History Author Show

  June 28, 2021 - We all know the name of John Henry “Doc” Holliday, but who was he in that lifetime beyond the fences of the O.K. Corral, standing guns drawn with Wyatt Earp? Our time machine travels back to meet this icon of the Old West, before and after his moment of destiny in Tombstone, Arizona, at the O.K. Corral. Our guide on this journey is Victoria Wilcox, who brings us The World of Doc Holliday: History and Historic Images. Victoria Wilcox is founding director of Georgia’s Holliday-Dorsey-Fife Museum and the brains behind the documentary In Search of Doc Holliday. She also authored The Saga of Doc Holliday trilogy, featuring the historical fiction novels Southern Son, Dance with the Devil, and Dead Man's Hand. True West Magazine named her the Best Historical Western Novelist and her debut novel earned Georgia's Author of the Year Award. Visit our guest at VictoriaWilcoxBooks.com, or on the social media outlets Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

June 14, 2021 - In 1982, the military junta in Buenos Aires had an idea to boost its sagging popularity: Invade the Falkland Islands, a British territory that Argentines called Las Malvinas. Only 60 Royal Marines stood in the way, 8,000 miles from home and cut off from support. In this week's episode, we bring you "the book they said couldn’t be written about the battle that they say never happened," debunking the conventional wisdom that those Marines surrendered without a fight. That narrative does injustice their heroic defense as well as the price paid by the Argentines thrown into a war by leaders who cared little for its soldiers, and sailors on ships such as the doomed ARA Belgrano. Our guide on this journey is Ricky D. Phillips, who brings us The First Casualty: The Untold Story of the Falklands War. His second book invokes the capital of the Falkland Islands and the soldiers of Argentina writing home, telling a very different story than their government's sunny propaganda tales of victory. That's L

   May 31, 2021 - The United States of America goes to great lengths to recover the remains of those who fall in battle, to offer a headstone, a finally resting place that loved ones can visit to honor their sacrifice. But what about those who fall and cannot be identified? In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard readers ages 7 to 97, with a book that's perfect for Memorial Day. Since 1937, an elite body of guards began the round-the-clock vigil that continues to this day, steeped in tradition, and dedicated to honoring our nameless war dead. Our guide into one of the most sacred places in the United States, within Arlington National Cemetery, is Jeff Gottesfeld who brings us the illustrated history, Twenty-One Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. You can find him at JeffGottesfeldWriter.com, as well as on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Gottesfeld is a novelist, playwright, screen-and-TV writer whose work (including The Tree in the Courtyard: Looking Through Anne Frank's Wi

    May 17, 2021 - When we think of George Washington, we see him carved onto Mount Rushmore -- above all of us and certainly above anything as oily as politics. But how did he get up there? Joining us to shine new light on the warrior-statesman's career from a mere state legislator to the single most dominant force in the creation of the United States, is David O. Stewart, who bring us  George Washington: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father. Special thanks to Lindsay M. Chervinsky, Ph.D, who submitted a question for David about Washington's biggest regrets. Watch or listen to our conversation about her book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. We previously caught up with David O. Stewart to chat about his books: Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America American Emperor – Aaron Burr: The Man Who Shot Alexander Hamilton The Lincoln Deception (A Fraser and Cook Historical Mystery) Also check out: Impeached: The Trial of President An

  May 3, 2021- Who was the Roman general Marc Antony before he became a legend, before he rose as a man in full, forever linked in history with Cleopatra? We'll meet a boy struggling to redeem his disgraced family name in this week's novel, Antonius: Son of Rome. It's book one in Brook Allen's Antonius Trilogy, followed by Antonius: Second in Command and the conclusion, Antonius: Soldier of Fate. Brook Allen introduces us to this historic figure before sculptors and Shakespeare got their hands on him, sharing her passion for ancient history, and redeeming a man whose enemies have had their say for 2,000 years. Brook Allen earned a B.A. from Asbury University and a Master's at Hollins University with an emphasis in Ancient Roman studies, so she has the grounding in facts to really bring this story to life. Visit her at BrookAllenAuthor.com and find her on Twitter or Facebook. Special thanks to Tonya Mitchell for recommending The Antonius Trilogy. You can find that interview in the archives, where we discus

