to Cape Town, from South America to South Korea, and on and on across the globe. The Christmas season takes up a significant part of the entire year. For many countries, the holiday is a major force in their national economy. Moreover, Christmas is not just a modern holiday, but has been an important feast for most Christians since the fourth century and a dominant event in many cultures and countries for over a millennium. The Oxford Handbook of Christmas provides an invaluable reference point for anyone interested in this global phenomenon.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Dad's Oatmeal Cookie Stout, O'Fallon Brewery, Maryland Heights, Missouri
BOOK: The Oxford Handbook of Christmas
https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Handbook-Christmas-Handbooks-ebook/dp/B08KYCFZQN/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1638937184&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
How did enslaved African Americans in the Old South really experience Christmas? Did Christmastime provide slaves with a lengthy and jubilant respite from labor and the whip, as is generally assumed, or is the story far more complex and troubling? In this provocative, revisionist, and sometimes chilling account, Robert E. May chides the conventional wisdom for simplifying black perspectives, uncritically accepting southern white literary tropes about the holiday, and overlooking evidence not only that countless southern whites passed Christmases fearful that their slaves would revolt but also that slavery’s most punitive features persisted at holiday time.
In Yuletide in Dixie, May uncovers a dark reality that not only alters our understanding of that history but also sheds new light on the breakdown of slavery in the Civil War and how false assumptions about slave Christmases afterward became harnessed to myths undergirding white supremacy in the United States. By exposing the underside of slave Christmases, May helps us better understand the problematic stereotypes of modern southern historical tourism and why disputes over Confederate memory retain such staying power today. A major reinterpretation of human bondage, Yuletide in Dixie challenges disturbing myths embedded deeply in our culture.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Christmas Ale, Great Lakes Brewing Company, Cleveland, Ohio
BOOK: Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory
https://www.amazon.com/Yuletide-Dixie-Slavery-Christmas-Southern/dp/0813945100/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1638405838&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/es Fork
The Back to the Future series is a timeless collection greatly revered by all audiences. The beauty of this book by Brad Gilmore is that it doesn’t present the history of the film as textbook information. He discusses these films from a place of passion and so effectively reveals how the history behind the movies is just as engaging as the films themselves.
Gilmore, a radio and television host and host of Back to the Future: The Podcast, is an expert on all things Back to the Future. Pairing his knowledge with his passion for the films, Gilmore uses this book to discuss details and movie trivia that reveal just why the trilogy has stood the test of time. As a fan speaking to fellow fans, he dives into fan theories and provides answers to many questions readers have—because they are the very questions he himself has asked.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Voodoo Ranger 1985 Hazy IPA, New Belgium Brewing, Ft. Collins, Colorado
BOOK: Back From the Future: A Celebration of the Greatest Time Travel Story Ever Told
https://www.amazon.com/Back-Future-Celebration-Greatest-Travel/dp/1642507237/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1637273942&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
The malign figure of the Antichrist endures in modern culture, whether religious or secular; and the spectral shadow he has cast over the ages continues to exert a strong and powerful fascination. Philip C. Almond tells the story of the son of Satan from his early beginnings to the present day, and explores this false Messiah in theology, literature and the history of ideas. Discussing the origins of the malevolent being who at different times was cursed as Belial, Nero or Damien, the author reveals how Christianity in both East and West has imagined this incarnation of absolute evil destined to appear at the end of time. For the better part of the last two thousand years, Almond suggests, the human battle between right and wrong has been envisaged as a mighty cosmic duel between good and its opposite, culminating in an epic final showdown between Christ and his deadly arch-nemesis.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Lucifest Festbier, Devil's Logic Brewing, Charlotte, North Carolina
BOOK: The Antichrist: A New Biography
https://www.amazon.com/Antichrist-Biography-Philip-C-Almond-ebook-dp-B08D6RZ2CN/dp/B08D6RZ2CN/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Compared to the Puritans, Mormons have rarely gotten their due, treated as fringe cultists at best or marginalized as polygamists unworthy of serious examination at worst. In Kingdom of Nauvoo, the historian Benjamin E. Park excavates the brief life of a lost Mormon city, and in the process demonstrates that the Mormons are, in fact, essential to understanding American history writ large.
Drawing on newly available sources from the LDS Church―sources that had been kept unseen in Church archives for 150 years―Park recreates one of the most dramatic episodes of the 19th century frontier. Founded in Western Illinois in 1839 by the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and his followers, Nauvoo initially served as a haven from mob attacks the Mormons had endured in neighboring Missouri, where, in one incident, seventeen men, women, and children were massacred, and where the governor declared that all Mormons should be exterminated. In the relative safety of Nauvoo, situated on a hill and protected on three sides by the Mississippi River, the industrious Mormons quickly built a religious empire; at its peak, the city surpassed Chicago in population, with more than 12,000 inhabitants. The Mormons founded their own army, with Smith as its general; established their own courts; and went so far as to write their own constitution, in which they declared that there could be no separation of church and state, and that the world was to be ruled by Mormon priests.
This experiment in religious utopia, however, began to unravel when gentiles in the countryside around Nauvoo heard rumors of a new Mormon marital practice. More than any previous work, Kingdom of Nauvoo pieces together the haphazard and surprising emergence of Mormon polygamy, and reveals that most Mormons were not participants themselves, though they too heard the rumors, which said that Joseph Smith and other married Church officials had been “sealed” to multiple women. Evidence of polygamy soon became undeniable, and non-Mormons reacted with horror, as did many Mormons―including Joseph Smith’s first wife, Emma Smith, a strong-willed woman who resisted the strictures of her deeply patriarchal community and attempted to save her Church, and family, even when it meant opposing her husband and prophet.
A raucous, violent, character-driven story, Kingdom of Nauvoo raises many of the central questions of American history, and even serves as a parable for the American present. How far does religious freedom extend? Can religious and other minority groups survive in a democracy where the majority dictates the law of the land? The Mormons of Nauvoo, who initially believed in the promise of American democracy, would become its strongest critics. Throughout his absorbing chronicle, Park shows the many ways in which the Mormons were representative of their era, and in doing so elevates nineteenth century Mormon history into the American mainstream.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED DRINK: Newman's Own Old Fashioned Roadside Virgin Lemonade
BOOK: Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier
https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Nauvoo-Religious-American-Frontier/dp/1631494864/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1635697937&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
When Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally hacked to death in Fall River, Massachusetts, in August 1892, the arrest of the couple’s younger daughter Lizzie turned the case into international news and her murder trial into a spectacle unparalleled in American history. Reporters flocked to the scene. Well-known columnists took up conspicuous seats in the courtroom. The defendant was relentlessly scrutinized for signs of guilt or innocence. Everyone—rich and poor, suffragists and social conservatives, legal scholars, and laypeople—had an opinion about Lizzie Borden’s guilt or innocence. Was she a cold-blooded murderess or an unjustly persecuted lady? Did she or didn’t she?
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Axe Murderer Imperial Stout, Moon Tower Sudworks, Houston, Texas
BOOK: The Trial of Lizzie Borden: A True Story
https://www.amazon.com/Trial-Lizzie-Borden-Cara-Robertson/dp/1501168371/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1635486330&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
In America’s early history, the enactment of Poor Laws and the establishment of poorhouses and asylums gave physically, mentally and emotionally disabled people a place to live and eat. But what kind of life did they have in these charity institutions? How did they die and what did they leave behind?
This book examines the answers to these questions and more as they arose at Eloise Infirmary and Psychiatric Hospital. This is not only a brief history of almost 150 years of Eloise, located in Westland, Michigan, but it also introduces you to stories of the true humanity of the lost souls who experienced traumatic deaths that may have led to the current hauntings. Actual paranormal experiences people have had over the past few years along with stunning photographs are revealed for the first time. By combining the history, humanity and haunts, you will meet Eloise through the eyes of those who experienced this sometimes-unforgiving institution firsthand.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Paranoia Imperial Pale Ale, Odd Side Ales, Grand Haven, Michigan
BOOK: Eloise Asylum: The History, the Humanity and the Haunts
https://www.amazon.com/Eloise-Asylum-History-Humanity-Haunts/dp/0578648075/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1LGRSU4I6UBAI&dchild=1&keywords=eloise+asylum&qid=1634864700&qsid=140-8553093-2922100&sr=8-1&sres=0578648075%2C0738519545%2C137630824X%2CB01N1X0BQ6%2C1401310192%2C0062574337%2C1717487173%2C1783449861%2CB076VD22TJ
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
With a Clash Between American Rebels and Royal Authorities Heating Up, Radicals Smuggled Cannon Out of Boston—and the British Came Looking for Them
In the early spring of 1775, on a farm in Concord, Massachusetts, British army spies located four brass cannon belonging to Boston’s colonial militia that had gone missing months before. British general Thomas Gage had been searching for them, both to stymie New England’s growing rebellion and to erase the embarrassment of having let cannon disappear from armories under redcoat guard. Anxious to regain those weapons, he drew up plans for his troops to march nineteen miles into unfriendly territory. The Massachusetts Patriots, meanwhile, prepared to thwart the general’s mission. There was one goal Gage and his enemies shared: for different reasons, they all wanted to keep the stolen cannon as secret as possible. Both sides succeeded well enough that the full story has never appeared until now.
The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War by historian J. L. Bell reveals a new dimension to the start of America’s War for Independence by tracing the spark of its first battle back to little-known events beginning in September 1774. The author relates how radical Patriots secured those four cannon and smuggled them out of Boston, and how Gage sent out spies and search parties to track them down. Drawing on archives in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, the book creates a lively, original, and deeply documented picture of a society perched on the brink of war.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Low Flying Panic Attack American Pale Ale, Idle Hands Craft Ales, Malden, Massachusetts
BOOK: The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary Warhttps://www.amazon.com/Road-Concord-Revolutionary-American-Revolution/dp/1594162492
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Robert E. Lee is one of the most confounding figures in American history. Leebetrayed his nation in order to defend his home state and uphold the slave system he claimed to oppose. He was a traitor to the country he swore to serve as an Army officer, and yet he was admired even by his enemies for his composure and leadership. He considered slavery immoral, but benefited from inherited slaves and fought to defend the institution. And behind his genteel demeanor and perfectionism lurked the insecurities of a man haunted by the legacy of a father who stained the family name by declaring bankruptcy and who disappeared when Robert was just six years old.
In Robert E. Lee, the award-winning historian Allen Guelzo has written the definitive biography of the general, following him from his refined upbringing in Virginia high society, to his long career in the U.S. Army, his agonized decision to side with Virginia when it seceded from the Union, and his leadership during the Civil War. Above all, Guelzo captures Robert E. Lee in all his complexity--his hypocrisy and courage, his outward calm and inner turmoil, his honor and his disloyalty.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Bob's Your Uncle English-Style Pale Mild Ale, The Virginia Beer Company, Williamsburg, VA
BOOK: Robert E. Lee: A Life
https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Lee-Allen-C-Guelzo/dp/1101946229/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=robert+e+lee+a+life&qid=1632891871&s=books&sr=1-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
In the summer of 1932, with the Cubs in the thick of the pennant race, Billy Jurges broke off his relationship with Violet Popovich to focus on baseball. The famously beautiful showgirl took it poorly, marching into his hotel room with a revolver in her purse. Both were wounded in the ensuing struggle, but Jurges refused to press charges. Even without their star shortstop, Chicago made it to the World Series, only to be on the wrong end of Babe Ruth's legendary Called Shot. Using hundreds of original sources, Jack Bales profiles the lives of the ill-fated couple and traces the ripple effects of the shooting on the Cubs' tumultuous season.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Perseverance Anniversary Ale, Greenstar Brewery, Chicago, Illinois
BOOK: The Chicago Cub Shot For Love: A Showgirl’s Crime of Passion and the 1932 World Serieshttps://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Cub-Shot-Love-Showgirls/dp/1467148482/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
MUSIC: Bones Fork
In this second in a series of Baseball Hall of Fame books, celebrate the larger-than-life role played by radio and TV baseball announcers in enhancing the pleasure of our national pastime.
Commemorate the 100th anniversary of baseball broadcasting. The first baseball game ever broadcast on radio was on August 5, 1921 by Harold Wampler Arlin, a part-time baseball announcer on Pittsburgh’s KDKA, America’s first commercially licensed radio station. The Pirates defeated the Phillies 8-5.
An insider’s view of baseball. Now you can own Memories from the Microphone and experience baseball from author Curt Smith. He has spent much of his life covering baseball radio and TV, and previously authored baseball books including the classic Voices of The Game.
Relive baseball’s storied past through the eyes of famed baseball announcers. Organized chronologically, Memories from the Microphone charts the history of baseball broadcasting. Enjoy celebrated stories and personalities that have shaped the game―from Mel Allen to Harry Caray, Vin Scully to Joe Morgan, Ernie Harwell to Red Barber.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Batting 1000 Red Lager, Beltway Brewing Company, Sterling, Virginia
BOOK: Memories from the Microphone: A Century of Baseball Broadcasting
https://shop.baseballhall.org/memories-from-the-microphone/
MUSIC: Bones Fork
WHEN IN OCTOBER 1982 THE FLAMBOYANT AUTO EXECUTIVE JOHN DELOREAN was arrested for possession of over sixteen million dollars’ worth of cocaine, the world was aghast and fascinated.
FEW STARS HAD SHONE MORE BRIGHTLY THAN HIS: he was an “A” student who didn’t need to crack a book, a brilliant engineer renowned for saving Pontiac, a visionary entrepreneur who shot to the top of GM and then left it behind, a reputed Hollywood swinger, and a charismatic millionaire who seemed to care about the little people who worked for him. But there was a darker side to the DeLorean story, a side that more and more clouded his life until he was forced into what most believe was a last desperate attempt to save the two-year-old auto factory in Northern Ireland and its startling gull-winged stainless steel cars.
