Cross Word Books

Send us Fan Mail bookclues.com . Find me! Looking for a big timely summer read? Dad book extraordinaire! This is it.  From LaSalle to Thomas Jefferson, the story of how our country was made in the grand sweep of time.  A true American tale as bold as the people who lived the story. Native Americans, Immigrants and enlsaved people. Lives coming together to establish a nation.  Four cents an acre. T...

Send us Fan Mail Connect at bookclues.com What is conservatism?  How can conservative principals replace MAGA and populism in the Republican Party  Connect with Our Republican Legacy ourrepublicanlegacy.com The Republican Party is headed for a reckoning, and the real battle is not going to be fought on cable news. It is going to be fought in precinct meetings, county conventions, state parties, an...

Send us Fan Mail bookclues.com . Find Michele  American Revolution | Historical Fiction | Thomas Paine | George Washington | Revolutionary War What does courage look like when you don't feel brave? George Washington “vaccinated” soldiers by giving them smallpox on purpose, and it may have saved the Revolution. That jaw-dropping history is just one of the realities we dig into with author Kath...

Send us Fan Mail find Cross Word Books at bookclues.com Our Wild Familiars: How Animals Are Adapting to Cities and Reshaping the Natural World,  Dan Werb published by crown books of penguinrandomhouse.com Smart nature writing, urban planning ideas, and clear-eyed conversations about conservation and public health Nature is moving into the city, and it is not waiting for our permission. I sit down...

Send us Fan Mail bookclues.com . Connect. You Visited Me.  Grace and Healing in the Modern Medical Center By Dr Robert Collins, MD            Ignatius Press     ignatius.com A cancer doctor who lives by evidence and protocols tells a story that begins with an interruption he can’t explain: a question, heard like a voice in a lab, that challenged the idea that reality is only matter and chance. Dr....

Send us Fan Mail You can find out more about Cross Word bookclues.com. The Forgotten World War Exploring the Secret History of the American Revolution, from Spain to India and Back Again by Derek Baxter  published by    Source Books  Follow the American Revolution far beyond the 13 colonies and trace how diplomacy, logistics, and foreign interests shape independence. We talk with author Derek Baxt...

Send us Fan Mail Alito The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution by Mollie Heningway The Supreme Court doesn’t just decide cases; it teaches the country what power is allowed to do. Today on Cross Word Books , Michele McAloon talks with Molly Hemingway, senior editor at The Federalis t and Fox News contributor, about her book on Justice Samuel Alito and why his origi...

Send us Fan Mail Contact Michele at  bookclues.com The Declaration of Independence isn’t just a set of famous lines we quote every July. It’s a battered physical object that survived close calls, a national symbol that took decades to become sacred, and a cultural artifact that ended up on walls, plates, and posters. As the United States heads toward the 250th anniversary and the semi-quincentenni...

Send us Fan Mail Find Michele at  bookclues.com The world you take for granted is younger than you think and it was never guaranteed. We sit down with Patrick Wyman, creator of Tides of History and Past Lives and author of Lost Worlds; How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World to trace the volatile 10,000-year span after the last Ice Age when farming, herding, villages, social hiera...

Send us Fan Mail Find out more at bookclues.com Two men got the highway signs—but the real Lewis and Clark Expedition story was a crowded canoe. We sit down with Craig Fehrman to discuss This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis and Clark and why the expedition only comes into focus when we follow the people history usually pushes to the margins—and when we take Native nations seriously as powe...

Send us Fan Mail Find Michele McAloon @  bookclues.com Andrew Jackson is one of those American names people think they understand until they look closer. We sit down with historian David S. Brown, author of Andrew Jackson: The First Populist , to walk through the life that turned “Old Hickory” into a national symbol, a political weapon, and a permanent argument. From a hazy birthplace and a brutal...

Send us Fan Mail Find Michele at bookclues.com The Westerners MythMaking and Belonging on the American Frontier We talk with historian Megan Kate Nelson about how the American West gets turned into a story and how that story shapes who counts as a “real” Westerner. We follow seven lives that expose the networks, conflicts and choices that the frontier myth often hides. • Frederick Jackson Turner’s...

Send us Fan Mail Find out more about this podcast at  https://www.bookclues.com/ Wisdom from the Cross How Jesus' Seven Last Words Teach Us How to Live (and Die) Well Holy Week can feel familiar until you slow down and listen to what Jesus actually says while he’s dying. Those final phrases from the cross, known as the Seven Last Words of Christ, are not random last breaths. They’re a compres...