  April 19, 2021 - How did the trauma of the First World War follow a baseball legend home, sending both his game and his life into downward spirals? Returning to introduce us to this tragic Hall of Famer is Jim Leeke, who brings us The Best Team Over There: The Untold Story of Grover Cleveland Alexander and the Great War. Grover Cleveland "Pete" Alexander is a legendary name in baseball, but a key factor in his career -- months of service as an artillery sergeant in the Great War -- has been overlooked.  Jim is a contributor to the Society for American Baseball Research Baseball Biography Project, as well as the writer or editor of several books on U.S. and military history. Visit our archives wherever you're watching or listening now for my previous conversations with Jim Leeke. Howell's Storm: New York City's Official Rainmaker and the 1950 Drought Nine Innings for the King: The Day Wartime London Stopped for Baseball, July 4, 1918 From the Dugouts to the Trenches: Baseball During the Great War

  April 5, 2021 - How did the general who saved the Union and served two terms as president, earn so much love from the nation that they memorialized him with what's the largest mausoleum in the Western Hemisphere? We explore this story with Louis Picone in Grant's Tomb: The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon. Louis and I previously caught up to discuss his books Where the Presidents Were Born: The History & Preservation of the Presidential Birthplaces and The President is Dead! The Extraordinary Stories of the Presidential Deaths, Final Days, Burials, and Beyond. In Grant's Tomb, he examines how Americans memorialized one of the most significant leaders in history, and how that man defied a death sentence from cancer to write his epic memoir and provide for his wife and family. Learn more about our guest at LouisPicone.com, or connect with him across social media platforms LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  

   March 22, 2021 - If you don't know the name Marion Miley, then prepare to meet someone you'll never forget. The young golfer had it all: brains, power, beauty, and a winning personality. It seemed only a matter of time before this 27-year-old phenom earned immortality on the links with a national championship. But fate had other plans. Three burglars cut Marion's life short in a botched robbery, just weeks before Pearl Harbor plunged the nation into war. With a war to fight and millions being killed, the death of even a beloved athlete quickly fell from the world's thoughts. Beverly Bell returns Marion Miley to her rightful spot as an inspiration in her meticulously researched novel about the forgotten tragedy, The Murder of Marion Miley -- a finalist for the 2020 U.S. Golf Association Herbert Warren Wind Book Award, the highest literary honor given by the USGA. It describes in vivid detail the young athlete who enchanted fans in Lexington, Kentucky, and the world over, who desperately needed some go

  March 8, 2021 - What happens when a legendary historian aims his keen eye in the rearview mirror, examining the places, people, and experiences that made him a great storyteller? Well, when the historian is David Pietrusza, the answer is the rich, funny and poignant memoir Too Long Ago: A Childhood Memory. A Vanished World. Before returning us to the Amsterdam, NY, of Upstate New York in the 1950s and '60s, David Pietrusza wrote or edited a treasure trove of books and has appeared everywhere from C-SPAN and the History Channel, to ESPN and Fox Sports Channel, as well as too many fine radio shows to list. He is also featured on AMC's Making of the Mob: New York. It's easy to see why he's been called "one of the great political historians of all time." David Pietrusza has sat down with me to discuss four of his previous books, interviews which you can find in our archives or below. They are: TR's Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy Rothstein: The Life, Tim

  February 15, 2021 - There has been no more noble fight in all of history than the one guaranteeing equal rights for formerly enslaved people. So how did America forget the Black congressman and a Civil War veteran president to ensure that all those Union soldiers hadn't died in vain -- and more importantly, that the words on those Reconstruction Era amendments to the Constitution guaranteeing rights to the freedmen, weren't just ink on the page, laughed at by marauding lynch mobs? In this episode, we meet this overlooked odd couple with Benjamin R. Justesen who brings us Forgotten Legacy: William McKinley, George Henry White, and the Struggle for Black Equality. Justesen writes, "William McKinley's role as a sincere friend and benefactor of African-Americans may be one of the best-kept secrets in American political history." He also introduces us to the inspiring Congressman White, whose skill as an orator -- and later as the founder of Whitesboro, New Jersey -- is the stuff of legend. Ben Justesen is a

