Q-90.1's Lifelines with John Augustine: Recent Episodes
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John Augustine reviews biographies and recounts the lives of the people featured in them. From Delta College Public Radio.
The story of Owosso, MI native James Oliver Curwood, author, conservationist, and builder of Curwood Castle.Support this podcast:https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/
A look at the life of stormchaser Tim Samaras and his field research on tornadoes.Support this podcast:https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/
At a time when everyone read the paper, Barney Kilgore was probably the most significant newspaperman.Support this podcast:https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/
In an age of rabid reformers, John Hancock was a moderate, yet he found himself as one of the instigators of the Boston Tea Party.Support this podcast:https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/
America's 250th birthday revived attention to the heroes of the Revolution, but one less familiar name is often overlooked, despite his significant contribution to our nation's birth.Support this podcast:https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/
Mark Twain imagines the diaries of the original couple and their observations of this new world.Support this podcast:https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/
tells the story of 20th-century conservationist Lawrence Anthony and his ability to communicate with wild elephants.Support this podcast:https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/
examines Eleanor Roosevelt's role as the first first lady to do regularly-scheduled radio programs.Support this podcast:https://www.deltapublicmedia.org/donate/
Alexis de Tocqueville was born in France 62 years after Thomas Jefferson, but the parallels between them are remarkable.Support Delta College Public Radio:https://www.deltabroadcasting.org/donate/
Herodotus of Athens was the first significant historian. This idea was so new that he didn't even call his stories of the wars between the Ancient Persians and Greeks "history."Support Delta College Public Radio:https://www.deltabroadcasting.org/donate/
It's remarkable to realize that Gershwin, the favorite American modernist composer, was born when many Civil War veterans were still alive.Support Delta College Public Radio:https://www.deltabroadcasting.org/donate/
There is a mystery around the death of Edgar Allen Poe and John Walsh is convinced he has solved the case.
In 1903, on a $50 bet, Horatio Nelson Jackson set out on the first journey by car from San Francisco to New York.
The most famous English diarist, Samuel Pepys, lived in the 1600s and the phrase "may you live in interesting times" certainly applies.
If there's a 20th century world champion subject for biography, it would have to be Winston Churchill. Fortunately, a small door has been opened by Gretchen Rubin and her book, "40 Ways to Look at Winston Churchill."
For 2000 years, the great scientific authority in the West was Aristotle. But by the time the Pilgrims were landing at Plymouth Rock, a new age of science was in bud, and Newton would be an example of the new scientist.
Today's book combines two autobiographical pieces: one a travelogue of Europe and an account of the first World's Fair, the other an account of growing up in and escaping from slavery.
Lady Constance Lytton was a British aristocrat and suffragette who shed her noble trappings to go on a hunger strike for women's right to vote.
Only one Native American chief won a negotiation with the U.S. government: the Apache leader, Cochise.
How many great novels should a writer be expected to produce to qualify as a great novelist? Thomas Hardy wrote a half-dozen acknowledged classics still read for pleasure and taught in universities though he has been dead for 100 years.
Early in the twentieth century, Albert Barnes created a fiefdom in suburban Philadelphia that embraced his grand house, his art museum, his school for fine arts appreciation, and his ego.
Born into slavery when it was still legal in New York, Sojourner Truth was a powerful orator on faith, women's rights, and the abolition of slavery.
Early sailors could navigate by latitude to sail east and west, but sailing north or south was much more difficult until John Harrison solved the longitude problem.
Twelve generals have been U.S. president. Among them are George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and today's subject, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Many people contributed to the idea of a computer being a machine rather than an occupation, but the biggest leap forward came from Alan Turing.
Authors who spread the Protestant Reformation risked censorship, imprisonment, or even death, including Michael Servetus, who was burned alive along with most copies of his book.
In the late 1950s, white author John Howard Griffin disguised himself as a Black man to experience the state of race relations in the segregated South from the other side.
While Kosciuszko's family was part of Poland's upper 10%, this military leader's sympathies were for the disenfranchised.
Machu Picchu was built mere decades before the Spanish invasion of South America, yet almost no one knew about it until the ruins were discovered in 1911 by Hiram Bingham.
Return with us now to a time when bright and ambitious students studied vocabulary lists to enhance their erudition and learn about a man responsible for bringing many of these words into the English language.
There is a select group of people who have become prominent in history because of one brief moment in their lives. For abolitionist Congressman Charles Sumner, that moment was being assaulted with a cane by a furious Southern senator.
King Edward of England's brutal execution of William Wallace was meant to intimidate the Scots, but instead it inflamed them and a new leader arose: Robert the Bruce.
John Hay would serve every Republican administration from Abraham Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt even though he was never elected to office himself.
There is a cliché that artists must struggle, but Frida Kahlo must hold the world record.
How could the famously enlightened city of Athens execute one of its most outstanding citizens? A reporter covers a trial held 2,400 years ago in this book.