FROM THE SHATTERED FRAGMENTS OF DELOREAN'S ACTS AND DREAMS, investigative journalist Hillel Levin—who began to look closely at the truth behind the image a year before anyone else did—has pieced together a fascinating picture of the man behind this contemporary myth. From the beginning, DeLorean's flight was fueled by a remarkable talent for financial legerdemain and corporate intrigue. Through meticulous research and interviews with the players in DeLorean's inner circle, Levin tracks the court cases and the lawsuits that accompanied his ascent, disentangles his convoluted and bizarre business schemes, explores the labyrinth of holding companies and paper corporations that channeled huge sums of other people's money into his personal control, and reconstructs the saga of the gull-winged car that, until the last, De Lorean believed would rise, Phoenix-like, from the ashes. AUTHORITATIVELY RESEARCHED
FROM DETROIT TO BELFAST, packed with new information, GRAND DELUSIONS is a riveting, uniquely American story, and a cautionary tale of genius misapplied in the service of a runaway ego.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Enchantment Under the "C" Hops Double IPA, Great Heights Brewing Company, Houston, Texas
BOOK: GRAND DELUSIONS: The Cosmic Career of John De Lorean (with Afterword)https://www.amazon.com/GRAND-DELUSIONS-Cosmic-Career-Afterword/dp/1983219460/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=hillel+levin&qid=1630630334&s=books&sr=1-3
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
A riveting history of the epic orbital flight that put America back into the space race.
If the United States couldn’t catch up to the Soviets in space, how could it compete with them on Earth? That was the question facing John F. Kennedy at the height of the Cold War―a perilous time when the Soviet Union built the wall in Berlin, tested nuclear bombs more destructive than any in history, and beat the United States to every major milestone in space. The race to the heavens seemed a race for survival―and America was losing.
On February 20, 1962, when John Glenn blasted into orbit aboard Friendship 7, his mission was not only to circle the planet; it was to calm the fears of the free world and renew America’s sense of self-belief. Mercury Rising re-creates the tension and excitement of a flight that shifted the momentum of the space race and put the United States on the path to the moon. Drawing on new archival sources, personal interviews, and previously unpublished notes by Glenn himself, Mercury Rising reveals how the astronaut’s heroics lifted the nation’s hopes in what Kennedy called the "hour of maximum danger."
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Houston Haze IPA, Spindletop Brewery, Houston, Texas
BOOK: Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy, and the New Battleground of the Cold War
https://www.amazon.com/Mercury-Rising-Glenn-Kennedy-Battleground/dp/1324003243
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Surprising and delightfully engrossing, Americanon explores the true history of thirteen of the nation’s most popular books. Overlooked for centuries, our simple dictionaries, spellers, almanacs, and how-to manuals are the unexamined touchstones for American cultures and customs. These books sold tens of millions of copies and set out specific archetypes for the ideal American, from the self-made entrepreneur to the humble farmer.
Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Webster's Dictionary, Emily Post’s Etiquette: Americanon looks at how these ubiquitous books have updated and reemphasized potent American ideals—about meritocracy, patriotism, or individualism—at crucial moments in history. Old favorites like the Old Farmer’s Almanac and Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book are seen in this new way—not just as popular books but as foundational texts that shaped our understanding of the American story.
Taken together, these books help us understand how their authors, most of them part of a powerful minority, attempted to construct meaning for the majority. Their beliefs and quirks—as well as personal interests, prejudices, and often strange personalities—informed the values and habits of millions of Americans, woven into our cultural DNA over generations of reading and dog-earing. Yet their influence remains uninvestigated. Until now.
What better way to understand a people than to look at the books they consumed most, the ones they returned to repeatedly, with questions about everything from spelling to social mobility to sex? This fresh and engaging book is American history as you’ve never encountered it before.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Come to Light West Coast IPA, Jester King Brewery, Austin, Texas
BOOK: Americanon: An Unexpected U.S. History in Thirteen Bestselling Books
https://www.amazon.com/Americanon-Unexpected-History-Thirteen-Bestselling/dp/1524746630
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Dr. Patrick Hotle discusses the amazing story of the First Crusade. He explains the economic and political conditions that led thousands to make their way across medieval Europe to Constantinople and then on to the Holy Land. He discusses the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages and in the importance of pilgrimage and relics. Hotle describes the Peace of God and Truce of God and how Pope Urban II's call led to a massive movement to recapture the ancient city of Jerusalem. He discusses several key figures such as Godfrey, Bohemond, Raymond, and Baldwin. The amazing journey led to the capture of Antioch and several battles with the Seljuk Turks. He explains the capture of Jerusalem and the establishment of the Crusader States. He concludes with the early history of the Knights Templar.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Absolution Belgian-Style Quadrupel, Crusader Brewing Company, Bakersfield, California
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
A small team of CIA operatives and Marines commanded by Captain Diego Cruz are protecting a tiny base in Helmand—the most violent province in Afghanistan. In a series of escalating fights, Cruz must prove he is a combat leader, despite the growing disapproval of the colonel in overall charge. At the same time, the president has ordered the CIA to capture a drug lord. But with a fortune in heroin at stake, the Taliban joins with the drug lord to wipe out the base. As the president negotiates a secret deal, Cruz must rally the Marines to make a last stand. Bringing you into America’s longest war with vivid immediacy, The Last Platoon portrays how leaders rise or wilt under intense pressure. A searing, timeless story of moral conflict, savage combat, and feckless politics.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Semper Fi PA, Stars and Stripes Brewing Company, Freeport, Maine
BOOK: The Last Platoon: A Novel of the Afghanistan War
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Platoon-Novel-Afghanistan-War/dp/1642936731/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+last+platoon&qid=1626543443&s=books&sr=1-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
The Bible, we are constantly reminded, is the best-selling book of all time. It is read with intense devotion by hundreds of millions of people, stands as authoritative for Judaism and Christianity, and informs and affects the politics and lives of the religious and non-religious around the world. But how well do we really know it? The Bible is so familiar, so ubiquitous that we have begun to take our knowledge of it for granted. The Bible many of us think we know is a pale imitation of the real thing.
In A Most Peculiar Book, Kristin Swenson addresses the dirty little secret of biblical studies that the Bible is a weird book. It is full of surprises and contradictions, unexplained impossibilities, intriguing supernatural creatures, and heroes doing horrible deeds. It does not provide a simple worldview: what "the Bible says" on a given topic is multi-faceted, sometimes even contradictory. Yet, Swenson argues, we have a tendency to reduce the complexities of the Bible to aphorisms, bumper stickers, and slogans. Swenson helps readers look at the text with fresh eyes. A collection of ancient stories and poetry written by multiple authors, held together by the tenuous string of tradition, the Bible often undermines our modern assumptions. And is all the more marvelous and powerful for it.
Rather than dismiss the Bible as an outlandish or irrelevant relic of antiquity, Swenson leans into the messiness full-throttle. Making ample room for discomfort, wonder, and weirdness, A Most Peculiar Book guides readers through a Bible that will feel, to many, brand new.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Experience Paradise American IPA, Holy City Brewery, North Charleston, SC
BOOK: A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible
https://www.amazon.com/Most-Peculiar-Book-Inherent-Strangeness/dp/0190651733/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
The lights are coming down. Frank, Dean, and Sammy are about to take the stage. This is the moment we remember, when Las Vegas became classic. And it was at the Sands. Built in 1952 over the ashes of Hollywood Reporter publisher Billy Wilkerson’s last chance in Las Vegas, the Sands was a collective effort. Underworld figures like Meyer Lansky, Doc Stacher, and Frank Costello provided the cash. Beloved Texas gambler Jake Freedman was the public face. Manhattan nightclub king Jack Entratter kept the Copa Room filled and made the party happen, every night. No matter how well your casino is run, you need a good hook to get the gamblers through the door. Casino owners were learning that entertainment was a pretty fair hook. The Copa was the hottest ticket in America and, for performers, one of the most coveted stages in the nation. Headlining at the Sands–or even opening there–meant that you had made it. For gamblers, the Sands was paradise. Behind the scenes, Davis and Sinatra resisted the prevailing segregationist mindset of Las Vegas and helped to overturn Jim Crow on the Strip. After Howard Hughes bought the Sands in 1967 (with Frank Sinatra explosively departing soon after) the Sands lost some of its allure, but the casino soldiered on. In the end, the Sands went out with a bang–an implosion that brought down its hotel tower. It had a wild 44 year run. The Sands may be gone, but it did not fade away.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Excited State Unfiltered Pilsner, Able Baker Brewing Company, Las Vegas, Nevada
BOOK: At the Sands: The Casino That Shaped Classic Las Vegas, Brought the Rat Pack Together, and Went Out With a Banghttps://www.amazon.com/At-Sands-Classic-Brought-Together/dp/0990001660/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1625631204&sr=1-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Former Mayor Chuck Scholz explains how the city of Quincy took in nearly the entirety of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the winter of 1838-1839. That act of charity the community extended to the Mormons was also extended to the Potawatomi Indians on their Trail of Death in 1838 and also to the many escaped slaves who fled to freedom on the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. Chuck also talks about his time as mayor and his meetings with Mormon leaders including the prophet of their church Gordon B. Hinkley. He discusses the standing ovation he received in Salt Lake City and the reenactment of the City of Refuge across the Memorial Bridge.
HOST: Rob Mellon
GUEST: Chuck Scholz
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
In the watershed year of 1962, events and people came together to reshape baseball like never before. The season saw five no-hitters, a rare National League playoff between the Giants and the Dodgers, and a thrilling seven-game World Series where the Yankees, led by Mickey Mantle, won their twentieth title, beating the San Francisco Giants, led by Willie Mays, in their first appearance since leaving New York.
Earlier that year in Los Angeles, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley launched Dodger Stadium, a state-of-the-art ballpark in Chavez Ravine and a new icon for the city. For the Dodgers, Sandy Koufax pitched his first of four career no-hitters, Maury Wills set a record for stolen bases in a season, and Don Drysdale won twenty-five games.
Beyond baseball, 1962 was also a momentous year in American history: Mary Early became the first Black graduate of the University of Georgia, First Lady Jackie Kennedy revealed the secrets of the White House in a television special, John Glenn became the first astronaut to orbit Earth, and JFK stared down Russia during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Weaving the 1962 baseball season within the social fabric of this era, David Krell delivers a fascinating book as epochal as its subject.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Old Slugger Pale Ale, Cooperstown Brewing Company, Cooperstown, NY
BOOK: 1962: Baseball and America in the Time of JFK
https://www.amazon.com/1962-Baseball-America-Time-JFK/dp/080329087XMUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
"The FAKE NEWS media,” Donald Trump has tweeted, “is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” Has our free press ever faced as great a threat? Perhaps not—but the tension between presidents and journalists is as old as the republic itself.
Every president has been convinced of his own honesty and transparency; every reporter who has covered the White House beat has believed with equal fervency that his or her journalistic rigor protects the country from danger. Our first president, George Washington, was also the first to grouse about his treatment in the newspapers, although he kept his complaints private. Subsequent chiefs like John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Barack Obama were not so reticent, going so far as to wield executive power to overturn press freedoms, and even to prosecute journalists.
In this remarkable new history, acclaimed scholar Harold Holzer examines the dual rise of the American presidency and the media that shaped it. From Washington to Trump, he chronicles the disputes and distrust between these core institutions that define the United States of America, revealing that the essence of their confrontation is built into the fabric of the nation.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Freedom of Press Session Sour, Revolution Brewery, Chicago, Illinois
BOOK: The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle between the White House and the Media--from the Founding Fathers to Fake News
https://www.amazon.com/Presidents-vs-Press-Media-Founding/dp/152474526X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Just over a year after Robert E. Lee relinquished his sword, a band of Union and Confederate veterans dusted off their guns. But these former foes had no intention of reigniting the Civil War. Instead, they fought side by side to undertake one of the most fantastical missions in military history: to seize the British province of Canada and to hold it hostage until the independence of Ireland was secured.
When the Irish Invaded Canada is the untold tale of a band of fiercely patriotic Irish Americans and their chapter in Ireland's centuries-long fight for independence. Inspiring, lively, and often undeniably comic, this is a story of fighting for what's right in the face of impossible odds.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Smithwick's Irish Red Ale, St. James Gate Brewery, Dublin, Ireland
BOOK: When the Irish Invaded Canada: The Incredible True Story of the Civil War Veterans Who Fought for Ireland's Freedom
https://store.thehistorylist.com/products/when-the-irish-invaded-canada-signed-by-the-author-christopher-klein?variant=39284788691009FEATURED MUSIC: The Mary Wallopers
https://www.marywallopers.com/
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
In 1942,the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To “set Europe ablaze,” in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France.
In D-Day Girls, Sarah Rose draws on recently declassified files, diaries, and oral histories to tell the thrilling story of three of these remarkable women. There’s Andrée Borrel, a scrappy and streetwise Parisian who blew up power lines with the Gestapo hot on her heels; Odette Sansom, an unhappily married suburban mother who saw the SOE as her ticket out of domestic life and into a meaningful adventure; and Lise de Baissac, a fiercely independent member of French colonial high society and the SOE’s unflappable “queen.” Together, they destroyed train lines, ambushed Nazis, plotted prison breaks, and gathered crucial intelligence—laying the groundwork for the D-Day invasion that proved to be the turning point in the war.
Rigorously researched and written with razor-sharp wit, D-Day Girls is an inspiring story for our own moment of resistance: a reminder of what courage—and the energy of politically animated women—can accomplish when the stakes seem incalculably high.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Kronenbourg 1664, Carlsberg
BOOK: D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War IIhttps://www.amazon.com/D-Day-Girls-Resistance-Sabotaged-Helped/dp/0451495098/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1622992300&sr=1-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Eric Jay Dolin returns to History Ago Go to discuss his most recent book A Furious Sky. The conversation includes a review of the 500 year history of hurricanes in the Americas starting with stories about Columbus and early colonization. He explains how we first started to understand the nature of hurricanes with the findings of early storm researchers like Redfield and Espy. Dolin breaks down the great "American Storm Controversy" and how the debate increased our overall knowledge of the mighty storms. He finishes the discussion with an explanation of the historical impact and what we can expect in the future so beware.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Unholy American Trippel Ale, Coppertail Brewing Company, Tampa, Florida
BOOK: A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZTTHPB8/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i1MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Hard rock in the 1980s was a hedonistic and often intensely creative wellspring of escapism that perfectly encapsulated―and maybe even helped to define―a spectacularly over-the-top decade. Indeed, fist-pumping hits like Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” are as inextricably linked to the era as Reaganomics, Pac-Man, and E.T.