Send us Fan Mail If you care about Russian history, Soviet culture, environmental history, or how geography shapes war,   Russia looks different when you stop treating nature like background scenery. We sit down with writer and Cornell professor Sophie Pinkham to talk about The Oak and the Larch and the idea that the Russian forest, the taiga, and the swamp belt are not just settings in history, b...

Send us Fan Mail https://www.bookclues.com Feminism is supposed to make women safer, freer, and happier. So why does it so often leave behind loneliness, rivalry, collapsed families, and a constant need to prove we’re “enough”? I sit down with Dr. Carrie Gress, PhD, scholar at the Institute for Human Ecology at The Catholic University of America and author of “Something Wicked: Why Feminism Can’t...

Send us Fan Mail Find Michele at https://www.bookclues.com A voice from the golden age of flight opens the door to one of history’s most enduring mysteries. We sit down with National Geographic writer Rachel Hartigan, author of Lost: Amelia Earhart’s Three Mysterious Deaths and One Extraordinary Life , to trace Earhart’s path from a refined but unstable Midwestern childhood to global fame—and the...

Send us Fan Mail find out about Cross Word Books podcast https://bookclues.com./ A single ice axe swung in a quiet Mexico City study, but the shockwave started decades earlier, on the edges of a collapsing empire. We follow the combustible rivalry between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin —from exile and revolution to a propaganda war that turned one man’s image into the regime’s most useful enemy. O...

Send us Fan Mail https://www.bookclues.com Tell a friend about CROSS WORD BOOK Podcast-the podcast for the serious reader Think misinformation started with the internet? We rewind five centuries to watch it form in real time. With historian Matthew Restall, we separate the historic Christopher Columbus from the patriotic mascot and the Italian American symbol, and we track how printing presses, ro...

Send us Fan Mail Find out more information at  https://www.bookclues.com Presidents aren’t just dates and policies; they’re people formed by families, faith, loss, ambition, and a country that rarely stops arguing. We sat down with author and veteran editor Mary Carol Ghislin to unpack her new book—a compact, classroom-friendly journey through every U.S. president that doubles as an eye-opening gu...

Send us Fan Mail Contact michele at  https://www.bookclues.com What if a city without modern newspapers learned to think like a public anyway? We sit down with historian Robert Darnton to chart how Paris, from 1748 to 1789, became an information society powered by parades, fireworks, songs, rumor, and street theater. Instead of headlines, “publication” meant a royal herald reading peace aloud whil...

Send us Fan Mail Connect with Michele at  https://www.bookclues.com Headlines keep tossing around the phrase “ civil war, ” but what are we really talking about when we invoke that history today? We sit down with historians John Kinder and Jennifer Murray, co-editors of They Are Dead and Yet They Live: Civil War Memories in a Polarized America , to unpack how memory gets made—and why it gets weapo...

Send us Fan Mail https://www.bookclues.com Care about wildlife conservation, China-Africa politics, religious freedom, and character-driven storytelling with real stakes, this conversation is for you.  An interview with author David Pinault on his real world fiction book Earth Dragon Run A Spiritual Entertainment Ignatius Press A quiet librarian gets pushed out, grabs a stuffed monkey, and walks s...

Send us Fan Mail Article by Adam Entous of the New York Times The Separation: Inside the Unraveling U.S.-Ukraine Partnership https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/30/world/europe/ukraine-war-us-russia.html We trace Ukraine’s war from early U.S.–Ukraine partnership to a fragile “separation,” where support is uneven, Europe scales up late, and a DMZ-style end state competes with continued attr...

Send us Fan Mail Forget the tinsel and crowns—let’s meet the Magi where history lives. We sit down with Fr. Dwight Longenecker, author of The Mystery of the Magi, to rethink the famous journey to Bethlehem through the lenses of archaeology, geopolitics, and Scripture. Instead of mystical monarchs following a neon star, we explore a compelling alternative: Nabataean court advisors—astrologers and d...

Send us Fan Mail Merry Christmas everyone!!!  This is a re-run but one of my most popular podcasts about the beloved Charlie Brown.  Who doesn't love the Charlie brown Christmas Tree?  I hope all of you are captured by the wonder of this season, surrounded by love and to remember what it is to love. God Bless all Look forward to everyone in the New Year. Michele McAloon  We explore how Charle...