History Author Show

September 21, 2020 - The Great War is over, but the Spanish Influenza continues to deliver the butcher's bill. Everywhere, children are dying. But in Philadelphia, they're also disappearing -- and they all have one thing in common: They're immigrants. We dive into a riveting novel set 100 years ago that's eerily familiar today with acclaimed novelist Ellen Marie Wiseman. She brings us The Orphan Collector, a Target Book Club Pick and an Editor’s Choice in Historical Novel Society magazine. Her 13-year-old heroine, Pia, and her mother care for twins, Ollie and Max, even as prejudice and the Purple Death beset them on all sides. Like so many German immigrants, her patriotism was immediately suspect, and her father -- feeling the need to prove his loyalty -- did so by enlisting to fight the Kaiser. With Armistice Day, they dare to hope for a return to normalcy. But when Pia leaves quarantine at home in a desperate search for food, she can't imagine that she'll return to find her brothers have evaporated into t

Sep 7, 2020 - On September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda sought to break the American union, aiming at what they saw as fatal flaws in our democratic system. Two decades later, the man who was governor of the Empire State on that day of infamy dares to ask, "Did the terrorists win?" In this episode, the 53rd governor of New York, George E. Pataki, joins us to discuss Beyond the Great Divide: How a Nation Became a Neighborhood, co-authored with former congressman Trey Radel of Florida. Governor Pataki spent twelve years at the helm of the Empire State and delivered the lone remarks at Ground Zero on the one-year commemoration of the attacks, choosing to recite the Gettysburg Address. He discusses how 2020 America, like Lincoln's, faces domestic divisions that would've seemed impossible as the rubble of the Twin Towers smoldered. Then as now we find ourselves asking: Can this nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to equality, long endure? This former presidential candidate, state legislator, mayor of Peekskill, and

Aug 24, 2020 - What if your grandparents had narrowly escaped a genocide that left one million people dead, just because they shared your faith and ethnic background? That's part of the Karayanis family story, in the mass murder of Greeks by Ottoman Turkey that followed the Great War. Our guide back to the 20th Century's first genocide, is Greek-Australian Aris Tsifidis, who brings us The Genocide of the Greeks in Turkey: Survivor Testimonies from The Nicomedia (Massacres of 1920-1921). It's the first English translation of journalist Kostas Faltaits work, published in 1921 under the title, These are the Turks: Survivor Testimonies from the Nicomedia Massacre. Aris administers the Greek Genocide Resource Center, an online portal containing bibliography, photos, testimonies and other documentation of the mass slaughter that left up to 1.5 million people dead, and forced over a million others out of the homeland where they'd lived for centuries. Connect on Twitter @Greek_Genocide and on Facebook at TheGreekGe

August 10, 2020 - Lizzie Borden has been testified against by generations of children in a nursery rhyme, and continually convicted in the court of public opinion. But did she swing the axe that whacked her parents, or didn't she? We dig into the 1893 murder trial with first-time author Cara Robertson. She brings us The Trial of Lizzie Borden: A True Story. Based on transcripts of the proceedings, newspaper accounts, unpublished recollections of citizens in Fall River, Massachusetts -- and recently unearthed letters from Lizzie -- the book brings us inside a case that shook the deeply held convictions, assumptions and social anxieties of the 19th Century's twilight. Cara Robertson began researching the Borden case as an undergraduate at Harvard and continued while earning an Oxford PhD and JD from Stanford Law School. She clerked at the Supreme Court of the United States for two justices and served as a legal adviser to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague. Learn more

July 27, 2020 - Video killed the radio star, and the talkies killed Vaudeville, but some legends adapt to changing times. In this episode, we meet one such innovator, who made a series of leaps from New York City's Hippodrome to Hollywood, with many entertaining stops and in between. Born in the San Francisco of 1883 as Katherine Gertrude Hay, Gertrude Hoffman broke into show business as a mimic, copying highbrow performances from Europe and popularizing them for a broader American audience. She started as a pantomime ballet girl in the Gay Nineties, grew up with Vaudeville, and later worked as a choreographer and teacher, living well into the 1960's. Joining us in our time machine is the Hargis associate professor of American literature at Auburn University, Sunny Stalter-Pace, who brings us, Imitation Artist: Gertrude Hoffmann's Life in Vaudeville and Dance. Find our guest online at SunnyStalterPace.com or on Twitter @SLStalter.      