From the do-or-die early days of self-financed recordings and D.I.Y. concert productions that were as flashy as they were foolhardy, to the multi-Platinum, MTV-powered glory years of stadium-shaking anthems and chart-topping power ballads, to the ultimate crash when grunge bands like Nirvana forever altered the entire climate of the business, Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock's Nothin' But a Good Time captures the energy and excess of the hair metal years in the words of the musicians, managers, producers, engineers, label executives, publicists, stylists, costume designers, photographers, journalists, magazine publishers, video directors, club bookers, roadies, groupies, and hangers-on who lived it.
Featuring an impassioned foreword by Slipknot and Stone Sour vocalist and avowed glam metal fanatic Corey Taylor, and drawn from over 200 new interviews with members of Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, Poison, Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row, Bon Jovi, Ratt, Twisted Sister, Winger, Warrant, Cinderella, Quiet Riot and others, as well as Ozzy Osbourne, Lita Ford and many more, this is the ultimate, uncensored, and often unhinged chronicle of a time where excess and success walked hand in hand, told by the men and women who created a sound and style that came to define a musical era―one in which the bands and their fans went looking for nothin’ but a good time…and found it.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Pantheon Rum Barrel Aged Imperial Brown Ale, Ale Asylum Brewery, Madison, Wisconsin
BOOK: Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion
https://www.amazon.com/N%C3%B6thin-But-Good-Time-Uncensored/dp/1250195756/ref=sr_1_1?crid=15STBUREYJM6D&dchild=1&keywords=nothin+but+a+good+time&qid=1621906497&sprefix=nothin+but+a+good+time%2Caps%2C178&sr=8-1MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Rob and Chuck discuss the interesting tale of how Quincy, Illinois was "officially" designated the Lattice Fries Capital of the World in a federal court. Chuck explains how he got involved in a court case where two large food wholesalers were in a dispute over who invented the waffle cut or the lattice fry. After sampling the evidence and finding some old menus it was determined that the patent that was issued in Washington for the waffle cut fry to a company out west was invalid. The patent was issued in 1980, but they found lattice fries had been sold in the Gem City going back to the 1920s. From Eddie Spickler and the Ritz restaurant to Sprout McClean Quincy had been serving lattice fries for decades.
HOST: Rob Mellon
GUEST: Chuck Scholz
HSQAC WEBSITE: www.hsqac.org
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
It didn't take long for freshman Congressman Stephen A. Douglas to see the truth of Senator Thomas Hart Benton's warning: slavery attached itself to every measure that came before the U.S. Congress. Douglas wanted to expand the nation into an ocean-bound republic. Yet slavery and the violent conflicts it stirred always interfered, as it did in 1844 with his first bill to organize Nebraska. In 1848, when America acquired 550,000 square miles after the Mexican War, the fight began over whether the territory would be free or slave. Henry Clay, a slave owner who favored gradual emancipation, packaged territorial bills from Douglas's committee with four others. But Clay's "Omnibus Bill" failed. Exhausted, he left the Senate, leaving Douglas in control. Within two weeks, Douglas won passage of all eight bills, and President Millard Fillmore signed the Compromise of 1850. It was Douglas's greatest legislative achievement. This book, a sequel to the author's Stephen A. Douglas: The Political Apprenticeship, 1833-1843, fully details Douglas's early congressional career. The text chronicles how Douglas moved the issue of slavery from Congress to the ballot box.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: The Calling Double IPA, Boulevard Brewing Company, Kansas City, MO
BOOK: Stephen A. Douglas, Western Man: The Early Years in Congress, 1844-1850
https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Douglas-Western-Man-1844-1850/dp/1476673764/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=stephen+a+douglas+western+man&qid=1621369013&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
CLIPS: Illinois Stories featuring Stephen A. Douglas interpreter Gary DeClue
The definitive history of the world's most popular drug. Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks. Mark Pendergrast reviews the dramatic changes in coffee culture over the past decade, from the disastrous "Coffee Crisis" that caused global prices to plummet to the rise of the Fair Trade movement and the "third-wave" of quality-obsessed coffee connoisseurs. As the scope of coffee culture continues to expand, Uncommon Grounds remains more than ever a brilliantly entertaining guide to the currents of one of the world's favorite beverages.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Maple Breakfast Stout, 14th Star Brewing Company, St. Albans, Vermont
BOOK: Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World
https://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Grounds-History-Coffee-Transformed/dp/1541699386/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=uncommon+grounds%5C&qid=1621225780&sr=8-2
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
By March 4, 1865, the Civil War had slaughtered more than 700,000 Americans and left intractable wounds on the nation. After a morning of rain-drenched fury, tens of thousands crowded Washington’s Capitol grounds that day to see Abraham Lincoln take the oath for a second term. As the sun emerged, Lincoln rose to give perhaps the greatest inaugural address in American history, stunning the nation by arguing, in a brief 701 words, that both sides had been wrong, and that the war’s unimaginable horrors―every drop of blood spilled―might well have been God’s just verdict on the national sin of slavery.
Edward Achorn reveals the nation’s capital on that momentous day―with its mud, sewage, and saloons, its prostitutes, spies, reporters, social-climbing spouses and power-hungry politicians―as a microcosm of all the opposing forces that had driven the country apart. A host of characters, unknown and famous, had converged on Washington―from grievously wounded Union colonel Selden Connor in a Washington hospital and the embarrassingly drunk new vice president, Andrew Johnson, to poet-journalist Walt Whitman; from soldiers’ advocate Clara Barton and African American leader and Lincoln critic-turned-admirer Frederick Douglass (who called the speech “a sacred effort”) to conflicted actor John Wilkes Booth―all swirling around the complex figure of Lincoln.
In indelible scenes, Achorn vividly captures the frenzy in the nation’s capital at this crucial moment in America’s history and the tension-filled hope and despair afflicting the country as a whole, soon to be heightened by Lincoln's assassination. His story offers new understanding of our great national crisis and echoes down the decades to resonate in our own time.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: 1861 Lager, Lincoln Beer Company, Burbank, CA
BOOK: Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln
https://www.amazon.com/Every-Drop-Blood-Lincolns-Inauguration/dp/0802148743/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=every+drop+of+blood&qid=1620783299&s=books&sr=1-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
A new biography of the intellectual father of Southern secession—the man who set the scene for the Civil War, and whose political legacy still shapes America today.
John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American political history. First elected to Congress in 1810, Calhoun went on to serve as secretary of war and vice president. But he is perhaps most known for arguing in favor of slavery as a "positive good" and for his famous doctrine of "state interposition," which laid the groundwork for the South to secede from the Union—and arguably set the nation on course for civil war.
Calhoun has catapulted back into the public eye in recent years, as some observers connected the strain of radical politics he developed to the tactics and extremism of the modern Far Right, and as protests over racial injustice have focused on his legacy. In this revelatory biographical study, historian Robert Elder shows that Calhoun is even more broadly significant than these events suggest, and that his story is crucial for understanding the political climate in which we find ourselves today. By excising Calhoun from the mainstream of American history, he argues, we have been left with a distorted understanding of our past and no way to explain our present.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Evil Twin Red IPA, Heretic Brewing Company, Fairfield, CA
BOOK: Calhoun: American Heretic
https://www.amazon.com/Calhoun-American-Heretic-Robert-Elder/dp/0465096441/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1VOURJK6H7XH2&dchild=1&keywords=calhoun+american+heretic&qid=1620356405&s=books&sprefix=calhoun+am%2Cstripbooks%2C258&sr=1-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family’s apartment building in Poland—and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows. Menachem Kaiser’s brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as “The Killer.” A surprise discovery—that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex—leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance—material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: She'Brew RBG Milkshake IPA, Shmaltz Brewing Company, Troy, New York
BOOK: Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure
https://www.amazon.com/Plunder-Memoir-Family-Property-Treasure/dp/132850803X
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
The hymn—as poetry, as craft, as a tool for worship and philosophy—was a vital art form throughout antiquity. Although the Homeric Hymns have long been popular, other equally important collections have not been readily accessible to students eager to learn about ancient poetry. In reading hymns, we also gain valuable insight into life in the classical world. In this collection, early Homeric Hymns of uncertain authorship appear along with the carefully wrought hymns of the great Hellenistic poet and courtier Callimachus; the mystical writings attributed to the legendary poet Orpheus, written as Christianity was taking over the ancient world; and finally, the hymns of Proclus, the last great pagan philosopher of antiquity, from the fifth century AD, whose intellectual influence throughout western culture has been profound.
Greek Poems to the Gods distills over a thousand years of the ancient Greek hymnic tradition into a single volume. Acclaimed translator Barry B. Powell brings these fabulous texts to life in English, hewing closely to the poetic beauty of the original Greek. His superb introductions and notes give readers essential context, making the hymns as accessible to a beginner approaching them for the first time as to an advanced student continuing to explore their secrets. Brilliant illustrations from ancient art enliven and enrichen the experience of reading these poems.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Athena #4 Pink Boots 2021 Russian Imperial Stout, River Styx Brewing Company, Fitchburg, MA
BOOK: Greek Poems to the Gods: Hymns from Homer to Proclus
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520302877/greek-poems-to-the-gods
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
CLIP: Ancient Greek Music: Hymn to Dionysos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-wUxktO1OQ
From Dr. Annie Gray, presenter of BBC2's Victorian Bakers - What does it mean to eat like a queen? Elizabeth gorged on sugar, Mary on chocolate and Anne was known as 'Brandy Nan'. Victoria ate all of this and more. The Greedy Queen celebrates Victoria's appetite, both for food and, indeed, for life. Born in May 1819, Victoria came 'as plump as a partridge'. In her early years she lived on milk and bread under the Kensington system; in her old age she suffered constant indigestion yet continued to over-eat. From intimate breakfasts with the King of France, to romping at tea-parties with her children, and from state balls to her last sip of milk, her life is examined through what she ate, when and with whom. In the royal household, Victoria was surrounded by ladies-in-waiting, secretaries, dressers and coachmen, but below stairs there was another category of servant: her cooks. More fundamental and yet completely hidden, they are now uncovered in their working environment for the first time. Voracious and adventurous in her tastes, Queen Victoria was head of state during a revolution in how we ate - from the highest tables to the most humble. Bursting with original research, The Greedy Queen considers Britain's most iconic monarch from a new perspective, telling the story of British food along the way.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Hand of the Queen Barleywine Ale, Ommegang Brewing Company, Cooperstown, New York
BOOK: The Greedy Queen: Eating with Victoria
https://www.amazon.com/Greedy-Queen-Eating-Victoria/dp/1781256837/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+greedy+queen&qid=1618791902&sr=8-1MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
CLIPS: Jake Morley - Graceland (Paul Simon Cover) | Sofar London - Check it out it is incredible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kac_IOUIzDI
Leonard Cohen - Queen Victoria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7opwenLcR0
The first biography of the great Shawnee leader in more than twenty years, and the first to make clear that his misunderstood younger brother, Tenskwatawa, was an equal partner in the last great pan-Indian alliance against the United States.
Until the Americans killed Tecumseh in 1813, he and his brother Tenskwatawa were the co-architects of the broadest pan-Indian confederation in United States history. In previous accounts of Tecumseh's life, Tenskwatawa has been dismissed as a talentless charlatan and a drunk. But award-winning historian Peter Cozzens now shows us that while Tecumseh was a brilliant diplomat and war leader--admired by the same white Americans he opposed--it was Tenskwatawa, called the "Shawnee Prophet," who created a vital doctrine of religious and cultural revitalization that unified the disparate tribes of the Old Northwest. Detailed research of Native American society and customs provides a window into a world often erased from history books and reveals how both men came to power in different but no less important ways.
Cozzens brings us to the forefront of the chaos and violence that characterized the young American Republic, when settlers spilled across the Appalachians to bloody effect in their haste to exploit lands won from the British in the War of Independence, disregarding their rightful Indian owners. Tecumseh and the Prophet presents the untold story of the Shawnee brothers who retaliated against this threat--the two most significant siblings in Native American history, who, Cozzens helps us understand, should be writ large in the annals of America.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Tippecanoe Common Ale, The Lafayette Brewing Company, Lafayette, Indiana
BOOK: Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation
https://www.amazon.com/Tecumseh-Prophet-Shawnee-Brothers-Defied/dp/1524733253/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1LHGHNDA8DF57&dchild=1&keywords=tecumseh+and+the+prophet&qid=1618618276&sprefix=tecumseh+and+the+p%2Caps%2C181&sr=8-1MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
CLIP: So Live Your Life – Chief Tecumseh (A Native American Poem)- Read by Shane Morris.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QageNN-V8rY
Art historian and author Jennifer Dasal talks about some the the most fascinating and truly unbelievable stories in art history. She details the wild journey of the Mona Lisa and indicates that it might be possible the one on display is actually a forgery. She discusses the possiblity that the infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper might actually have been British artist Walter Sickert. Dasal explains how it is also possible that Vincent van Gogh did not commit suicide, but may have been murdered. She talks about the connection between the CIA and the expansion and popularity of modern art and covers a host of topics from UFOs in art, ghosts directing paintings and the most infamous art theft in history.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Hell's Belle Belgian Blond Ale, Big Boss Brewing Company, Raleigh, North Carolina
BOOK: ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History
https://www.amazon.com/ArtCurious-Unexpected-Slightly-Strangely-Wonderful/dp/0143134590/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=artcurious&qid=1618286869&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
The nation's leading Ulysses S. Grant interpreter talks about the campaign for Petersburg and the end of the American Civil War as General Grant. He discusses the difficulty but importance of crossing the James River to put General Robert E. Lee in a vice. He explains the challenge of assuming command of the entire United States Army as General-in-Chief after he moved east from the western theater of the war. General Grant talks about meeting President Lincoln at City Point and the directives he was given by the President toward the end of the war. He finishes with a detailed explanation of what happened at Appomattox Court House.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Lucky 25 American Brown, Trapezium Brewing Company, Petersburg, Virginia
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
CLIP: The Battle Cry of Freedom (George F. Root, 1862)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok1tw2Lt3Rc
Set against the backdrop of the Age of Exploration, Black Flags, Blue Waters reveals the dramatic and surprising history of American piracy’s “Golden Age”―spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s―when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond. Best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin illustrates how American colonists at first supported these outrageous pirates in an early display of solidarity against the Crown, and then violently opposed them. Through engrossing episodes of roguish glamour and extreme brutality, Dolin depicts the star pirates of this period, among them towering Blackbeard, ill-fated Captain Kidd, and sadistic Edward Low, who delighted in torturing his prey. Upending popular misconceptions and cartoonish stereotypes, Dolin provides this wholly original account of the seafaring outlaws whose raids reflect the precarious nature of American colonial life.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Gold and Haze of Piracy Belgian Wit, Pirate Republic Brewing Company, Nassau, The Bahamas
BOOK: Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Flags-Blue-Waters-Notorious/dp/1631492101/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1617743551&sr=1-1MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
CLIPS: Hoist the Colours (Pirates of the Caribbean) Cover - Colm McGuinness Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX0r4H2i9uY
Drunken Sailor - Sean Dagher · Michiel Schrey · Nils Brown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOu9W9Nmj6U
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirates life for mehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A19q7rysLs
The Wellerman (Sea Shanty) - From TikTok to Epic Remixhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgsurPg9Ckw
Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the twentieth century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany. He shouldered a major share of responsibility for some of the worst Nazi atrocities, and up to his assassination in Prague in 1942, he was widely seen as one of the most dangerous men in Nazi Germany. Yet Heydrich has received remarkably modest attention in the extensive literature of the Third Reich.
