Booknotes+

Judy Shelton has been appearing on C-SPAN since 1989 and in this edition of the Booknotes+ podcast, she talks about the role of the Federal Reserve in our economy. . Her first visit was on Booknotes to discuss her book titled "The Coming Soviet Crash." During the past 33 years since her first appearance on C-SPAN, Judy Shelton has been in and out of politics. She worked for a time with three presi...

John Locke was born on August 29, 1632, in Sommerset, England. He lived for 72 years. University of Montana professor Claire Arcenas, in her new book, calls him "America's Philosopher." She writes in the preface: "Though he never set foot on America soil and died long before the creation of the United States, John Locke stands and has always stood at the center of American intellectual life." Prof...

On August 16, 1977, 45 years ago, Elvis Presley died at age 42. The autopsy found eight different drugs in his body. Just seven years earlier, Presley was with Richard Nixon in the Oval Office to offer his assistance in fighting the war on drugs. He asked for a special agent badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. A copy of the photo of President Nixon and Elvis on that occasion is...

Hey all you teachers and all you parents, and all you professors and all you students: Season #2 of the C-SPAN in the Classroom podcast drops this fall! Whether you're mowing the yard, on a peaceful weekend drive, or just relaxing on the couch with your favorite blanket, make sure to tune in to the first episode of Season #2 of C-SPAN in the Classroom on September 10th, available at c-span.org, on...

Ron Liebman and Tim Baker are former assistant U.S. attorneys who were part of the prosecution team that brought down Vice President Spiro Agnew on October 10, 1973. On that day, Mr. Agnew appeared before the federal court in Baltimore and pleaded "no contest" to one felony charge for tax evasion in 1967. Messrs. Liebman and Baker talked about their role as the case unfolded. Agnew was fined $10,0...

Terence Smith's media career went from the Stamford Advocate the New York Times, then to CBS News, and finally the PBS Newshour. In his short memoir of his working life, titled "Four Wars, Five Presidents," Terrence Smith writes: "There is a great deal of hand-wringing these days about the news business. Young people don’t read, don’t know anything beyond what they see on their screen, and don’t s...

David Kertzer has studied and written about Italy, the Catholic Church, Nazism, communism, and fascism for over 40 years. His latest of 13 books is about the secret history of Pope Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler. It's titled "The Pope at War." In 2020, Pius XII's archives were finally open in the Vatican. Brown University professor Kertzer, according to Random House, his publisher, "paints a new,...

In the history of Pulitzer Prizes and the Oscars, very few winners have turned down these awards. One of those who did was a famous Armenian-American, a writer from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. His name was William Saroyan. He turned down the Pulitzer for the drama called "The Time of Your Life" in 1940. Saroyan said he was opposed in principle to awards in the arts and was quoted as saying "such arts...

In the heart of Washington, DC, is a unique place for kids. It's called the Little Blue House. For 31 years, it's been the first love of its director, a man named Carl Foster. On the website of the Little Blue House, it says that there is a single core mission: "to foster the development of vulnerable and at-risk children and youth in the District in a safe, stable, and healthy environment." Carl...

"Americans react to homeless with a mix of anger, compassion, perplexity, and frustration. Little progress ever seems to be made." Those are the thoughts of Stephen Eide, from his book "Homelessness in America." Mr. Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute with a PhD in political philosophy from Boston College. He focuses a good deal of the 151-page book on the housing issue. In Chapter...

New York Times reporter David Gelles claims in his latest book that legendary General Electric CEO Jack Welch is the root of all that's wrong with capitalism today. The title of his book is "The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America – And How to Undo His Legacy." Mr. Gelles says while Welch made G.E. the most valuable company on Ear...

Lance Morrow is an author, writer, and essayist. He joined Time magazine in 1965. During his time there, Morrow covered the Detroit riots, the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration, and the Watergate scandal. In 1976 he became a regular writer of essays for Time magazine and wrote more "Man of the Year" cover articles than any other reporter. From 1996 to 2006, he was a professor at Boston Univers...

