Booknotes+

Claudia Rowe is the author of "Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care." Rowe has been writing about the hallways and courtrooms, where kids and government clash, for 30 years. "Every person in this book," according to Claudia Rowe, "agreed to talk to me for one of two reasons, or both: They wanted to be seen, to be understood. And they wanted to change foster care." Rowe point...

Richard Brookhiser is an American journalist, biographer, historian, and senior editor at National Review. He has appeared on C-SPAN for many years as the author of biographies of America's founders. His latest book features a Frenchman and is titled "The Hero Returns." His focus is on Lafayette (LAH-fee-et) and the legacy of revolution. Mr. Brookhiser's particular attention is on 1824, the year t...

In July of this year, 2026, the new, multi-million-dollar Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opens to the public in Medora, North Dakota, population 121. The senior historian for the T.R. Library is a man named Michael Patrick Cullinane, a professor of history at Dickinson State University in North Dakota, 36 miles from Medora. To coincide with the opening of T.R.'s Library, Professor Cullina...

David J. Garrow is a prize-winning historian. Since graduating from Wesleyan University in 1975 and completing his law degree at Duke in 1981, he has spent most of his time writing about civil rights. His best selling and most praised book is titled "Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference," published in 1986. We last talked to David Garrow in M...

Dr. Lerone Bennett Jr. was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, on October 17, 1928. He spent over 50 years with Johnson Publishing, ultimately became executive editor of its Ebony magazine. Bennett died at age 89 on February 14, 2018, in Chicago, his home base of many years. Dr. Bennett's mother worked as a maid, his father a chauffeur. Their son graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta. His Bookn...

Lois Romano, formerly of the Washington Post, re-examines the legacy of Mary Todd Lincoln. In the promotion of the book, Simon & Schuster, the publisher, claims that Mrs. Lincoln "was failed at nearly every turn in her widowhood by her family, by her government, by medical professionals ill-equipped to diagnose her mental illness, and finally failed by history." In her prologue, Lois Romano writes...

Danny Funt is the author of the book "Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling." In May 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in a 6-3 decision that legalized sports betting nationally by declaring the federal prohibition unconstitutional. According to Danny Funt, sports leagues oversight went from the position that...

Theo Baker will graduate from Stanford University on June 14th, 2026. About one month prior, his first book, "How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University," is being published by Penguin Press. Praise for his book, gathered by Penguin Press, is plentiful. Author William D. Cohen writes: "[Theo Baker's] astounding reporting as a Stanford freshman led to the downfall of the un...

Harvey Mansfield arrived as an undergrad at Harvard in 1949, 77 years ago. He hardly left the university until he retired as research professor in 2023. Professor Mansfield, at age 94, is still writing. Encounter Books has just published a 136-page book by him titled "Where Harvard Went Wrong." Prof. Mansfield says he's one of the conservative faculty members of his university, one of three. His b...

During his almost 40-year career in publishing, Bruce Nichols served as publisher of both Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Little Brown & Company. His book is titled "The Emerson Circle: The Concord Radicals Who Reinvented the World." The focus of the book is on famous names, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Louisa May Alcott and Henry David Thoreau. Author Nichols...

Author Craig Fehrman has written a new history of the expedition of Lewis and Clark. It's called "This Vast Enterprise." In the prologue to his 515-page book, Fehrman writes: "After departing from near St. Louis on May 14, 1804, the Corps of Discovery traveled 8,000 miles to find 'the most direct and practicable water communication across the continent for the purpose of commerce.'" The Corps was...

Sir Antony Beevor, an historian based in London, has authored 13 books which have sold at least 8.5 million copies and been translated into 35 different languages. In his latest book, he focuses on Rasputin and the downfall of the Romanovs. The country is Russia and the timeframe is the early 1900s. Sir Antony Beevor, on his official website, sums up his findings this way: "Grigori Rasputin, a bar...

Bob Crawford plays upright bass, bass guitar, and violin with the Grammy nominated Americana band, the Avett Brothers. He's been with the band for 25 years. Since 2016, Mr. Crawford has had his own podcast called The Road to Now, along with Ben Sawyer. Their focus is about history. Six years ago, during his band's tour, Mr. Crawford received his master's degree online from Arizona State University...