Today's review covers the second half of Walt Disney's career, following up on the success of Mickey Mouse and Snow White.
A century ago you could see many bizarre sideshows on the boardwalk at Coney Island. But one of these was not an act, but a system that saved thousands of premature babies.
Years ago, I read a fine biography of Gershwin, but I decided to read a more recent one and, sure enough, I'm impressed by Gershwin all over again.
Dylan Thomas wasn't just a star. He was a supernova blazing before us before flaming out.
The American detective story with its hardboiled protagonist walking the mean streets was invented by Dashiell Hammett.
Johnny Appleseed might be the best known figure from America's past that most people know almost nothing about (and one that many believe to be a myth).
There are many people with TV shows named after them, but only a few have entire networks, and only Walt Disney transformed American culture.
The story of Abraham Lincoln is best take in small doses and today's book focuses on the events leading up to and including the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg.
It seems wrong to call Frank Lloyd Wright a "modern" architect - he was born just two years after the end of the Civil War. But he lived a long life and some of his buildings still look something that landed from outer space.
Is it possible that The Iliad and The Odyssey, with over 25,000 lines between them, originated in oral tradition rather than written texts? This is the story of a young Classics student who set out to prove it.
The little-known story of screenwriter Salka Viertel, who created a refuge for famous figures escaping World War ll.
After 13 years of this program, we are finally getting around to the first and most important leader in American history.
The first person to attain the grand status of rocket scientist was Robert Goddard, a pioneer who laid the groundwork for space travel.
The name of Hatshepsut, a woman who declared herself king of Egypt, was scratched out of the hieroglyphics, but her story is told in this week's biography.
Trial lawyers are popular protagonists in TV and movies, but few are celebrated in biographies, except for Clarence Darrow.
You've likely never heard of General Alexandre Dumas, but his life served as inspiration for the swashbuckling adventure stories written by his famous son.
Dorothea Lange's most famous photograph is of a weather-beaten migrant mother whose face is burned into the American soul.
An immigrant peddler's son, Julius Rosenwald headed to Chicago and eventually became the head of one of the most successful companies in the world.
Would you be interested in a biography of the world's most famous speech therapist, a man you may already be familiar with?
America's take on the detective novel gave us hard-boiled figures like Raymond Chandler's gumshoe Philip Marlowe.
Bach is the grandmaster of German baroque, but so little is known about Bach's life that after his death, he almost disappeared!
One of the world's most famous paintings is "Whistler's Mother" by James McNeill Whistler, except that it isn't, even though she is.
Shortly after the time of Marco Polo, another traveler from Morocco set out on the Hajj to Mecca and ended up traveling to many more places.
Some lives can't be squeezed into a single book, so it's nice to find a biography that focuses on an aspect of a life.
Most Americans get through the year without reading a single poem, even though millions of them were raised on the work of America's most successful poet.
Every American schoolchild could tell you that Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, but he did so much more.
Solomon Northup was a free man in New York who was kidnapped, sold, and resold as a slave for 12 years in the plantations near New Orleans.
Voltaire was born on the brink of the Age of Enlightenment and became the star of that era.
Over 1,000 years ago there lived an English king who was not supposed to be king, but he turned out to be perhaps the most important ruler in British history.
Before the FBI, the first organized crime syndicate in America was confronted by an inspector for the US Post Office.
Stradivari built some of the finest and most famous instruments ever made, including the violins that bear his name.
William Herschel began as a talented musician and, through math, became a brilliant astronomer who discovered the planet Uranus.
Few creators were ever as consistent in their creation as America's greatest portraitist.
Everyone remembers Houdini, but in his day, Howard Thurston was considered the King of Magic.
There is no shortage of biographies on Groucho Marx, but most are too worshipful or fail to separate him from his brothers.
Jim Thorpe was the only American athlete to play professional baseball and football as well as to win Olympic gold for track and field.
Thomas Jefferson was widely considered the most outstanding writer among the Founding Fathers, but they turned to another eloquent member to write the Preamble to the Constitution.
He was the most successful world conqueror in history, but there's a good chance you've never heard of him.
When a British scholar died with his work on the Oxford English Dictionary incomplete, the reins were picked up by an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.
This week, we look at an ill-fated expedition former President Teddy Roosevelt took into the Amazon.
If you $1 million, what would you buy with it? For Henry Folger, the answer was Shakespeare.
The 1600s were a time of religious intolerance and Anne Hutchinson was persecuted for challenging the exclusively male clergy.
Wiley Post was the first person to fly solo around the globe. In his day, he was second only to Lindbergh in fame, but he is largely forgotten today.
The son of a slave and his former master, Benjamin Banneker was a self-taught astronomer, an almanac author, and a surveyor for the site of the nation's capital.
Roget compiled his famous thesaurus when he was in his 70s, but he was a brilliant polymath with many accomplishments before that.
Sometimes a portion of a great life can make a fine story and a good book, as in the case of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.