July 13, 2020 - He's the ultimate Civil War baby gone bad, born in 1866 with the modest handle of Robert Leroy Parker. So how did that dirt-poor son of a Mormon farmer grow up into a horse thief, rustler, and bank robber who ran with the Wild Bunch? Charles Leerhsen explores the origin story of a famous outlaw who never killed a soul in Butch Cassidy: The True Story of an American Outlaw. If you're familiar with sensationalized, thinly researched Hollywood depictions of Butch, you'll find the real man even more entertaining and charming. Charles Leerhsen previously joined us to discuss one of my all-time favorite books Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. In it, he redeems one of baseball's all-time greats, stripping away the lies of the sensationalist sportswriter, Al Stump, who concocted tales of a brutal, belligerent racist. Now, he aims the same careful eye to Butch, digging through legends and tall tales to paint a complete picture of an American original who just wanted to be liked -- and to avoid the 19th Cen

June 29, 2020 - Doctor. Major General. Hero of the American Revolution. Martyr who spilled his lifeblood fighting the British at Bunker Hill. And yet most of us have never heard of him. Our guide on this journey is Christian Di Spigna, who brings us Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution's Lost Hero. Christian Di Spigna is a regular speaker and volunteer at Colonial Williamsburg, and an expert on the history of the era with a real passion for bringing the Revolution to life. Visit him at FoundingMartyr.com or Martyr1776 on Twitter. Since Dr. Warren stoked the flame of liberty in taverns, we also discussed my interview with Robert Norden at The '76 House in Tappan, New York. It's America's oldest restaurant, and a spot where all the major Continentals -- including George Washington -- spent time and took their meals. It's also where the patriots held Benedict Arnold's British conspirator, Maj. John André, on the evening before his execution, as we discussed with S

June 15, 2020 - Investigative journalist and attorney Gerald Posner shares the highpoints of the pharmaceutical industry's transformational successes, as well the moments they'd prefer to keep buried. We go along for the ride in his latest book, Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America. It's a page-turning journey to meet the scientists whose successes have improved the lives of every human being on earth, and the marketers who gave us infamous scourges like Thalidomide and the opioid crisis. Yes, for every polio vaccine, there are those who lose sight of their noble mission to first do no harm, in the face of massive piles of corrupting cash and compliant congresses that are more lap dogs than watch dogs. Gerald Posner is a distinguished attorney, Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, and an Honors Graduate of Hastings Law School. He's written definitive books on everything from the Nazi "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele, the Oklahoma City Bombing, 9

June 1, 2020 - Meet the commanders who led America to Victory in mankind's most terrible conflict before they had stars on their shoulders. Our guide on this journey is 82nd Airborne veteran and paratrooper Benjamin Runkle. He brings us Generals in the Making: How Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Their Peers Became the Commanders Who Won World War II. It's the first comprehensive history of these men during the interwar years, when the already lean U.S. Armed Forces found themselves squeezed even further by the Great Depression and isolationist sentiment, all while facing strains on marriages, bouts with the bottle, the deaths of wives or children, backwater postings, and stagnant chances for promotion. In addition to his service, for which he earned a Bronze Star during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Benjamin Runkle has worked as a presidential speechwriter, Department of Defense official, director at the National Security Council, and professional staff member on the House Armed Services Committee. He is curr

May 18, 2020 - In an iconic, ad-libbed moment at the old Yankee Stadium, a terminally ill baseball player declared himself "the luckiest man on the face of the earth." A decade earlier, he'd sat down to write the remarkable story of his career in newspaper columns that remained buried for almost a century -- until now. In Lou Gehrig: The Lost Memoir, we meet Major League Baseball's most triumphant and tragic slugger as a young man with a great career in front of him. He had no way of knowing that one day, that career would be cut short by ALS, or that the disease would one day bear his name. Alan D. Gaff brings us this treasure trove of writings that flesh out our picture of No. 4, the man they called the Iron Horse. Mr. Gaff is a veteran, best-selling author of books on the American Civil War, and president of Historical Investigations. Visit our guest at AlanDGaff.com or @AlanDGaff on Twitter.          

May 4, 2020 - What if a former U.S. congressman told you he had a secret about the most infamous presidential assassination, but died before revealing it? It's a turn-of-the-century whodunit, courtesy of historian David O. Stewart's novel, The Lincoln Deception (A Fraser and Cook Historical Mystery). His Holmes and Watson team features the white Dr. Jamie Fraser, and African-American former baseball player, Speedwell Cook. We previously chatted about his non-fiction books, American Emperor – Aaron Burr: The Man Who Shot Alexander Hamilton, and Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America. Check out those interviews in our archives, visit our guest at DavidOStewart.com, and find him on Facebook. You'll also enjoy his post-Civil War non-fiction exploration of the man who found himself president after Lincoln's murder: Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy. On that topic, he was recently featured in the documentary, Going to the Devil: The Impeachment of 18

April 20, 2020 - In 1863, the Confederate States held a last stronghold on the Mississippi River: Vicksburg. Losing it, and the slavocracy would be sliced in half, mortally wounding their cause. Donald L. Miller musters us into the Grand Army of the Republic's campaign to capture this city on its high bluff in Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy. Donald L. Miller is the John Henry MacCracken Professor of History at Lafayette College, and was awarded the prestigious Fletcher Pratt Prize for the outstanding book on the American Civil War in 2020. His previous books include City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America, as well as a book we discussed in one of our very first interviews, Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America.          