Giles Tremlett is a biographer, a narrative historian, and a journalist based in Madrid, Spain. He was born in Plymouth, England, in 1962, but since graduating from Oxford University has almost continuously lived in Spain. His latest book is titled "El Generalísimo," a biography of the late Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Supported by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Franco rose to power by d...

Author and editor Tom Wells opens his 600-page book titled "The Kissinger Tapes" this way: "Henry Kissinger is one of the most polarizing figures in recent American history…He is hailed by many as a master in the art of diplomacy and realpolitik…" Tom Wells, who has a PhD in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley also writes this: "[M]any critics consider his diplomacy overhyped a...

As a follow up to the most recent Booknotes+ featuring Seth Harp on his book "The Fort Bragg Cartel," we are replaying an interview from June 12, 2012. The guest on Q&A, the television program, was 31-year-old Michael Hastings, author of the book "The Operators," which he said is what the special forces call themselves. It is based on a Rolling Stone article that allegedly led to the dismissal of...

Seth Harp is a lawyer and an Iraq war veteran and an investigative writer and journalist. His first book, "The Fort Bragg Cartel," is about drug trafficking and murder in the Special Forces. Near the end of his book, Harp writes: "Between January 2017 and September 2022, a total of 15,293 active duty service members suffered drug overdoses, and 322 of those were fatal. The Defense Department data...

London-based writer Josh Ireland is the author of three books and ghostwriter of five others. His latest is titled "The Death of Trotsky: The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin's Greatest Enemy." According to Josh Ireland, Trotsky led two revolutions and a civil war in Russia in the first half of the 20th century. Leon Trotsky died on August the 21, 1940. The day before, in Trotsky's house near...

On May 26, 2002, our guest on the Booknotes television program was Richard John Neuhaus . His book, "As I Lay Dying: Meditations Upon Returning." The Neuhaus interview received one of the biggest responses of any during the history of the 16-year program. Neuhaus was 66 at the time and told us that several years earlier, he had a ruptured tumor that almost killed him. During a series of complicate...

David Sirota, who is based in Denver, Colorado, has some very strong views about money and politics. His book is called "Master Plan: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America." There are 11 chapters which reflect the 11 episodes of his podcast, "Master Plan." In order to tell his story, he points his finger at the 1971 Powell secret memo. That's former US Supreme Court Associate Justice L...

For his book, "Five Bullets," attorney Elliot Williams wrote 95,720 words. On the back of the cover of the book, writer Garrett Graff sums up the story this way: "Never has a book about the 1980s felt more like current events than Elliot Williams's journey back to one of America's most notorious shootings, when Bernie Goetz opened fire in a crowded New York City subway…'Five Bullets' is a haunting...

Russian Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group, marched toward Moscow starting on June 23, 2023. His forces were advancing north on M4 Highway after seizing Rostov-on-Don. The rebellion against his longtime colleague Vladimir Putin was halted the next day. Literally two months later, at a little past 6pm, Prigozhin and nine others boarded his Embraer 600 jet in Moscow. Several minutes later...

In the December 1, 2025, print edition of the Wall Street Journal, there was this headline on page R25: "These 10 books changed the way Americans thought about work." Carol Hymowitz, the author, wrote: "It began with Benjamin Franklin, who couldn't stop working or writing about work throughout his 84-year long life." Carol Hymowitz has been associated with the Wall Street Journal since she got her...

Jonathan Horn's latest book is titled "The Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines." The publisher Scribner explains the premise of Horn's book: "For the doomed stand American forces made in the Philippines at the start of World War II, two generals received the country's highest military award, the Medal of Honor. One was the charismatic Douglas MacArt...

Anne Marshall is associate professor of history and executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library at Mississippi State University. Her book is "Cassius Marcellus Clay: The Life of an Antislavery Slaveholder and the Paradox of American Reform." Clay lived to be 92, had two wives and 11 children. Kentucky was his home state. As an antislavery reformer, Cassius Marcellus Clay is oft...