  February 8, 2012 - The U.S. Navy builds modern marvels: 100,000-ton hunks of metal that glide across the ocean rather than sinking like rocks. But how do they do it? The short answer is "computers." But it was Raye Montague who first designed a ship with that technology, doing so as a single mother during the height of the Cold War, and as a Black woman born into the segregated Little Rock of 1935. She literally let nothing stand in her way. We meet this inspirational trailblazer in Overnight Code: The Life of Raye Montague, the Woman Who Revolutionized Naval Engineering thanks Raye's son, David R. Montague, and his co-author, Paige Bowers, who  previously stopped by to chat about her debut book The General's Niece: The Little-Known de Gaulle Who Fought to Free Occupied France. You can enjoy that conversation in our archives wherever you're listening now. Paige Bowers holds a master’s degree in modern European history and taught about French history and culture at Louisiana State University. David R. Mon

  January 25, 2021 - When George Washington accepted the responsibility of being the first president of a new nation, he felt the weight of history on his broad shoulders, knowing that every step he took, would set precedents for generations. So, how did he pick a team of advisers to keep his path straight on the long march to nationhood? We explore how he pioneered the presidential cabinet with Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky. She's a historian of Early America, the presidency, and government who brings us The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. Lindsay Chervinsky is Scholar in Residence at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona College, Senior Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, and Professorial Lecturer at the School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University. She earned her Ph.D. in history from UC Davis. Find her at LindsayChervinsky.com, or on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where you can

January 11, 2021 - In 2017, Sports Illustrated named Mike "Doc" Emrick the greatest sportscaster of all time. But how did a kid from a tiny town in the American Midwest, grow up to be a voice synonymous with Canada's game, the first media member inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, a TV heavyweight, and the winner of eight Sports Emmys? How did Doc sound just as excited about the 10,000th goal he saw, as he did when he was a boy in the 1950s, watching the Fort Wayne Komets put the biscuit in the net for the very first time? We get those insights in his memoir, Off Mike: How a Kid from Basketball-Crazy Indiana Became America's NHL Voice. In a career that spanned 47 years, Doc had stops everywhere from ESPN and CBS, to Fox, SportsChannel, MSG, NBC, and beyond. He survived prostate cancer along the way, and spent 5,000 nights away from his beloved wife, Joyce. They've certainly earned their retirement. The Emrick's are also lovers of all creatures great and small. In fact, Doc is donating proceeds from

   December 28, 2020 - What's it like being the great-grandson of one of the greatest leaders of the 20th Century, the man called "the Greatest Briton"? In this episode, we pay tribute to Jonathan Sandys, Winston Churchill's great-grandson, who passed away at just 43 years old on December 29, 2018. With the two-year remembrance upon us, we reached back into the archives to share a speech he delivered to the English-Speaking Union at the Fort Orange Club in Albany, NY, about his book, God and Churchill: How the Great Leader’s Sense of Divine Destiny Changed His Troubled World and Offers Hope to Ours. You can also enjoy our full interview about God & Churchill from October 6, 2015 in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com, our iHeartRadio Channel, iTunes, etc. Jonathan, like his famous ancestor, had the power to uplift even in the darkest times. We hope this speech will inspire you to "never surrender," to "Never, never, never give up," as we approach 2021. As Winston Churchill said, "When you're going through

December 14, 2020 - In 1880, Maria Longworth Nichols Storer founded Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati, aiming to give American artists a place to produce quality pieces to beautify the home, but also practical ceramics and tile. It grew into a world-renowned success, one that endures to this day. Spinning the pottery wheel for us is Bob Batchelor who brings us the illustrated history Rookwood: The Rediscovery and Revival of an American Icon -- a Publishers Weekly Holiday Gift Guide 2020 Selection. We previously caught up with Bob to chat about his books The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius and Stan Lee: The Man behind Marvel. Bob Batchelor is a cultural historian who has written or edited more than two dozen books on popular culture and American literature, including books about John Updike, The Great Gatsby, and Mad Men. Find him at BobBatchelor.com, on Facebook, or at the Twitter and Instagram handle @BobPBatchelor.    