Robert Gerwarth weaves together little-known stories of Heydrich's private life with his deeds as head of the Nazi Reich Security Main Office. Fully exploring Heydrich's progression from a privileged middle-class youth to a rapacious mass murderer, Gerwarth sheds new light on the complexity of Heydrich's adult character, his motivations, the incremental steps that led to unimaginable atrocities, and the consequences of his murderous efforts toward re-creating the entire ethnic makeup of Europe.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Naughty Temple Ale Aged in Whiskey Barrels, Toppling Goliath Brewing Company, Decorah, Iowa
BOOK: Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich
https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Hangman-Heydrich-Robert-Gerwarth/dp/0300187726/ref=sr_1_1?crid=Y38Z536MKWKZ&keywords=hitlers+hangman&qid=1617420204&s=books&sprefix=hitlers+hangman%2Cstripbooks%2C411&sr=1-1MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
CLIPS: Hangmen Also Die! (1943) - USA
Benjamin Grierson’s Union cavalry thrust through Mississippi is one of the most well-known operations of the Civil War. There were other simultaneous operations to distract Confederate attention from the real threat posed by U. S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee. Grierson’s operation, however, mainly conducted with two Illinois cavalry regiments, has become the most famous, and for good reason: For 16 days (April 17 to May 2) Grierson led Confederate pursuers on a high-stakes chase through the entire state of Mississippi, entering the northern border with Tennessee and exiting its southern border with Louisiana. The daily rides were long, the rest stops short, and the tension high. Ironically, the man who led the raid was a former music teacher who some say disliked horses. Throughout, he displayed outstanding leadership and cunning, destroyed railroad tracks, burned trestles and bridges, freed slaves, and created as much damage and chaos as possible.
Grierson’s Raid broke a vital Confederate rail line at Newton Station that supplied Vicksburg and, perhaps most importantly, consumed the attention of the Confederate high command. While Confederate Lt. Gen. John Pemberton at Vicksburg and other Southern leaders looked in the wrong directions, Grant moved his entire Army of the Tennessee across the Mississippi River below Vicksburg, spelling the doom of that city, the Confederate chances of holding the river, and perhaps the Confederacy itself.
Novelists have attempted to capture the large-than-life cavalry raid in the popular imagination, and Hollywood reproduced the daring cavalry action in The Horse Soldiers, a 1959 major motion picture starring John Wayne and William Holden. Although the film replicates the raid’s drama and high-stakes gamble, cinematic license chipped away at its accuracy.
Based upon years of research and presented in gripping, fast-paced prose, Timothy B. Smith’s The Real Horse Soldiers captures the high drama and tension of the 1863 horse soldiers in a modern, comprehensive, academic study. Readers will find it fills a wide void in Civil War literature.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Cavalry Scout Stout, El Paso Brewing Company, El Paso, Texas
BOOK: The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson’s Epic 1863 Civil War Raid Through Mississippi (Timothy B. Smith)
https://www.amazon.com/Real-Horse-Soldiers-Griersons-Mississippi/dp/1611215307/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
CLIP: The Horse Soldiers (1959)
A political Field of Dreams. A moderate US president is struggling to lead amidst the country's dysfunctional polarization when he stumbles upon a centuries-old saloon where he can drink at a nightly party with every former president, living or dead. He relishes this escape and the camaraderie with his new drinking buddies who understand his problems and sympathize with him. When he realizes that they all want only the best for both him and the country, unlike what he experiences in Washington each day, he starts to wonder if somehow this saloon can have greater value. Can he tap into the collective wisdom of Washington, Jefferson, the Roosevelts, Kennedy, Reagan and all the others to craft a solution to fix the country's broken and divisive political dynamic?
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Cliff Hanger Marzen German-Style Auburn Lager, Gordon Biersch Brewing Company, California
BOOK: Presidential Spirits: A Novel
https://www.amazon.com/Presidential-Spirits-Dan-Coonan/dp/1597132128/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=presidential+spirits+dan+coonan&qid=1616812427&s=books&sr=1-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Journalist and author Bill Knoedelseder discusses the crazy and extremely interesting life of one of America's "royal" families - the Busch family. He starts from the beginning and details how a young German brewer took a small neighborhood brewery and turned it into an international powerhouse. He explains how the flagship beer of Anheuser-Busch Budweiser got its name and how the company weathered the temperance movement and Prohibition. The author explains the succession from father to son from the original Adolphus Busch to the current patriarch of the family. He talks about how "Gussie" Busch married baseball and beer in St. Louis and the day he was forced from power by his son. He finishes with the story of how the brewing giant was bought out by a company that didn't even exist a few years before the historic company was purchased.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Michelob Ultra Pure Gold, Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, MO
BOOK: Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings f Beer
https://www.amazon.com/Bitter-Brew-Anheuser-Busch-Americas-Kings/dp/0062009273/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1616456667&sr=1-2
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Author and historian John Woolf discusses the amazing freak performers and freak shows of the 19th century. He talks about famous performers such as Tom Thumb (Charles Stratton) and the greatest showman P.T. Barnum. He explains how the meeting between General Tom Thumb and Queen Victoria brought the freak performers and shows into mainstream entertainment of the day. He also discusses the early fascination with little people and others with abnormalities, such as Jeffrey Hudson who was in the court of Charles I of England. Woolf covers several additional freak performers such as Chang and Eng, Joice Heth, Maximo and Bartola, the WhatIsIt and the influence Charles Darwin's research had on the freak shows of the age. He explains the life of the Elephant Man (Joseph Merrick) and how exploitation led to the decline of popularity of the shows. He finishes with a discussion on whether the extraordinary performers were exploited or empowered by the freak shows of the 19th century.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Freakshow Crush Hazy IPA, Flying Monkey Craft Brewery, Barrie, Ontario
BOOK: The Wonders: The Extraordinary Performers Who Transformed the Victorian Age
https://www.amazon.com/The-Wonders-John-Woolf-audiobook/dp/B07YCXCWQ1/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=john+woolf&qid=1615864967&s=books&sr=1-2
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
CLIP: This is Me, The Greatest Showman, Atlantic Records
Author Mike Mitchell talks about his comprehensive book about the early years of the St. Louis Cardinals. He explains the tremendous impact that baseball executive Branch Rickey had on the game. The discusses Rickey's early years and how he first got into baseball. Mitchell covers the mediocre baseball playing career of Branch Rickey and his service in the Chemical branch of the Army during WWI. The discussion includes how Rickey first got to the Cardinals and his move to the front office. Mitchell describes the minor league system that Rickey developed that lasted 100 years. He discusses the several pennants and World Series titles during his tenure. He used the farm system to produce amazing talent from Dizzy Dean to Stan Musial. Rickey's move to the Dodgers is covered including breaking baseball's color barrier. The talk concludes with Rickey's return to the Cardinals in 1962 and his final days.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Urban Underdog American Lager, Urban Chestnut Brewing Company, St. Louis, MO
BOOK: Branch Rickey's Redbirds: Baseball, Beer, Scandals & Celebrations in St. Louis
https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Rickeys-Redbirds-Baseball-Celebrations/dp/0578693879/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=branch+rickey&qid=1615349110&s=books&sr=1-2
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
CLIPS: Baseball's Best Moments (MLB.com), Stan Musial Biography, St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame, Wabash Cannonball
West Point Professor Emeritus of History Ty Seidule talks about is recently released book Robert E. Lee and Me. He discusses growing up in the American South and how he was indoctrinated into the myth of the Lost Cause. He explains the difference of living in Alexandria, Virginia and living in rural Georgia. He talks about the deification of Robert E. Lee and the groups that perpetuated the myth. Seidule explains the history of the flags of the Confederacy including the Confederate Batte Flag. The discussion includes why several Army posts were named for Confederate officers and how and why that should change in the future. He explains the importance of Lincoln and Grant's leadership and why that is downplayed by the Lost Cause philosophy. He discusses the history of Arlington National Cemetery and when Confederate graves and statues were allowed on the grounds. He finished with how racism has infected the American bloodstream and the steps that can be taken to tell the full nature of our shared history.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Ground Pounder Pale Ale, Service Brewing Company, Savannah, Georgia
BOOK: Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause
https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Lee-Me-Southerners-Reckoning/dp/1250239265
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
CLIPS: From an interview with Shelby Foote, the U.S. Army oath, quote from Andrew Young the former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., and a speech given by Harry Truman to the NAACP
Dr. Brian Dirck discusses how death impacted our greatest President during his life. He explains the death of his mother when he was a boy and how is father did not provide emotional support. The talks about customs and rituals for mourning, funerals, and burials in the Victorian Era. Dirck details deaths in Lincoln's life that had impact on him from his sister Sarah, Ann Rutledge, his son Eddie in 1850, Elmer Ellsworth, his son Willie while he was President, and the myriad of war dead. He discusses the literature that Lincoln preferred and how that provides some insight into how he viewed death and dying. He finishes with a comparison of wartime Presidents and how they dealt with death and what we can all learn from Lincoln's example.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Life & Death IPA, Vocation Brewery, West Yorkshire, England
BOOK: The Black Heavens: Abraham Lincoln and Death
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Heavens-Abraham-Lincoln-Death/dp/0809337029/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+black+heavens+abraham+lincoln&qid=1614666188&s=books&sr=1-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
CLIPS: President Obama reads the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln (2012)
Father Blantz discusses his comprehensive book on the history of the University of Notre Dame. He begins with the founding by Father Sorin and how the college has been impacted by French culture and the French Revolution. He describes the early inhabitants of the area near the university and how the institution still has a connection to that native tribe today. He details the rich history of the school including the Holy Cross Brothers Civil War controversy, destructive fire in 1879, and the innovations of several past presidents. Of course the discussion includes the birth of football at Notre Dame and the impact Knute Rockne had not only on the football team, but the university. Father Blantz talks about the university becoming co-ed in 1972 and finishes with a short history of some of the most iconic structures on campus including the famous Golden Dome, the Grotto, and "Touchdown Jesus."
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Guinness, Guinness St. John's Gate Brewery, Dublin, Ireland
BOOK: The University of Notre Dame: A History (Father Thomas Blantz)
https://www.amazon.com/University-Notre-Dame-History/dp/0268108218/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2TCS5QGXS99M7&dchild=1&keywords=the+university+of+notre+dame+a+history&qid=1614396375&s=books&sprefix=the+univesity+%2Cstripbooks%2C173&sr=1-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
FIGHT SONG: University of Notre Dame Glee Club (intro) and the University of Notre Dame Marching Band (outro)
Historian Greg Poulgrain explains the strategic and economic importance of the fourth largest country in the world, Indonesia. He describes the political situation in Indonesia before WWII and how American companies like Standard Oil had a vested interest in the resources of the nation. He explains how the discovery of the largest gold mine in the world was kept a secret for thirty years, even kept from John Kennedy when he became president. The author details the dealings of spymaster Allen Dulles and how he had a vested interest in keeping violence and confrontation going in Indonesia. He explains how President Kennedy planned to end the violence and provide economic aid to the people of Indonesia, but was thwarted by Allen Dulles. When Kennedy decided to go to Indonesia himself to ensure peace in Southeast Asia - Dulles and some in the CIA had to make sure that trip never happened. Kennedy planned the trip for 1964, but was killed in Dallas in November, 1963.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Bintang Pilsner, Heineken Indonesian Brewery Company, Indonesia
BOOK: JFK vs. Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia
https://www.amazon.com/JFK-vs-Allen-Dulles-Battleground/dp/1510744797/ref=sr_1_1?crid=142TL0IDGZFHK&dchild=1&keywords=jfk+vs+allen+dulles&qid=1614033824&s=books&sprefix=jfk+vs+%2Cstripbooks%2C174&sr=1-1
Chuck returns to talks a little baseball. The discussion starts with the first baseball game played in Quincy and includes some of the early team names like the Occidentals, Dexters, Red Hots, and Shoo Flys. Chuck recalls many great Quincy ballplayers from the past as well as many who came through the Gem City. He talks about the long tradition of minor league baseball in town. He concludes with conversation with the history of how the Quincy Gems were brought back with the help of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and a great Quincy philanthropist Bernie Willer.