According to Beverley Driver Eddy, little has been written about Camp Ritchie, Maryland. Dickinson College retired professor Eddy says in her book "Ritchie Boy Secrets" that on June 19, 1942, the U.S. Army opened a secret military intelligence training center. Over the next four years, it produced some 20,000 graduates, intelligence and language specialists, for service in World War Two. Some of t...

At least 6 U.S. Presidents recorded conversations while in office. Hear those conversations on this C-SPAN podcast. Season 2 focuses on President Richard Nixon's secretly-recorded private telephone conversations. Through eight episodes, hear Richard Nixon talk with key aides about Watergate strategy, potential Supreme Court Nominees, and hear his reaction to the leaked publication of the Pentagon...

Historian Thomas Kidd, a professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in St. Louis, opens his newest book, "Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh," this way: "This is a biography of a brilliant but troubled person. Thomas Jefferson would seem to need no introduction, yet among the Founding Fathers he is the greatest enigma – and the greatest source of controversy." Professor Ki...

Elizabethtown College professor David S. Brown is the author of a new book on former president Andrew Jackson. Professor Brown writes that Jackson was the first president to be born in a log cabin, to live beyond the Appalachians, and to rule, so he swore, in the name of the people. The title of the book is "The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson." He was president for two terms, e...

Booknotes the television program started in April of 1989. Our third guest was journalist Bruce Oudes. His book was titled "From: The President-Richard Nixon's Secret Files." Because the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in is on June 17th, Booknotes+ is revisiting Mr. Oudes' book, which contains over 600 pages of previously unreleased memoranda from Richard Nixon and aides during the six ye...

Any follower of C-SPAN knows the name Harold Holzer, a lifelong aficionado and chronicler of Abraham Lincoln. He has either written or edited fifty-four books on America's 16th president. President Lincoln has been Mr. Holzer's avocation over these many years while he maintained full-time work and responsibilities for twenty-three of those years as senior vice president for public affairs at the M...

Not a day goes by that Russia is not in the news, especially since the February 24th invasion of Ukraine. In the history of Russia, one of the most familiar figures, especially in the world of writing and writers, is Leo Tolstoy. He's best known for two novels, "War & Peace" (1869) and "Anna Karenina" (1878). He lived for 82 years, had 13 children, was married for 48 years, and left his wife just...

Professor Olivier Zunz has been a professor of history at the University of Virginia since 1979. He was born and raised in France and received his Ph. D. from Pantheon Sorbonne University in Paris in 1977. Alexis de Tocqueville (TOKE-vihl) was also a Frenchman. At 25, Tocqueville traveled throughout the United States for nine months and recorded his experiences in the well-known 1835 book "Democra...

Joe Madison has hosted a radio talk show for over 40 years. He's known to his audience as the "Black Eagle" and can be heard daily on SiriusXM radio. A native of Dayton, Ohio, and a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, Mr. Madison started his professional life as an activist. One of his first jobs was working for the NAACP as political director under the leadership of Ben Hooks. Joe Mad...

Megan McArdle has been a columnist for the Washington Post since 2018. She has described herself as a right-leaning libertarian. At the same time, she says she's actually a social liberal. Megan McArdle graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in English literature in 1994 and worked for several start-ups before getting an MBA from the University of Chicago. She started her prof...

The book is called "Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War." The author is Deborah Cohen, a professor at Northwestern University. Prof. Cohen primarily focuses on four American journalists who traveled the world in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s: H.R. Knickerbocker, Vincent "Jimmy" Sheean, Dorothy Thompson, and John Gunther. These reporters landed exclusive interviews w...

For the past twenty years, Dr. Thomas Fisher has worked in the emergency department at the University of Chicago Medical Center, serving the same South Side community in which he was raised. During the past two years of COVID-19, he decided to write about his experience in a large urban hospital emergency room. He says that at the end of a shift he was haunted by the confusion in the eyes of his p...

In Jeffrey Frank's recent book titled "The Trials of Harry S. Truman," he reports that at his low point in his time as president, Truman's popularity rating was at 16 percent. However, seventy years later, according to the latest C-SPAN survey, he was ranked sixth most effective of 44 U.S. presidents. Jeffrey Frank, whose career includes professional years at the Washington Post and the New Yorker...