Booknotes+

The book is titled "The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy." The author is Christopher Leonard, the current director of the Watchdog Writers Group at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. On the dust jacket of the book it says: "If you ask most people what forces led to today's income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Res...

Emma Camp is a 22-year-old senior at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, home of Thomas Jefferson. She calls herself a liberal and has written opinion pieces for the school newspaper, The Cavalier Daily. Back in October of 2020, Ms. Camp had some strong things to say about the First Amendment. She wrote that: "The first amendment does not exist to protect reasonable opinions — it exists...

The list is long and, to a lot of people, confusing. We're talking about the language of money. How would you do if you had to define the following: stocks, bonds, private equity, index funds, leveraged buyouts, venture capital, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds, just to name a few. We asked Jeffrey Hooke, author of "The Myth of Private Equity," to give us some help in understanding the world...

During his 40 years in the political science department at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer has not avoided controversy. His article and subsequent book about the Israel lobby, for example, written with Harvard University's Stephen Walt, caused a stir in 2006 and 2007. More recently, at the beginning of March 2022, the New Yorker ran a headline that read: "Why John Mearsheimer Blames th...

In the dedication of his book, "The Heart of Caring," Dr. Mark Vonnegut tells his patients, teachers, and parents everywhere, "Thank you for letting me have such a good time when I go to work." Dr. Vonnegut is a pediatrician who graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1979. This was after he had been diagnosed, at age 25, with severe schizophrenia. He's had four psychotic breakdowns in his life,...

What is the financial history of the Founding Fathers? How did their personal finances affect the Constitution and the new United States? Historian and Champlain College professor emeritus Willard Sterne Randall puts the focus on how money shaped the birth of America in his book "The Founders' Fortunes." Prof. Randall has written books about Benjamin Franklin, Benedict Arnold, Thomas Jefferson, Ge...

The book "Hitler's American Gamble" recounts the five days in 1941 that upended everything. Starting with Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th and ending with Hitler's declaration of war on the United States on December 11th, British historians Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman trace the developments during the five days in real-time and reveal how America's engagement in World War Two...

July 23rd of this year will mark the 55th anniversary of the Detroit Race Riot. Forty-three people died and more than 1000 were injured during that chaotic week in 1967. Our guest, Professor Clarence Lusane was there. His mother and sister were shot. We talked to him about that experience and about his academic career and activism, which has taken him around the world. Clarence Lusane is currently...

"I knew Richard Nixon well." At age 81, Dwight Chapin has decided, for the first time, to write about his years in politics and the Nixon White House. His book is called "The President's Man: The Memoirs of Nixon's Trusted Aide." In the first chapter, he writes: "I started working for him as an organizational field man during his 1962 California gubernatorial campaign….I became an advance man at t...

British historian Andrew Roberts, in the introduction of his latest book called "The Last King of America," about King George III, says the following: "This portrait of a heartless, absolute sovereign is repeated almost every single day in America's print and online media. Even two centuries after his death, hardly a day passes in the United States without some reference to George III where he is...

In early 2001, Bethany McLean, at the time a reporter for Fortune magazine, asked the question in an article: "How does Enron make its money?" McLean's reporting, and the reporting of others, led to inquiries that were put to the Enron management. Within a few months, the company was bankrupt. Bethany McLean's subsequent book, "The Smartest Guys in the Room," became a bestseller and a successful d...

On the dust jacket of Debby Applegate's book "Madam," it says "Simply put: Everybody came to Polly's." Polly being Polly Adler, the madam of some of the most popular brothels in New York City during the 1920s. It was a hangout for politicians, entertainers, writers, and members of the city's underworld. According to Debby Applegate, Polly's pals included FDR, Frank Sinatra, Desi Arnaz, and Duke El...

In March of 2017, Lance Geiger, from the basement of his house in O'Fallon, Illinois, created a new business, a YouTube show that is now regularly seen by hundreds of thousands of people. Since that day in 2017, Geiger has been known as "The History Guy." He has produced hundreds of short documentaries on history. In his home studio, "The History Guy" is surrounded by artifacts, including military...

The first ever televised congressional hearing was on August 3, 1948. The first witness was a man who said he didn't want to be there. He had been subpoenaed to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). His name was Whittaker Chambers, an American who had been a Communist spy for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. We spoke to DC-based attorney John Berresford, who has spent...

"What's your question or comment for Rush?" That is how James Golden – aka Bo Snerdley – would greet callers to Rush Limbaugh's daily, 3-hour radio program. Mr. Golden has written a book about his time as call screener, official show observer, and producer of the most popular talk radio show in America during the past three decades. Rush Limbaugh died on February 17, 2021. In his book "Rush on the...

Between 1915 and 1970, six million African Americans moved from the rural South to cities in the North in search of a better life. Author Isabel Wilkerson captured the history of that mass movement, known as the Great Migration, in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book "The Warmth of Other Suns." She sat down with us in 2010 to talk about the book and the approach she took to tell the story. Learn more...

In 1787, between May and September, James Madison gave 167 speeches, made 72 motions, and served on four committees at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Jay Cost writes that "most importantly, Madison authored the Virginia Plan, a bold call for a total redesign of the national government that set the agenda for the convention and established the foundation upon which the Constitution...

Roosevelt Montás came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1985 at the age of twelve. He couldn't speak a word of English. He eventually went on get a Ph. D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, where he currently teaches. Prof. Montás joined us to talk about his latest book, "Rescuing Socrates," in which he chronicles his journey and explains how books by...

"Many people don't want to believe that the citizens of the Southern states were willing to fight and die to preserve the morally repugnant institution of slavery. There has to be another reason, we are told. Well, there isn't." Those are the words of retired Southern-born Army general Ty Seidule, who taught at West Point for two decades. Gen. Seidule, author of "Robert E. Lee and Me," grew up rev...

WASPs – White Anglo-Saxon Protestants – such as Henry Adams, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Dean Acheson, and Joe Alsop, held an outsized influence on American culture and history for much of the country's history, waning only after the mid-twentieth century. Author Michael Knox Beran ("BARE"-in) joins us to talk about the power, privilege, and contributions of WASPs in the United States and the...

Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary were the parents of four boys. Only one – Robert – lived beyond his eighteenth birthday. Author Jason Emerson spent nearly a decade researching the 82-plus years of Robert Lincoln's life, including his time as a Union soldier, minister to Great Britain, Secretary of War, and president of the Pullman Car Company. Mr. Emerson is the author of "Giant in the Shadows:...

From 1946 to 1958, the U.S. government conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, a chain of islands and coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean that had been inhabited for thousands of years. Walter Pincus, longtime national security reporter for the Washington Post and current national security columnist for the Cipher Brief, talks about the tests and the fate of the Marshallese people who ha...

Edward Moser has been a speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush and a writer for the "Tonight Show with Jay Leno." He currently works as a tour guide, historian, and author. We spoke to Mr. Moser about his latest book, "The Lost History of the Capitol," an account of the many bizarre, tragic, and violent episodes around the U.S. Capitol Building since 1790.   Learn more about your ad choices....

"It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man," wrote President Calvin Coolidge in his autobiography, originally published in 1929. An expanded and annotated version of that book, which historian Craig Fehrman calls "the forgotten classic of presidential writing," has recently been published by ISI Books. Amity Shla...

Frenchman the Marquis de Lafayette came to America two years after the start of the American Revolution and was promptly made a major general in the Continental Army by George Washington. The year was 1777 and Lafayette, an aristocrat with no military experience, was 19. He later returned to France and helped launch the French Revolution. History podcaster Mike Duncan, author of "Hero of Two World...