HOST: Rob Mellon
GUEST: Chuck Scholz
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Historian and New York Times and LA Times Best Selling author Timothy Wingard explains the massive impact the mosquito has had on human history. He begins with an overview of why certain mosquitos are so dangerous and details the specifics of how the insect draws blood. He then goes into the historical impact of the mosquito from the Ancient Greeks, Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire and even to on the spread of Christianity. Winegard explains how the mosquito even tamed the mighty Mongol hordes. He continues with the effects the mosquitoes had on the Columbian Exchange and the massive expansion of African slavery in the Americas. The mosquito has also impacted the British Empire and helped give birth to America with some help from George Washington the the other founders. He explains how the insect at first benefited the Confederacy during the Civil War, but during the last few years of the war was an advantage for the North. He finishes the discussion with the impact the mosquito had on WWII and how the overuse of DDT led to the insect adapting to make the pesticide obsolete.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Vicious Mosquito IPA, Sunriver Brewing Company, Sunriver, Oregon
BOOK: The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predatorhttps://www.amazon.com/Mosquito-Human-History-Deadliest-Predator/dp/1524743429/ref=sr_1_1?crid=10Q322X4R9QZW&dchild=1&keywords=the+mosquito&qid=1613523562&s=books&sprefix=the+mosqui%2Cstripbooks%2C172&sr=1-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Author and historian of the atomic age James Kunetka details the birth and exponential growth of the Manhattan Project during WWII. He describes the unlikely partnership between Army General Lesley Groves and lead scientist Dr. Robert Oppenheimer that led to phenomenal achievements in the program. He discusses the discovery of nuclear fission in Germany in 1938 and the exodus of Jewish scientists from Nazi Germany to the United States. He explains the great challenge of producing enriched and refined nuclear material and how that led to a massive project that included many locations around the U.S. participating in the Manhattan Project, including the creation of the massive town of Oak Ridge, TN and Los Alamos in New Mexico. Kunetka details the recruitment efforts to get the preeminent scientists in the world to work on the project. He describes the first test of the bomb at Trinity and the use of the atomic bomb against imperial Japan to end WWII. He explains the amazing story of Project Crossroads and what happened to General Groves, Dr. Oppenheimer, and the Manhattan Project after the war.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Plutonium 239 Coconut Porter, Manhattan Project Beer Company, Dallas, Texas
BOOK: The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer the Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb
https://www.amazon.com/General-Genius-Oppenheimer-Unlikely-Partnership/dp/1504671023
MUSIC: Bones Fork
SONG: Louvin Brothers, Great Atomic Power, 1952
Acclaimed presidential historian Dr. Ronald White discusses his classic New York Times Bestseller American Ulysses. He starts with the early days of Ulysses growing up in Ohio and how his father worked to get him an appointment to West Point. He dispels many myths about Grant and starts with his time a the Military Academy. White goes into aspects of Grant's life that is often overlooked like his artistic and literary sides. He details his meeting with Julia Dent and how their partnership would change the course of American history. The professor discusses Grant's early military service and his participation in the Mexican War. He explains his exit from the Army and Ulysses' challenges and even failures in Missouri before the Civil War. White talks about his entrance into the war and the early years as he gained rank including the battles of Shiloh and Vicksburg. He discusses Grant's controversial presidency and his real achievements in the area of civil rights. He finishes with an explanation of his famous memoirs and Grant's legacy.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Uly's Dark Oatmeal Stout, Galena Brewing Company, Galena, Illinois
BOOK: American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant
https://www.amazon.com/American-Ulysses-Ronald-C-White-audiobook/dp/B01KBMP7IQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=9C7NCEJUS9EG&dchild=1&keywords=ulysses+american&qid=1612580969&s=books&sprefix=ulysses%2Cstripbooks%2C177&sr=1-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
MOVIE CLIPS: Lincoln, Dreamworks Pictures/20th Century Fox/Participant Media
New York Times Best Selling author and Rolling Stone journalist Andy Greene discusses his book The Office. He starts from the beginning with the British version of The Office created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. He details how the show made its way to America and its very rough beginning. The conversation includes the casting and the set that was built for the show in an actual office building. Greene covers the love story of Jim and Pam (John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer), as well as the choice of Steve Carell as Michael Scott. He talks about the history and development of the character Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson). He explains the improbable inclusion of Creed Bratton and how the brilliant producer Greg Daniels chose Mindy Kaling (Kelly Kapoor) and B.J. Novak (Ryan Howard) to be both writers and actors on the show. He explains the individual episodes in the book he highlights and the reason for each choice. He covers all your favorite characters from the show and some of the best moments. Greene ends with a discussion on why Steve Carell left the show after season 7 and why The Office is so iconic.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Dundee Original Brown Lager, Dundee Ales and Lagers, Genesee Brewing Company of Rochester, New York owned by North American Breweries
BOOK: The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s
https://www.amazon.com/Office-Untold-Greatest-Sitcom-History/dp/1524744972
MUSIC: Bones Fork
bonesfork.com
CLIPS: The Office, NBC
Legal scholar and baseball historian Mitch Nathanson discusses the amazing and interesting life of Jim Bouton. He talks about his early days as how he wasn’t even the best pitcher on his high school baseball team. Scouts went to see his teammate Jerry Colangelo. He goes into his early baseball success with the Yankees in the 1963 and 1964 World Series. Nathanson explains how Bouton’s life changed with the release of Ball Four, Bouton’s baseball account of life with the Seattle Pilots. Bouton became a controversial figure basically being blacklisted. Mitch then discusses Bouton’s life on TV and his role in the invention of Big League Chew. He finishes with the importance of Jim Bouton on the game of baseball.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Natural Light, Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, MO
BOOK: Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original
https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496217707/
MUSIC: Bones Fork
William Steele discusses his amazing biography of famed writer W.P. Kinsella who was the author of Shoeless Joe which was the basis for the classic baseball movie Field of Dreams. Steele talks about how he initially got interested in Kinsella and how that eventually became years of work, research and study. He describes the early years of Bill Kinsella growing up in a remote part of Canada and his eventual move to Iowa to study at the University of Iowa. He explains why Kinsella did not start writing until his early 40s and how he eventually made writing a career. He breaks down Kinsella's work which is in two main categories: First Nation people of Canada and baseball. Steele discusses the magic of the study of baseball and how that can help us learn more about race, politics, religion and society in general. He talks about Kinsella's masterpiece Shoeless Joe and how that became a national phenomenon. He explains Kinsella's view of religion and academia. He finishes with the story of the end of W.P. Kinsella's life and how he research continues.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Slingshot Dunkel Dark Lager, Backpocket Brewing Company, Coralville, Iowa
BOOK: Going the Distance: The Life and Works of W.P. Kinsella
https://www.amazon.com/Going-Distance-Life-Works-Kinsella/dp/177162194X
MUSIC: Bones Fork
MOVIE CLIPS: Field of Dreams, Universal Pictures, 1989 and Bull Durham, Orion Pictures, 1988
New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin discusses his book Tombstone. He covers all of the key figures in the Wild West story including, Wyatt Earp and the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Cochise County Cowboys. He discusses the early days of Wyatt Earp and how he became one of the most known lawmen in American history. Clavin also talks about the early life of Doc Holliday and how he met Wyatt Earp and how they became friends. The conversation also covers the rough and tumble cowboys such as the Clanton's, McLaury's, Curly Bill, and Johnny Ringo. He suggests what Hollywood portrayals are accurate and which take a great deal of liberties with the story - which often happens when covering the legends of the American West. Clavin explains what actually happened at the OK Corral and indicates that it did not even occur at he corral. He finishes with the last days of Wyatt Earp and the last of the Wild West.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Tombstone Lite, Tombstone Brewing Company, Tombstone, Arizona
BOOK: Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell
https://www.amazon.com/Tombstone-Earp-Brothers-Holliday-Vendetta/dp/1250214580
MUSIC: Bones Fork
MOVIE CLIPS: Tombstone, Hollywood Pictures (1993)
Author Kathryn Smith reveals the amazing life of FDR's gatekeeper, Missy LeHand. She starts from her early days helping Franklin Roosevelt with the 1920 Election and the tragedy of FDR being stricken with polio in 1921. She explains the importance of LeHand and how she became a key figure in FDR's inner circle. She details the relationship Missy had with the Roosevelt's and how she became almost like a member of the family. Smith talks about the gubernatorial races in 1928 and 1930 and how that prepared Franklin Roosevelt for a presidential run in 1932. The entire way to the White House, Missy LeHand was by FDR's side. The discussion also covers how the president shielded his disability from the public. The talk finishes with the untimely death of Missy LeHand and the lasting importance she had on FDR, the New Deal, and the nation.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Fireside Chat Winter Spiced Ale, 21st Amendment Brewery, San Leandro, CA
BOOK: The Gatekeeper: Missy LeHand, FDR, and the Untold Story of the Partnership that Defined a Presidency
https://www.amazon.com/Gatekeeper-LeHand-Partnership-Defined-Presidency/dp/1501114972/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=missy+lehand&qid=1610603614&s=books&sr=1-2
WEBSITE: http://margueritelehand.com/
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Baseball writer and historian David Krell details the storied and amazing history of the New York Mets. He talks about a myriad of topics from the first sponsorship for the Mets to their connection with the New York Metropolitans of the 19th century. He explains how the Mets came to New York in 1962 and their owner the influential Joan Whitney Payson who owned the team from 1962 to 1975. Krell details the early struggles for the Mets and their eventual rise of World Series Champions in 1969. He discusses their powerful rotation of the early 70s with Seaver, Koosman, and Nolan Ryan. After some down years the Mets returned to prominence in the mid-1980s with a brash and swaggering team. Krell talks about the 80s rivalry with the St. Louis Cardinals and the funs style of baseball of each team. He then discusses the Mets in popular culture with movies such as Gone Girl and City Slickers and famous TV shows like Seinfeld. He finishes with a discussion on the future of the New York Mets and the future of baseball.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Rhinegold Extra Dry Lager, Drinks Americas, Connecticut
BOOK: The New York Mets in Popular Culture
https://www.amazon.com/New-York-Mets-Popular-Culture/dp/1476680108
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
The award-winning author, journalist, and television producer Thomas Maier discusses the amazing story of the CIA's secret objective to assassinate Fidel Castro. He explains how the mafia lost millions of dollars when Castro took control of Cuba and how the CIA used them to develop several schemes to kill the Cuban leader. He spins the web by brining in the connection of the Kennedy family to the mafia and how the stars of the day such as Frank Sinatra was the connection between Kennedy, the mob, and the CIA. He describes in detail the role that famous gangsters Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli played in the secret mission to assassinate Fidel Castro. Maier explains the many wild methods and schemes such as exploding cigars, poisoning, diseased handkerchiefs, and bomb-laden sea shells - none of which were successful. The author indicates that Kennedy's fascination with James Bond led to that having a direct influence on real world missions. He explains the wild connections between Kennedy, Sinatra, Giancana, Roselli, and the women in their lives who played a major role in the story - to include a proposed hit on Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. He talks about the power struggled between Dulles/CIA and Hoover/FBI. He details the Church Committee hearings in 1975 and how they led to the hits put on Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli. Maier finishes with secrets he uncovered in his research and even touches on the subject of who killed President Kennedy in 1963.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Anti-Hero IPA, Revolution Brewing, Chicago, Illinois
BOOK: Mafia Spies: The Inside Story of the CIA, Gangsters, JFK and Castro
https://www.amazon.com/Mafia-Spies-Inside-Gangsters-Castro/dp/1510741712
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning, New York Times best selling author Thomas Ricks discusses the classical education of the Founding Fathers and how that impacted the creation of the American government. He explains the moment that shocked him into starting to research this topic. He details the intellectual journey of the first four American presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. Ricks explains civic virtue and how it was viewed by the founding generation. He warns of a political environment that could lead to oligarchy, which Aristotle considered the least stable form of government. He talks about how he held Washington and Madison in higher regard after writing First Principles, and that Adams and Jefferson lost some of their luster. He details the system that Madison developed which used vice instead of virtue to strengthen the new government. He discusses the rise of the market economy and how that has come to dominate American political, economic and social thought. He concludes with some suggestions on how the American system can long endure with changes, which the Founders anticipated would happen.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Samuel Adams Limited Edition Winter Lager, Samuel Adams Brewing Company, Boston, Massachusetts
BOOK: First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How that Shaped Our Country
https://www.amazon.com/First-Principles-Americas-Founders-Learned/dp/0062997459/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2QOOQJNANFWH4&dchild=1&keywords=first+principles+thomas+ricks&qid=1608591561&sprefix=first+principles%2Caps%2C183&sr=8-2
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Award winning author Judith Flanders discusses her book Christmas: A Biography. She explains two major assumptions that are made about the holiday and how we have grown to accept many myths and legends as fact. Christmas is a holiday that we all know, do not really know at all. She talks about the early Roman celebrations such as Saturnalia and the importance of the winter solstice. Flanders also discusses the reasons that December 25th was chosen to celebrate the nativity. She does into detail about the many food traditions that accompany the holiday. She explains the reason for the use of greenery and the history of the use of the Christmas tree. She covers the giving of gifts and the origins of Santa Clause from St. Nicholas to Coca-Cola and she busts a few myths along the way. She even discusses the history of the reindeer from Donner and Blitzen to Rudolph - for who we have Montgomery Ward and Gene Autry to thank for that. She explains how carols did not start as Christmas songs and were not incorporated into church and religious services until modern times. She discusses the importance of carols during WWII and their proliferation due to radio and TV. She finishes with what Christmas really is and what it could look like in the future.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Rogue's 2020 Santa's Private Reserve Peppermint Bark Milk Stout, Rogue Brewery, Newport, Oregon
BOOK: Christmas: A Biography
https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Biography-Judith-Flanders/dp/1250190797/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3N25ZBE7MD30G&dchild=1&keywords=christmas+a+biography+by+judith+flanders&qid=1608248862&sprefix=christmas+a+bio%2Caps%2C168&sr=8-1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Professor Douglas Boin discusses the Goths and ancient Gothia and why they are often misunderstood. He talks about the difficulty of researching a people that did not have a written language for much of their existence. He explains Roman stereotypes and prejudices against the Goths and the world that Alaric grew up in on the border of the Roman Empire. Boin covers how many Goths were converted to Christianity through Roman missionaries as well as the difference between the Arian form of Christianity practiced by Alaric and the Nicaean form practiced by most Romans during that time. He explains the exploitation of the Goths and how that led to hunger, raids, and pillaging by Alaric. The author goes into the interesting political intrigue and deception that followed the death of Emperor Theodosius and how that destabilized an already challenged empire. He discusses the importance of the Roman General Stilicho who was half-Vandal which caused some in the leadership to question him and eventually led to his execution. Boin talks about Alaric's rise to military power, his problems with the Romans and why the death of Stilicho led to his decision to sack the imperial city of Rome in 410 A.D. He finishes with what we can learn today from the fractured and complicated relationship between the Romans and the Goths.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Southern Gothic Unfiltered Pilsner, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, California
BOOK: Alaric the Goth: An Outsider's History of the Fall of Rome
https://www.amazon.com/Alaric-Goth-Outsiders-History-Fall/dp/0393635694/ref=asc_df_0393635694/?tag=bingshoppinga-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=&hvpos=&hvnetw=o&hvrand=&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4583795269210872&psc=1
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Pulitzer Prize winning author and Harvard University historian Dr. Fredrik Logevall covers the early years and eventual rise of John F. Kennedy. He discusses his father Joseph Kennedy, Sr. and the impact he had on his children. He challenges some of the myths about Joe Kennedy's contacts to organized crime and questionable business dealings and instead focuses JFK's father as a successful, although ruthless businessman. Logevall compares demanding fathers of American presidents, Fred Trump and Joe Kennedy. He explains how Jack Kennedy developed a different philosophy from his father in regards to international relations and how educational trips to the capitals of Europe help shape John Kennedy's worldview. Dr. Logevall talks about Kennedy's military service and what actually happened with the famous PT-109 incident. He also covers the controversial topic of Jack Kennedy's womanizing and his relationship with a possible Nazi spy Inga Marie Arvad. The Congressional elections of 1946 are discussed which included the election of JFK, Nixon and Joseph McCarthy. He discusses John Kennedy's service in the House and the Senate, and the criticism he receives for his conduct during the McCarthy-era. He connects JFK's rise in politics and the rise of American power in the world. He finishes with a discussion on the legacy of John F. Kennedy.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Heineken, Heineken International, Amsterdam
BOOK: JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956
https://www.amazon.com/JFK-Coming-American-Century-1917-1956/dp/0812997131
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Chuck Scholz discusses the background and connection of Father Augustus Tolton to the Gem City. He was the first African American priest in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. After his mother escaped from slavery in Missouri she made her way with her children across the Mississippi River to Illinois under gunfire. Chuck details the early years of young Gus and his working in tobacco factory and attending school first at St. Boniface and later St. Peter's. He explains the importance of Father McGirr in taking the Tolton family into his congregation and his effort to develop Augustus Tolton's religious training and education. Chuck moves on to Tolton's education at St. Francis (Quincy University) and at a seminary in Rome, Italy where he became the first Catholic priest in history. Scholz talks about Ft. Tolton's charismatic sermons and how he started to gain a large bi-racial congregation, which drew the jealousy of other Quincy priests. The Diocese moved Tolton to Chicago where he continued his ministry where he died in 1897. At his request, he was brought back to Quincy to be buried. Chuck then goes into detail about the Cause for Sainthood of Father Augustus Tolton. He finishes with where Father Tolton is in the process and even discusses one of the miracles that has been included as part of the Positio and his Cause of Sainthood.