April 6, 2020 - Pack your full-body swimsuit, everybody. We're headed for Coney Island in the summer of 1911, where we'll meet a young heiress, Peggy Batternberg. Peggy falls in love, dives into the seedy world where the other half lives, and stumbles upon the mystery of young women found murdered under the boardwalk. Our time machine travels back to America's Playground, Coney Island, Brooklyn, with "writer, editor, and lover of words" Nancy Bilyeau, who brings us Dreamland. It's Nancy's fifth novel, following The Crown, The Blue, The Chalice, and The Tapestry. She also published a novella, The Ghost of Madison Avenue. Nancy's family tree traces back to a seed planted on Gotham's shores in 1665, when French Huguenot Pierre Billiou put down roots in what was then New Amsterdam. Today, the stone house he built on Staten Island stands as the third oldest in New York State. For more on our guest, visit NancyBilyeau.com, follow her on Twitter and Instagram @TudorScribe, or toss her like at Facebook.com/NancyBi

March 23, 2020 - Adolf Hitler ... had a need for speed. After all, it was the key feature in blitzkrieg, lightning war. So the Nazis poured resources into developing the fastest engines, sleekest race cars, and best drivers. Who dared stand against them? We'll meet the Jewish driver who took on these would-be Aryan supermen in Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler’s Best. For this journey, we welcome a familiar face back into our time machine: Neil Bascomb. We previously caught up back in Norway with The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb -- and -- The Escape Artists: A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War. Visit NealBascomb.com, follow @NealBascomb on Twitter, or like Facebook.com/NealRBascomb.      

March 9, 2020 - Jerry Mitchell joins us with Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era.  In addition to what we today know as the Mississippi Burning case, this unique memoir covers our guest's efforts in the assassination of Medgar Evers, the 16th Street Church bombing, and the firebombing of Vernon Dahmer. By refusing to ignore pleas for justice when everyone else had given up hope, Mitchell's dedication that ultimately landed four members of the KKK in prison for the rest of their lives. Jerry Mitchell has been a reporter in Mississippi since 1986, earning over 30 national awards and founding the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit that carries on his work of exposing injustices and raising up a new generation of investigative reporters. Follow him @JMitchellNews on Twitter.      

February 24, 2020 - What if the Revolution sparked in 1776 had collapsed? In this episode, our time machine travels back to the last days of the American Revolution, to track down rumors of an unthinkable plot by the Continental Army to mutiny over lack of pay. Only George Washington stood against the passions of men that may have included such patriots Alexander Hamilton and James Madison? Infiltrating the plot against the government to see just how far it goes is Professor David Head, who brings us A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution. Professor Head is a history professor at the University of Central Florida whose work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and George Washington's Mt. Vernon. Visit him online at DavidHeadHistory.com, on Facebook at David Head History, or @DavidHeadPhD on Twitter.      

February 10, 2020 - Recorded live at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, our time machine travels back to the end of the Great War and the dawn of Prohibition. Jazz Age America picks a president, with flappers in all 48 states casting ballots for the first time as a half dozen once and future presidents compete for victory. They are: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge and the eventual winner, Ohio's Warren G. Harding. Returning to share his historical wisdom is David Pietrusza, who brings us, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents. We last chatted with the award-winning historian about his books TR's Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy, and, Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series. David Pietrusza has written or edited a stack of best-selling, award-winning books, including those on pivotal presidential election years 1932, 194

January 27, 2020 - Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fred Kaplan drops in on the key flashpoints of the Nuclear Age, from Harry S Truman first getting word that the Manhattan Project had birthed its radioactive fruit, to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Reagan's peace offerings to Gorbachev, to modern fears of rogue nations and terrorists gaining access to the ultimate firecrackers. Fred Kaplan is the national-security point man for Slate, where he writes the "War Stories" column, and is the author of five previous books including Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, and the Pulitzer finalist The Plot to Change the American Way of War. Visit him at FredKaplan.info or @FMKaplan on Twitter.  

January 13, 2020 - Our time machine travels back to the Civil Rights era, to meet a man who fought the racial discrimination of his day on the basketball court, while using his platform to support those battling in courts of law. In the process, he was the first man ever described as a "superstar." We enjoy this 6' 5"pioneer's story in Elgin Baylor: The Man Who Changed Basketball. Giving us play by play courtside for the man who invented hangtime is award-winning cultural critic and sportswriter, Bijan C. Bayne. Bayne is a member of United States Basketball Writers Association, a founding member of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, and an executive board member and media relations director for the Association for Professional Basketball Research. You can find our guest at Twitter @BijanCBayne and his blog at BijanC.WordPress.com. You can also enjoy our previous chat about Martha's Vineyard Basketball: How a Resort League Defied Notions of Race and Class.        

December 16, 2019 - Our time machine travels back to the death throes of the Confederate States of America with New York Times best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist S.C. Gwynne who brings us Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War. Click here for an excerpt -- "Chapter One: The End of Begins." You can also enjoy our History in Five Friday segment on our guest's previous book, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson, or pick up Empire of the Summer Moon, the 2011 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in General Nonfiction that recounts the rise and fall of the Comanche. Learn more about our guest by visiting him at SCGwynne.com or @SCGwynne on Twitter. Sam Gwynne previously joined me in the fall of 2016, when we played four quarters with  a gridiron revolutionary in The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football. Find that interview in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com, iHeartRadio, iTunes, or wherever you listen to on-demand