November 30, 2020 -What are your favorite stories from growing up? Well, make room on your bookshelf for the chickens who dreamed of speaking Yiddish. We dive into a treasure trove of children's literature, brought together here for the first time by Miriam Udel. Her book is Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children's Literature. Perfect for anyone on your Hanukah or Christmas list. That's right. Santa can clean out the bookshelves on this one -- a great gift for any young person year 'round. Storytelling binds us all together, so you don't have to be of the Jewish faith to enjoy these tales, although they'll speak in a different way to those readers. Miriam Udel is associate professor of Yiddish language, literature, and culture at Emory University. She holds an AB in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and a PhD in Comparative Literature, both from Harvard. In 2019, she was ordained a rabbi at Yeshivat Maharat. Her previous book is  Never Better! The Modern Jewish Picaresque, which earned

November 16, 2020 - "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." The phrase is the stuff of legend, but who wrote that memorable lyric? In this episode, we meet the street poet with a heart of gold, Drew "Bundini" Brown, Jr., one of boxing’s most mysterious and misunderstood figures -- and the one who motivated Muhammad Ali to be the greatest. Join us in the corner of Sugar Ray Robinson and the young Cassius Clay as he transforms into a transcendent sports icon. Bundini kept the boxer grounded, sticking by him despite opposition from the Nation of Islam, who tried to bully, bribe and brush him out of the entourage for marrying a Jewish woman. Born in the Jim Crow South, Bundini struggled out of poverty and a broken home, to enlist in the U.S. Navy, appear in several Hollywood films (including the Blaxploitation classic Shaft), and break convention to uplift everyone around him. Khalilah Camacho-Ali, Muhammad Ali’s second wife, said, "When you talk about Bundini, you are talking about the mouthpiece of Muhamm

November 2, 2020 - One of Europe's greatest monsters. One of America's greatest presidents. We'll dig into the parallel paths that led these men and their nations to very different final destinations with renowned historian David Pietrusza. We sat down at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y., to discuss his book 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR ―Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal, and Unlikely Destiny. We last chatted with the award-winning historian about his books... 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents, and, TR's Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy, as well as, Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series. David Pietrusza has written or edited a stack of best-selling, award-winning books, including those on pivotal presidential election years 1948 and 1960, in addition to the '20 and '32 campaigns. He's appeared everywhere from C-SPAN and the History Channel, to ESPN and Fox Sports Channel, an

October 19, 2020 - In 1887, the New York World newspaper laughed off 23-year-old Elizabeth Cochrane's dreams of being a reporter. Today, she's a New York City legend, known to history by the pen name Nellie Bly. But to sew up that dream job, Nellie had to go undercover in the closest thing Gilded Age Gotham had to hell: The asylums of Blackwell's Island on the East River. Tonya Mitchell brings us a meticulously researched, fictionalized account of Nellie's mission in her debut novel, A Feigned Madness. It follows Nellie's quest to expose the corrupt officials running the asylum, and blow up the conventional wisdom that women just can't hack it in a newsroom. You've seen Tonya Mitchell's award-winning fiction in the Copperfield Review, Words Undone, the Front Porch Review, and various anthologies. She's also earned a BA from Indiana University in the field Nellie Bly pioneered, journalism, and describes herself as obsessed with the Victorian Era, as we'll see in the rich, transportive detail of her fiction.

October 5, 2020 - In 1881, an assassin shot President James A. Garfield just four months into his term, ending this noble leader's plans for carrying out Abraham Lincoln's legacy of equality for formerly enslaved Americans. But how did he get into the big chair? Our time machine heads into the hurly burley of the 1880 election, the only time two Civil War veterans faced off across the Mason-Dixon line of politics. It's the ultimate winner, James A. Garfield of Ohio, who we meet in the book The Last Lincoln Republican: The Presidential Election of 1880. Our campaign manager on the road to the White House, is Benjamin Todd Arrington, site manager of the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio. Learn more about the 20th president's life and unfulfilled potential at the National Parks Service website, or on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Special thanks to Candice Millard for submitting a question for Todd. She's author of the landmark James A. Garfield book Destiny of the Republic: A Tale