HOST: Rob Mellon
GUEST: Chuck Scholz
MUSIC: Bones Fork
HYMN: Holy God We Praise Thy Name, Faith of Our Fathers
Dr. Mark Roehrs discusses the expansion of the Japanese military starting with their victory over Russia in 1905. He explains the role Japan played in the First World War and the political system that developed in Japan after WWI. He emphasizes the impact the Great Depression had on Asian countries and Japanese dependence on American products. Roehrs talks about the dynamic between the Japanese military and the emperor. He discusses the invasion of Manchuria and the U.S. response. He goes into the military commanders of the Japanese and the United States and the rising tensions between the two nations. He explains why the President Roosevelt moved the American Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbor and the Japanese plan to destroy the U.S. naval presence in the Pacific. Roehrs covers Admiral Yamamoto's plan and the situation that led to the American military being susceptible to attack. He does include the mistakes the Japanese made at Pearl Harbor will giving them a large amount of credit for a near flawless attack. He details the events on the morning of December 7, 1941 in Hawaii. He concludes with a review of the conspiracy theory that FDR or Churchill knew about the attack and allowed it to occur to get the U.S. into WWII.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Big Wave Golden Ale, Kona Brewing Company, Hawaii
BOOK: WWII in the Pacific
https://www.routledge.com/World-War-II-in-the-Pacific/Renzi-Roehrs/p/book/9780765608369
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Dr. Timothy Roberts describes his research into the letters written between an Illinois couple during the American Civil War. He discusses the migration patterns of central and southern Illinois and how many Southerners migrated west and brought their political philosophy with them. He explains the Illinois Black Codes and the restrictions on Black citizens that limited large scale migration to the the Illinois. Roberts talks about the letters of William and Jane Standard and how they provide insight into the political and social philosophy of many rural farmers. He details the Standard's view of abolition, Abraham Lincoln and their general distrust of war aims. He goes into the decision by an antiwar Illinoisan to join the Union effort and the war against the Confederacy. Dr. Roberts explains the formation of the 103rd Illinois Regiment and the service and contribution to the war effort, including Vicksburg, Missionary Ridge, the Battle for Atlanta and Sherman's March to the Sea. He includes the pressure the war and William's absence had on Jane and the Standard family. He details how William almost left the Army on several occasions. He finishes with a discussion on how the rural way of life in America changed due to the Civil War and how that has impact still today.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Shock Top Belgian White, Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, MO
BOOK: This Infernal War: The Civil War Letters of William and Jane Standard
https://www.amazon.com/This-Infernal-War-Letters-Standard/dp/1606353357
MUSIC: Bones Fork
PERIOD MUSIC: Frontier Favorites: Old-Time Music of Wild West by Mark Gardner and Rex Rideout
https://www.amazon.com/Frontier-Favorites-Old-Time-Music-Wild/dp/B000CAJZQ8/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=rex+rideout+western+music&qid=1606276262&sr=8-1
Professor and author Alexander Mikaberidze offers an in-depth and informative discussion on the Napoleonic Wars. He explains how Napoleon was able to rise to prominence from relative obscurity during the French Revolution. The professor discusses the aspects of the Revolution that Napoleon embraced even after he became an "enlightened despot." Mikaberidze details the impact that the French invasion of Egypt had on the region we now refer to as the Middle East. He entertains the aspects of the Napoleonic Code that were progressive and how in way Napoleon was a progressive leader. He offers his insight into the Franco-British rivalry and how that helped shape the political, economic, and social aspects of the 19th century world. He explains the sale of Louisiana to the United States and Napoleon view of the American nation. The professor covers the failures and disasters that Napoleon encountered including the Continental System, the Peninsular War, and the Invasion of Russia. He finishes with a description of how Napoleon "escaped" from Elba and reestablished himself in France before he was defeated at Waterloo. The discussion includes the legacy of Napoleon and the impact of his policies, successes, and failures on the 20th century and today.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Li'l Napoleon IPA, Pensacola Bay Brewery, Florida
BOOK: The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History
https://www.amazon.com/Napoleonic-Wars-Global-History/dp/0199951063
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
New York Times best selling author John O'Neill recounts the amazing tale of the secret Vatican search to find the true grave and bones of St. Peter. He explains what we know historically about the birth, life and death of Peter the Apostle. He talks about the building of the original St. Peter's by the Emperor Constantine and how that construct leveled Vatican Hill and covered tombs that were centuries old. O'Neill discusses the Catholic Church's first attempts to locate the bones of St. Peter in 1513 and later in 1683 - both of which were unsuccessful. He tells of an amazing discovery in the 1930s when workers were digging to prepare for the burial of Pope Pius XI. The discovery sparked renewed interest in First and Second Century Christians and embarked the Vatican on the trail once again to locate Peter's grave. O'Neill discusses how the 1930s were a troubling time for the Catholic Church with fascist leaders who were belligerent to religion. The Church out of funds turned to a Texas oilman, George Strake to fund the search for the fisherman's tomb. The author also explains the importance of Father Walter Carroll and how he helped protect Rome from destruction during WWII. The archeological dig finally got expert help with the addition of renowned archeologist Margherita Guarducci. The discussion concludes with an overview of the current tour you can take to St. Peter's Tomb.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Paulaner Salvator Doppelbock, Paulaner Brewery, Munich, Germany
BOOK: The Fisherman's Tomb: The True Story of the Vatican's Secret Search
https://www.amazon.com/Fishermans-Tomb-Vaticans-Secret-Search/dp/1681921405/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&hvadid=78477753307848&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&keywords=the+fisherman%E2%80%99s+tomb&qid=1605233077&sr=8-1&tag=mh0b-20
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Former Mayor Chuck Scholz tells the story of the five sitting presidents that visited the Gem City including Rutherford B. Hayes, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. He even covered the coastal visit of Jimmy Carter. He covers the trip of Hayes that included a rough follow-on trip to Hannibal where General William Sherman had to admonish the crowd. Scholz covers the William McKinley visit that included speeches by almost his entire cabinet, including John Hay. The short but successful visit by President Theodore Roosevelt at the old Adams County Court House. He speaks extensively about the visit by President Clinton and the stop to see the Father Tolton statue. He finishes with Barack Obama's trip to the Convention Center.
HOST: Rob Mellon
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Dr. Carol Berkin discusses her book Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence. She begins by explaining what aspects of American colonial society would be understandable to modern women and what aspects would be abhorrent. As an expert in the Revolutionary War, she explains why the war is often incorrectly interpreted as a simple, quaint, and harmless conflict. Berkin details the horrors and violence of the War and specially how that impacted American women. She discusses the political roles women assumed during the 1770s with their voices, raising money, and the use of their purchasing power as a political weapon. She talks about the importance of "camp followers" in the camps of the British and American armies and the problems that arose from the presence of women in the camps and forts. The discussion included the presence of Martha Washington and other wives of key officers in the camps. One of the most entertaining aspects of the conversation was regarding the female spies, saboteurs, couriers and heroines who helped win America's independence. There are some specifics stories you will really enjoy. She finishes the discussion with a desire for Americans to return to normalcy at the conclusion of the war, but indicates the strides women made as a result of the fight for independence.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Every Day-Hero Session IPA, Revolution Brewery, Chicago, IL
BOOK: Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence
https://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-Mothers-Struggle-Americas-Independence-ebook/dp/B000XUAEA8
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Mount Vernon Research Historian Mary V. Thompson discusses the Virginia slave system that was used on the plantations that George Washington grew up on. She explains how Washington first became a slave owner upon the death of his father when George was only 11. She discusses his marriage to Martha Dandridge Custis and the laws regarding the slaves of a widow. Thompson talks about how Washington's military service impacted his management and philosophy on slavery. She discusses his fierce temper and his approach to managing a plantation. She explains how the Washington's maneuvered around a Pennsylvania law to avoid the situation where their slaves living with them in Philadelphia could sue for their freedom. Thompson covers the story of West Ford and contends that he was not fathered by George Washington although many of his descendants claim that parentage. She talks about the special relationship between Washington and his personal slave servant Billy Lee and the manner in which George Washington freed his slaves in his will. She finishes with a discussion on how Mount Vernon has interpreted slavery over the years.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: George Washington's recipe for small beer
BOOK: "The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret"https://www.amazon.com/Only-Unavoidable-Subject-Regret-Washington/dp/0813941849
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Musical historian Rex Rideout discusses the individual songs, composers and performers that helped tame the American West. From the first American explorers heading into the unknown, such as Lewis and Clark and Zebulon Pike, music was an important component to maintaining high spirits and morale. Rex emphasizes the songs of the Civil War and cowboy songs of the West. Rideout tells American history through a series of songs. Some of the songs featured on the podcast are The Girl I Left Behind Me, Old Rosen and Beau, Old Dan Tucker, and The Battle Cry of Freedom - just to name a few. Enjoy the musical journey that Rex takes us on and the interesting stories that accompany the traditional music or America's past.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Hop Bullet Double IPA, Sierra Nevada Brewery, Chico, California
REX's MUSIC: Frontier Favorites: Old-Time Music of the Wild West
https://www.amazon.com/Frontier-Favorites-Old-Time-Gardner-2003-08-26/dp/B01KAT88FY
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Dr. Arthur Mehrhoff explains how German traditions and customs have added to American life. He details the domestic issues and conflicts that were going on in Germany that led to a widespread migration to the United States. He discusses the impact of the Revolution of 1848 in Germany and the expectations of the “48ers” that came to America. Mehrhoff describes why many Germans migrated to the American Midwest while other immigrant groups such as the Irish mainly concentrated in Eastern cities. He identifies some of the first and largest German communities in Missouri which a special emphasis on Hermann, Missouri. He talks about the economic, religious, and artistic impact Germans had on Missouri culture, as well. He explains how the German initially preserved and cultivated their traditions and customs – including a discussion on how German Christmas customs has had an effect on American holiday traditions. Mehrhoff delves into the history of groups such as the “Turners” and discusses the impact that WWI and anti-German hysteria had on German communities in the U.S. He describes how Prohibition devastated German breweries in the United States. He then explains how WWII and the move to the suburbs in the 1950s changed German communities forever. Mehrhoff finishes with a look to the future and how communities are celebrating and educating the public about German heritage in America.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Korbinian Doppelbock, Bavarian State Brewery Weihenstephan, Germany
MISSOURI HUMANITIES COUNCIL
https://mohumanities.org/
PUBLICATION: Missouri Life
https://missourilife.com/
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
FOLK MUSIC: Eisberg Germanisches Land
Author Anne R. Keene discusses the story of the Navy baseball team that was formed in the early years of World War II called the Cloudbuster Nine. The squad was made up of several major league baseball players including Williams, Sain, Pesky and Gremp. The focus is really on Hall of Famer Ted Williams and Anne Keene's father who served as a batboy for the Cloudbusters. She explains how Williams decided to join the Navy's elite V-5 Pre-Flight School. The program had five locations in the United States including at the University of Iowa and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The discussion centers on the training and team at UNC. Keene talks about how Ted Williams worked through early academic troubles to become one of the most successful trainees at the Pre-Flight School. She explains training developed by Naval commander Tom Hamilton which was the most challenging and difficult course in the U.S. Navy. Anne talks about her father's connection to baseball, his struggles with near fame and his legacy. She finishes with a discussion on the Cloudbuster schedule and a fabled game with Babe Ruth's squad which featured the Bambinos very last at-bat.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Tank 7 American Saison Ale, Boulevard Brewing Company, Kansas City, MO
BOOK: The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team that Helped Win World War II
https://www.amazon.com/Cloudbuster-Nine-Untold-Williams-Baseball/dp/1683583620/ref=asc_df_1683583620/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=459526726066&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16977945266457766814&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9022417&hvtargid=pla-915388764440&psc=1
AUTHOR: Anne R. Keene
https://www.annerkeene.com/
