Think Back

We seem to be living in a reenactment of the Gilded Age: tariffs, territorial expansion, oligarchic control of politics, assassination attempts, a democracy that is straining at the seams. Overlooked and misunderstood, it’s an important period to reconsider. What did it take to leave that tumultuous, surprisingly violent period behind—and what were the costs of the reforms adopted to end it? The p...

I am wildly excited that publication day is finally here for my new book, Fear No Pharaoh: American Jews, the Civil War, and the Fight to End Slavery . It’s a very strange feeling to have worked on something, largely in solitude, for so long, and now for it to finally be made available to the world. In this episode I share some thoughts about the book’s origins and the six main characters whose li...

Amy Greenberg, a historian at Penn State University, talks about the role of masculinity in the idea of Manifest Destiny, both today and in the era when that phrase originally became popular, the 1840s, a time of falling economic mobility for men and new opportunities for women. Greenberg is the author of several books about American history, including Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American...

One of Donald Trump’s first acts in office in his second term was signing an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. What does this focus on names obscure, what does it reveal? What is the real meaning of “America,” and how has its meaning varied across both time and space? For this, the first episode of Think Back , I spoke with Greg Grandin, a professor of history at...

Music: "The Union," composed by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, performed by Akiko Sasaki Logo by Lily Piyathaisere, based on John Frederick Kensett, " Hudson River Scene " (1857) " You didn't kill Liberty Valance !" William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain (1925) Get full access to Think Back at www.thinkbackpod.com/subscribe