Drafting the Past

In this episode, host Kate Carpenter is joined by Dr. Rhae Lynn Barnes to talk about book Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment . Rhae Lynn is an assistant professor of history at Princeton University . With meticulous research and piles of evidence, Darkology reveals the widespread and persistent use of amateur blackface minstrelsy across the United States from the Civil War...

Historian and writer Emily Lieb's professional history is a fascinating one, from crafting textbooks for kids to leaving a job as a professor to become a full-time writer. She taught history and urban studies at Seattle University for more than a decade. Now, in addition to her work as a historian, she also works for the Derfner & Sons writing agency.   Her first book came out in 2025 after many y...

In this episode, Kate is joined by Dr. Matthew Delmont. Matt is a professor and associate dean at Dartmouth University, and he is the author of six books . His two most recent books are Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad , which came out in 2022, and Until the Last Gun is Silent: A Story of Patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the Fight to Save...

In this episode we're taking a look at another great new book on this history of the American Revolution:  The American Revolution and the Fate of the World , by Richard Bell. In this book, we get to see how the revolution affected not only North America, but most of the world. To learn more about how you write a book that manages to cover such a massive subject with remarkable alacrity, I'm joine...

In most episodes, I interview an author of nonfiction history about their research and writing process, but in today's episode we get to do something a little different. We're taking a closer look at how authors and presses get the word out about new books. And we're going to do that with an insider's perspective. I'm very excited to be joined in this episode by Sonya Bonczek, the director of publ...

In case you haven't been paying attention—or maybe you don't live in the United States--you should know that this year marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. If you prefer funny words, you can call it America's semiquincentennial. Anyway, what this means for us is that there are a shocking number of books about the American Revolution, the early United States, and related subjects...

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links. Sign up for the  Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more. Hi everybody! I'm taking this week off to work on some things behind the scenes, so I wanted to talk this chance to replay an episode from early in the podcast that I love. I kn...

In this episode, host Kate Carpenter interviews historian Dr. Heather Ann Thompson. Heather is the author of three books. The first was Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City , which was first published in 2002. Her second book, published in 2016, was the astonishing Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy . Blood in the Water won far more...

In this episode of Drafting the Past, host Kate Carpenter is joined by Dr. Fahad Bishara. Fahad is an associate professor at the University of Virginia, but he is currently on leave and teaching at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. His first book, A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950 , won multiple awards. His second book, which came out in 2025, is Mo...

In this episode, host Kate Carpenter interviews labor historian Dr. Shaun Richman. Shaun is a program director at SUNY Empire State College, and he recently completed his PhD in American Studies. But before that, he spent more than a decade as a union organizer and representative. That experience inspires much of his writing, including two books, magazine articles, and op-eds in numerous outlets....

In this episode of Drafting the Past , you'll hear from a historian who had to figure out how to wrangle narratives from twenty different countries to tell a new history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But keeping track of all those threads wasn't her only formidable challenge. In this episode, host Kate Carpenter is joined by historian Dr. Renata Keller. Dr. Keller is a professor at the University o...

This is the first episode of 2026, which means that we are at the beginning of the fifth season of this show. That's a lot of great conversations about writing history, and I want to thank you for being here for them. There are many more to come this year! First up, in this episode I'm talking with Dr. Jeff Roche, author of the new book The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the Origins of the New R...

Welcome back to Drafting the Past, and to the final episode of 2025. This  episode is all about you! I asked listeners to call in and share the best history books they read in 2025, and they delivered. We've got history books covering a huge range of subjects. Some were published recently, some as long as 90 years ago. Some are about huge subjects, others about tiny places. We even let one histori...

I have a soft spot for historians who follow their curiosity through a range of subjects that might, at first glance, seem unrelated. So I was especially delighted to get to interview this episode's guest, Dr. Amy Erdman Farrell. Amy is a professor and endowed chair of American Studies and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Dickinson College. Her first book was Yours in Sisterhood: Ms. Magaz...

Welcome back to Drafting the Past, a podcast about the craft of writing history. For this one, I'm joined by  historian of science Dr. Alex Wellerstein . I've been a fan of Alex since at least his first book, Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States , which came out in 2021. But I was first introduced to Alex's work, like many people are, through his NUKEMAP project , w...

Welcome back to Drafting the Past. For this episode, I'm thrilled to be joined in this episode by historian Dr. Edward Watts. Ed is a professor of history at the University of California San Diego. He is the author of seven books, including Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny , and The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea . He has published extensively in acade...

This episode's guest and I share a last name (no relation, though), but that's not the only thing we have in common. We both grew up in the Pacific Northwest, where our history education left out most of the violence by white settlers against the region's Indigenous people. It was his righteous anger over the differences between what he had learned and what he read in the archives that prompted my...

Fair warning, listeners: in this episode of Drafting the Past, my guest and I geeked out pretty hard for a minute about our favorite pens. I'm hoping a lot of you can relate, but if not, you'll just have to forgive our moment of office supply nerdiness. I'm Kate Carpenter, the host of this podcast about the craft of writing history. In this episode, I'm thrilled to be joined by Karin Wulf . Karin...

I've heard from many academics that writing their second book can be even harder than writing their first book. That might be surprising, especially if you're still struggling with the first book. But with less free time and without the support of a dissertation adviser, some historians find that second book to be more challenging than they expected. But today's guest turned that struggle into an...

I've talked to many historians who have interviewed sources in order to write their histories over more than 70 episodes of Drafting the Past, but I don't think any has spent quite as much time getting to know their subject in person as today's guest. I'm Kate Carpenter, and in this episode I'm joined by Dr. Mary Frances Phillips to talk about her first book, Black Panther Woman: The Political and...

Historians never quite know what kind of discoveries will enable them to write a history. For today's guest, the list of things that contributed to his most recent book included a long-shot grant proposal, an elementary school fundraiser, and the rise of digitized genealogical records. On this episode of Drafting the Past, Kate spoke with Dr. Tyler Anbinder . Tyler is an emeritus professor history...

Even though Dr. Joanne Paul had wanted to be a writer for a long time, she had lost sight of that identity and had to find her way back to it. But now, she has embraced creativity and imagination as a historian, and is here to encourage you to do the same. I was thrilled to be joined in this episode by Dr. Joanna Paul. Joanne is a historian of the Renaissance and Early modern periods, especially o...

How do you write a history if you're not quite sure which—if any—of your sources is telling the truth? All historians have to deal with sources who exaggerate, or mislead, or just come from differing perspectives. But my guest in this episode had to wrestle with this question on a whole different level for his newest book. Were his subjects performing miracles, or conning people with magic tricks?...

I talk to a lot of history professors on this show, of course, but I'm always excited when I get a chance to talk to someone who is writing great history but working outside of a university setting. And my guest today didn't even start out as a historian, she found her way to narrative history after writing in other genres and venues first. Dr. Tracy Slater joins me in this episode to talk about h...

This is Drafting the Past, a podcast about the craft of writing history, and I'm your host, Kate Carpenter. In each episode, I'm joined by a historian to dig into their writing process and find out how they bring history to the page. This time around, I'm happy to get to chat with Dr. Andrew Hartman. Dr. Andrew Hartman is a professor of history at Illinois State University. Before that, as you'll...