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Veteran writer James Donovan talks about the inspiration and dangerous beginnings of the American space program. He explains how the U.S. in WWI acquired important plans and equipment from the Nazi V-2 rocket program, including the German scientist Wernher von Braun. He goes into Operation Paperclip the secret American plan to bring German scientists into the United States for use in military development and rocket technology. The conversation covers the importance of Sputnik in 1957 and how the Soviets had moved past the U.S. He details how the United States selected the astronauts for the early space program and the requirements and training they received. He goes into the flights of Alan Shepard and John Glenn and how that revived a struggling American space program. Dononvan describes how the election of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson changed the trajectory of the space race. He goes into the famous Apollo 204 training incident that resulted in the deaths of astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee and how that nearly grounded the entire system. The author tells how he handles those that believe the Moon landing was fake. He finishes with the legacy of Apollo 11 and the importance of space exploration for humanity.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Blue Moon LightSky Citrus Wheat, Blue Moon Brewery, Denver, CO
BOOK: Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo II
https://www.amazon.com/Shoot-Moon-Extraordinary-Voyage-Apollo/dp/0316341789
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Author and historian James B. Mills explains how an Irish lad from New York named Henry McCarty became the legendary Billy the Kid. He attempts to glean from scarce information to determine where he came from and when the family moved west. He discusses the relationship Billy developed with John Tunstall and how he was about to move beyond his run ins with the law to become a legitimate rancher before the murder of his employer took the Kid's future. Billy got involved in a conflict known as the Lincoln County War. His legend grew when he joined the Regulators after the death Tunstall. Mills reveals how Billy the Kid developed an extremely strong relationship with the Hispanos in Nuevo Mexico. He even discusses the rumors that Billy had a way with the ladies. He details the Kid's escape from jail and the murder of two deputies. The ensuing manhunt led by Pat Garrett ended when Billy the Kid was killed at Ft. Sumner, New Mexico after refusing to leave the love of his life and disappear to Old Mexico.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Billy the Kid Amber, Bonito Valley Brewing Company of Lincoln, NM
https://www.bonitovalleybrewing.com/
PUBLICATION: Wild West Magazine
https://magazineagent.com-sub.info/Wild-West/Welcome/?gclid=CjwKCAjw_Y_8BRBiEiwA5MCBJjSeN1FyqlJy9sTvb-kSJMFZ4AosbtziE9vjOZiRg_3ElGOBfgTlgRoCzO4QAvD_BwE&utm_expid=.9NfbmhaFSB6Dn5Dj9KgZ9g.1&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Former Mayor Chuck Scholz about the many famous people and celebrities that made their way through the Gem City. He starts with one of Quincy's native born residents Paul Tibbets who piloted the Enola Gay and the crew that dropped the first atomic bomb. Chuck talks about the two Supreme Court Justices he had an opportunity to meet as Mayor - Antonin Scalia and Clearance Thomas. He discusses how several celebrities decide to use the Quincy Airport when refueling, including some that have connections to Quincy such as Stephen Spielberg and John Travolta. He explains the city's rich baseball tradition and how Yankee great Hank Bauer developed a relationship with a Quincy lady. He mentions the friends of local baseball legend El Tappe, as well. He finishes with the story how he met Captain Kangaroo and the impact the CPT had on a local teacher.
Host: Rob Mellon
GUEST: Chuck Scholz
MUSIC: Bones Fork
New York Times bestselling author and historian Rick Perlstein explains in detail the rise of the New Right and conservative movement in American politics in the 1970s. He covers the election of 1976 and how Gerald Ford struggled to gain footing, Ronald Reagan almost won the Republican nomination, and Jimmy Carter miraculously won the presidency. He describes how Carter had to deal with a rising tide of conservative sentiment from the evangelicals, tax warriors and neoconservatives from his first day in office in 1977. Perlstein talks about the myriad of problems that President Carter faced including inflation, stock market lows, foreign policy challenges around the globe, an energy crisis and high unemployment. He juxtaposes that with the America that Ronald Reagan is promising. The author explains the failure of the ERA amendment and the "Achilles heal of liberal Democrats". He includes references to pop culture and how movies from the 1970s provide us a window into American culture. He concludes with an in-depth discussion on the Election of 1980 and the political ascendancy of Ronald Reagan.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Dead Guy Ale, Rogue Brewery, Newport, Oregon
BOOK: Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980
http://www.rickperlstein.net/
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Scott Dawson historian from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and author of the book The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island explains how information from the project he is working on uncovered evidence that determined what actually happened to the lost Roanoke colony. He discusses how the story has developed into a legend and how it found its way into pop culture. The talks about Sir Walter Raleigh’s preferred relationship with the Queen of England and his initial expedition. The conversation covers the rise of Spanish power and colonial holdings and the threat to England which prompted a series of expeditions from privateers such as Sir Francis Drake. The philosophy of Richard Hakluyt is discussed and how it impacted English ambition and colonization. Dawson describes the early foundations of the Roanoke colony and its many problems and challenges. He goes into detail about the native tribes that were encountered by the English and how they have misinterpreted throughout history. The author explains how the situation in Roanoke devolved for the English colonists and how that impacted the local tribes. He explains the arrival of John White and the baptism of Manteo. Dawson finishes by dispelling myths, putting the legend into context and answering the question – what actually happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke?
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Hazy Little Thing IPA, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, CA and NC
BOOK: The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island (Scott Dawson)
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Colony-Hatteras-Island/dp/1467144339
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Historian David Harbin discusses the beginning of the Mormons from the Second Great Awakening to the Midwest (3:25). He provides an overview of the life of Joseph Smith and the founding of a new church (5:50). He talks about how the Book of Mormon was received and written (6:41). Harbin explains the problems that developed for Joseph Smith and the move from New York to Kirtland, OH (9:35). After dividing he followers the Mormons settled in Missouri for the founding of the "New Jerusalem" (15:24). He talks about the Battle of Crooked Creek and the move out of Missouri including Governor Boggs' extermination order (27:33). The difficult winter of 1838-1839 for the Mormons was eased with the people of Quincy as the "City of Refuge" born (31:47). Joseph Smith arrived and moved his followers to a new town - Nauvoo was founded (42:10). Harbin talks about the political problems for the Mormons and the establishment of the Nauvoo Legion (43:00). He explains the schism within the LDS church and the anti-Mormon paper the Nauvoo Expositor (57:09). He details Joseph Smith's arrest and death at Carthage Jail (58:55) which began a series of clashes known as the Mormon War (1:03:05). He finishes with the Mormon Exodus and the Battle of Nauvoo (1:06:03).
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Coors Edge Non-Alcoholic, Golden, Colorado
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Dr. Paul Polgar explains how the nation moved from very limited anti-slavery sentiment before the 1760s to a more vibrant anti-slavery posture in the 1780s and 1790s. He describes the difference between those who were against the Atlantic slave trade and those that had moral and economic arguments to end slavery. The talk covers early manumission laws and how the political creed of the American Revolution had an impact on the anti-slavery movement. Dr. Polgar is an expert on the 1790 Congressional debate on slavery and race. He explains the petitions that were brought by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and the Quakers. He covers the pro-slavery argument of those in the states more dependent on slavery such as South Carolina and Georgia. Polgar includes an explanation of the role some of the Founding Fathers played in the early debate to end slavery to include Franklin, Hamilton and Washington. He finishes with a discussion on how the later abolition societies benefited from the early arguments and work of the individuals in the Revolutionary period.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Goose Oktoberfest, Goose Island Beer Company
BOOK: Standard-Bearers of Equality: America's First Abolition Movement
https://www.amazon.com/Standard-Bearers-Equality-Abolition-Published-University/dp/1469653931
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Former Mayor Chuck Scholz tells the interesting story of the birth of Mountain Dew and the connection the inventor has to Quincy. The story goes back to the city's founder John Wood and the German immigrants that made the treacherous journey across the Atlantic to the Midwest. He was even able to work in a connection to Father Tolton. He ties it all back to his family's connection to the world famous soda. Enjoy the story and the vintage Mountain Dew advertisements.
HOST: Rob Mellon
GUEST: Chuck Scholz
Historian and prolific author Dr. Andrew Burstein discusses the book, he co-authored with Dr. Nancy Isenberg, on John Adams and John Quincy Adams. He describes the problems that both Adams had with the two-party system that developed in the early days of the Republic. He details the historic events that John Adams and John Quincy Adams were involved in and how that impacted their philosophy. Dr. Burstein explains the fear JA and JQA had with the development of the cult of personality surrounding Ben Franklin, George Washington, and Andrew Jackson which they considered a real threat to American democracy. He describes the challenges that both John Adams and John Quincy Adams had as president and the combative political environment that developed. He finishes with a perspective on the basic principles that defined Adamsian Democracy.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Sam 76', Samuel Adams, Boston, MA
BOOK: The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality
https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Democracy-Presidents-Confront-Personality/dp/0525557504
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Dr. Christopher McDonald discusses the innovations and developments of the bolt action infantry rifles of World War I. He explains the difficulties the British had in South Africa and the Americans had during the Spanish-American War when confronted with entrenched soldiers armed with Mauser rifles. He details the importance of smokeless powers and magazine weapons. McDonald covers the development of the Pattern 1913 Enfield for the British and the M1903 Springfield for the American Army. He discusses the production challenges after the war broke out and the contracts for the American companies Winchester, Remington, and Remington Eddystone to produce the British Pattern 1914. The United States had production challenges with the M1903 as well which led to the modification of the Pattern 1914 to create the M1917 Enfield for the U.S. Army. He touches on the controversy over which rifle Sergeant Alvin York used during his famous engagement, which was captured in the 1941 film Sergeant York starring Gary Cooper. Dr. McDonald finishes talking about the rifle developments during the period between WWI and WWII and what happened to the thousands of weapons left over after WWI ended.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Bass and Company Pale Ale
BOOK: Three Lying or Four Sitting - From the Front in a Ford: WWI Letters of Kent Dunlap Hagler
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Lying-Four-Sitting-Letters/dp/193613201X
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Terrell Dempsey tells the untold story of Mark Twain and the slave culture in Missouri that helped shape him. The discussion focuses on slavery in Hannibal and northeast Missouri where Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) grew up. The "accidental historian" describes the nature of slavery in Hannibal as well as the small anti-slavery groups that developed across the river in Quincy, Illinois. The talk covers the preacher David Nelson and how he was driven out of Missouri to establish the Mission Institute in Quincy. Nelson impacted the lives of Elijah Lovejoy and Dr. Richard Eells. Dempsey covers the case of abolitionists Thompson, Work and Burr and their failed attempt at rescuing blacks from slavery. The conversation covers the religious changes in America and how those changes had an effect on slavery in America. Terrell discusses John Marshall Clemens the father of Samuel Clemens and his views on slavery. He describes the horrors of slavery and explains how myths about slaves developed. He covers some individual events like the murders in Marion County by the slave Ben, which perpetuated stereotypes and increased fear in the white citizenry. The conversation ends by discussing how slave culture formed Mark Twain and influence his writing, and finishes with Samuel Clemens's action at the beginning of the Civil War.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Tom Sawyer Blonde Ale (Mark Twain Brewing Company, Hannibal, MO)
http://marktwainbrewery.com/
BOOK: Searching for Jim: Slavery in Sam Clemens's Worldhttps://www.amazon.com/Searching-Jim-Slavery-Clemenss-Circle/dp/0826215939
MUSIC: Bones Fork
https://bonesfork.com/
Chuck relives his many stories of the presidential candidates and campaigns that made their way through the Gem City. From being a delegate for Jimmy Carter when other Illinois leaders were Kennedy men to setting up an event for President Obama at the Civic Center, he recounts numerous stories and friends from the past. The discussion covers Carter's riverboat connection, Mondale's stop at the Neisen Farm outside of Burton, Dukakis' huge speech on the Square, the connection to President Clinton through an old friend, Al and Tipper Gore on the riverfront, the impressive John Kerry, and Barack Obama filling sandbags. Chuck talks about getting stuck in a bathroom when he was supposed to meet a presidential candidate and how the Secret Service dealt with an overzealous local sheriff. Join the discussion as he takes you into Quincy's political past.
New York Times best-selling author Larry Tye discusses his new book Demagogue on the life of Senator Joseph McCarthy. He explains how he became interested in the topic and why a new book on McCarthy is important. He details the early life of Joe, his boxing background and his military service where he got the nickname "Tail Gunner Joe". Larry covers how McCarthy got into politics and how a speech in Wheeling, WV changed the tide of American history. Through lying, bullying, aggressiveness and baseless accusations Joe McCarthy rose to national prominence at a time when the country was fearful of communist infiltration and nuclear war. Larry talks about the team McCarthy put together including a talented young attorney Roy Cohn who would eventually become the mentor to Donald Trump. The books covers the enablers, the victims and the conspiracies left in the aftermath of McCarthyism. The conversation concludes with Senator McCarthy's political downfall after challenging the U.S. Army and he death from alcoholism.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Dirty Bastard Scotch-Style Ale, Founders Brewing Company, Michigan
WEBSITE: www.larrytye.com
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Nancy Benz discusses her research into the Women Ku Klux Klan (WKKK) that developed in the early 20th century. She explains the formation and early history of the KKK and the group's revival after the release of Thomas Dixon's The Clansman and D.W. Griffith's famous film The Birth of a Nation. Benz talks about how the Progressive Era played a role in increasing the profile of women in the KKK. She goes into the history of William Joseph Simmons in Georgia and how he used publicity experts Edward Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler who became known as the "Empress of the KKK". The discussion covers the expansion of the Klan in the 1920s into a national-level organization with new targets such as Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. She delves into the expanded role of the WKKK and their importance to the movement. She explains the concept of 100% Americanism in the growth of the organization. The conversation goes into the Klan in the South that developed in the 1960s and the societal changes that brought countless rural whites to the KKK during the Civil Rights Movement.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Zon Belgian-Style Witbeir Ale (Boulevard Brewing Company, Kansas City, MO)
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Former Mayor Chuck Scholz details the life of service of Illinois Senator Paul Simon. Chuck talks about how Senator Simon grew up and his start in politics in southern Illinois. He has an uplifting story of how Paul Simon and the "Father of Conservatism" Barry Goldwater developed a friendship that endured after Senator Goldwater retired. The chat includes when Senator Simon honored Hattie Josephine "JoJo" Williams the mother of Barry Goldwater who was from Bowen, Illinois. Rob discusses the amazing life of Josephine Williams Goldwater and her influence on the Senator Goldwater. Chuck explains the nature of the Election of 1964 where Lyndon Johnson defeated Goldwater in one of the largest landslides in American political history. In the end, the seemingly opposite personalities of Simon and Goldwater teach us a lesson about how to treat each other today, even if we disagree politically.
Mike Moyers details the history of local radio in Quincy and the importance of covering local sporting events to the fabric of a community. He discusses his time with WTAD and WGEM and the great local play-by-play announcers of Quincy. The talk will take you down memory lane with a host of clips from the past, including the 1971 game between Quincy Notre Dame and Quincy High School. Mike honors a great list of area personalities such as baseball Hall of Famer Bill King, Jim Woods, Jeff Dorsey, Jim Roberts, Ralph Oakley, Chuck Mahon, Derrick "Boots" Bush, Eric Ervin, Ron and Tim Kinscherf, Matt Longo, Mike Lawrence, Jeff Myers, Mel and El Tappe, Jeff Wellman, Sean Secrease, Broc Hampsmire, and others. He explains the excitement of Blue Devil basketball in the 1980s with some amazing finishes. He finishes with an evaluation of the current media landscape and the future of radio.
HOST: Rob Mellon
MUSIC: Bones Fork
The video creator and host of the wildly successful Tasting History on YouTube explains how he started cooking ancient recipes and his passion for history. He details the history of important Roman writer Pliny the Elder and speaks about the difficulty of replicating ancient dishes. He covers Apicius and the oldest book of cookery in western civilization the De Re Coquinaria. From Ancient Rome he moves on to talk about Medieval cookery starting with the use of bread as a plate known as trencher. He explains the history of finding food cures for the bubonic plague and the four humors. From there the discussion focuses on recipes from The Forme of Curry and King Richard II's extravagant feasts, including the famous Feast for the Duke of Lancaster which changed history. Max clarifies the use of sugar in medieval recipes and whether the tomato is a fruit or a vegetable where he agrees with the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled on the matter. He explains the importance of Hannah Glasse and her art and perspective on cooking, and offers a recipe for Syllabub (try it - it sounds amazing). He also covers his trip to Bathe, England and tasting the Sally Lunn Bun - try it too. He finishes with how to cook salmon founding fathers style in his 4th of July meal which John Adams was sour about until he died on the 4th of July in 1826. Want to know how the Union Army fed convalescing soldiers, Max covers that too.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Hot Buttered Beer of Tudor England (Tasting History)
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsaGKqPZnGp_7N80hcHySGQ
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Former Mayor Chuck Scholz describes the monumental challenge of dealing with the Great Flood of 1993 as the mayor of Quincy, Illinois. He details working with city, state and federal officials, including with the Illinois National Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers. Chuck explains how President Clinton contacted him and pledged to help in any way that he could. Enjoy the storied effort of Illinois and Missouri residents and the fight to open the river after the bridges on the Mississippi River had been closed. Join Chuck and Rob for interesting tales from the Gem City on this History Ago Go reoccurring bonus episode.
Dr. Lynn Snyder a Zooarchaeological Researcher who has worked for the Smithsonian and the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece describes how a farm girl from a small town in Illinois became one of the world's preeminent zooarchaeologists. She discusses her early studies and what motivated her to become an archaeologist. The discussion focuses on her book, The Agora Bone Well and her work at the Agora in Athens, Greece. She details the location of a mass grave in an ancient Athenian well. The discovery of the remains of hundreds of infants and dogs in the well led to a group of archaeologists attempting to unearth the real truth of the Bone Well. Her team in effect became Crime Scene Investigators for a mass grave that was used centuries ago. She speaks about how the Greeks treated newborn infants, the Greek child naming ceremony, and how the first few days of life in the ancient world were truly perilous. Dr. Snyder goes into great detail about the study of the skeletal remains of dogs in the well. She explains ancient purification rituals and the difficulty of examining the bones from the Bone Well which had been altered by bronze deposits dumped into the well by ancient Greek artisans. She finishes with the three hypothesis for the mass grave 1) Epidemic 2) Infanticide and 3) Natural Mortality. Listen to find out what the team of archaeologists concluded about the reason for the ancient mass grave in the Agora Bone Well.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Single-Wide American IPA, Boulevard Brewing Company, Kansas City, MO
BOOK: The Agora Bone WellMUSIC: Bones Fork
Dr. Patrick Hotle a decorated and award winning historian and professor discusses the amazing and important history of the Byzantine Empire and the ancient city of Constantinople. He explains the division of the Roman Empire under Emperor Diocletian and establishment of the city of Constantinople by Emperor Constantine. The professor emphasizes the geographic and economic importance of the location of the Byzantine capital. The concept of "Nova Roma" and the difference between the Eastern and Western Roman Empires are emphasized. Hotle details the reign of Emperor Justinian including his territorial ambitions, building projects, and the establishment of the Justinian Code. He tells of General Belisarius's military conquests and his role in defeating the Nika Rebellion. The Empress Theodora, her history and her importance to Justinian are the focus of the second half of the discussion. Dr. Hotle explains the impact a divided empire had on Christianity, and how we are in debt to the Byzantines for preserving Greco-Roman culture. He completes the conversation with an description of the Hagia Sophia, the rise of Islam in the region, and the eventual fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. Istanbul, not Constantinople remains a cultural hub for Christians and Muslims alike.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Schnickelfritz Bavarian-Style Weissbier Ale (Urban Chestnut Brewing Company, St. Louis, Missouri
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Author, historian and filmmaker Dr. Graham Peck speaks about his award winning book, Making and Antislavery Nation. The conversation covers the early controversy over slavery in the United States, including the agreements to maintain the Union. The Compromise of 1820 and 1850 are discussed in detail. Dr. Peck does a masterful job of articulating the vision and philosophy of both Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. He explains idea of Manifest Destiny and the issues with the territorial expansion of the United States including the Louisiana Purchase and the land acquired from Mexico after the Mexican War. He also describes the importance of Illinois in the national political landscape of the 1850s. Peck includes the rise of the Republican Party, the Election of 1856, and the impact of the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates on the national dialog on slavery. He concludes with the Election of 1860 to include Stephen Douglas's nationalist vision of America and Lincoln's belief in American democracy.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Pabst Blue Ribbon, Pabst Brewing Company, Los Angeles, CA
BOOK: Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle Over Freedom, University of Illinois Press, 2017
WEBSITE: www.civilwarprof.com
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Dr. Scott Giltner explains the ugly legacy of white supremacy and Jim Crow in America in the period after Reconstruction. He discusses the immediate impact of the 13th Amendment and how Southern leaders attempted to maintain power and economic control. The discussion includes the philosophy that formed the basis for white supremacy and how it was used to justify repression of the black population. Dr. Giltner continues with an explanation of the origins of the term Jim Crow and the impact of those laws on black citizens in the 1880s to the 1960s. He offers examples of segregation laws, how they started and how far they went. He explains early opposition to Jim Crow including the Plessy v. Ferguson case which established the concept of "separate, but equal". He speaks about the political impact of Jim Crow in the form of the "grandfather clause", poll taxes and literacy tests. The conversation ends with Jim Crow during the Cold War and vestiges that still remain.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Zwickel Bavarian-Style Lager (Urban Chestnut Brewing Company)
BOOK: Hunting and Fishing in the New South: Black Labor and White Leisure after the Civil War, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Historian and Librarian Iris Nelson details the interesting story of COL George V. Rutherford and his duties on the night that Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. After being called to the house of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, COL Rutherford was ordered to the Peterson House where Lincoln was dying from his wound. Nelson discusses the night of April 14, 1865 and the early morning hours of the next day. Rob and Iris detail the assassination attempt on Secretary of State William Seward and the gruesome scene left by the assailant Lewis Powell. The discussion covers COL Rutherford being ordered by Stanton to place silver half-dollars on Lincoln's eyes after his death at 7:22 am on April 15, 1865 and the COL accompanying the body of the President to the White House. The talk includes the history behind the ancient funerary tradition of placing obols (coins) on the eyes of the dead. Iris also speaks about the military tribunal that convicted Mary Surratt and the other conspirators. Mary Surratt was the first woman in the history of the United States to be executed by the U.S. Government. She explains the connection of Orville Hickman Browning of Quincy to Lincoln and his role after the assassination in the Surratt case.
HOST: Rob Mellon
FEATURED BREW: Newcastle Brown Ale (Lagunitas Brewing Company, California)
MUSIC: Bones Fork
Dr. Justin Coffey discusses the early years of Richard Nixon and his political rise. Coffey stresses the development of Nixon's work ethic and social resentments which form his politics. Nixon's school years and service in the Navy eventually lead to a congressional run in 1946. Dr. Coffey talks about the 12th Congressional District win by Nixon against Jerry Voorhis and his placement on the House American Activities Committee (HUAC). The conversation covers the HUAC and the investigation into the "Hollywood Ten" and the Alger Hiss case. The section on the Alger Hiss case encompasses more modern revelations such as the "Venona Decrypts". Coffey finishes with Nixon's election to the U.S. Senate in 1950, his political rivalry with John F. Kennedy, and his selection to be the VP nominee for Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952. The election of 1952 features the famous "Checkers Speech" which saved Richard Nixon's political career.
Host: Rob Mellon
Featured Brew: Mischief Hoppy Belgian-Style Ale (The Bruery, Yorba Linda, CA)
Music: Bones Fork
Author and researcher Phil Reyburn tells the history of the Illinois National Guard unit of Black Soldiers the 8th Illinois. Their service on the Mexican border and in the Spanish-American War. The 8th Illinois was an anomaly because it was the only regiment in the U.S. Army at the time with almost a complete compliment of Black Officers from Colonel to Private. The 8th was designated the 370th Regiment and assigned to the 93rd Division in WWI. General Pershing transferred the two Black Divisions the 92nd and 93rd to the French during the last counter offensive of the war. The draft of WWI and the segregation of Black Soldiers is explained to include the treatment of African-Americans in the Army. Reyburn also covers the training of Black Officers in the U.S. Army during the Great War. He then details the amazing and heroic service of LT Robinson and SGT Thompson culminating in those Soldiers being awarded French and American medals. The talk concludes with a conversation on the race riots in 1919 at the conclusion of the war.
Host: Rob Mellon
Featured Brew: Fantasyland Midwest Coast IPA Ale (Urban Chestnut Brewing Company - St. Louis, MO)
Music: Bones Fork
History professor Dr. Wendell Mauter details the political environment in Germany after WWI and how Adolf Hitler used the chaotic time to gain power. Mauter describes Hitler's life in Vienna and his time in the German Army. He covers the different groups that made up the political right in Germany and how the Nazis gained traction in a divided political landscape. The professor explains Hitler's world view and his rise to prominence after the failed coup in 1923. If you want to understand the National Socialist system - Dr. Mauter gives a description of the SA, SS, Gestapo and the SD, as well as, key Nazi figures Goebbels, Rohm, Goring, Himmler, Borman and Hess. The fascinating talk helps answer the question how someone like Hitler could come to power in a cultured and educated society.
Host: Rob Mellon
Featured Brew: Hofbrau Hefe Weizen (Hofbrau Munchen HB) Munich Wheat Specialty
Music: Bones Fork
Dr. Tim Jacobs the Commander of the Quincy Civil War Roundtable discusses the curious and amazing story of the sword in the wall detailing the tale of the Ruddell family. The talk included the history of CPT William Ruddell and his service with the Union Army and the Battle of Atlanta. The Ruddell family history traces back to Stephen Ruddell and his life with the Shawnee after being captured during the American Revolution. Stephen became brothers with Tecumseh and the Prophet. The Battle of Tippecanoe is discussed and the separation of the Shawnee brothers. Dr. Jacobs also discusses Civil War generals Grant, Sherman and Jackson.
Host: Rob Mellon
Featured Brew: #6 Classic American Lager (Urban Chestnut Brewing Company, St. Louis, Missouri)
Music: Bones Fork available on iTunes, Amazon and Spotify
Historian and author Reg Ankrom discusses his book Stephen A. Douglas: The Political Apprenticeship 1833-1843. The talk includes the early days of Douglas and his move west to Illinois. Reg details the political growth of the "Little Giant" and describes his competition with Abraham Lincoln. He also describes the nature of Stephen Douglas's engagement to Mary Todd (Lincoln). The discussion includes Douglas's time as the State's Attorney and Justice on the Illinois Supreme Court. The episode covers the Illinois politician's life in Jacksonville, Springfield and Quincy.
Host: Rob Mellon
Featured Brew: Prairie Path Golden Ale (Two Brothers Brewing Company)
Music: Bones Fork