Drafting the Past

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...

In this episode, I'm thrilled to be joined by historian Dr. Ruby Lal .  When I first started thinking about this interview more than a year ago, I read Ruby's book Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan . I was swept away by the book, which is a history biography of Princess Gulbadan in the early decades of the Mughal Empire. Ruby is also the author of Empress: The Astonishing Reign o...

Stephanie Gorton is a writer, editor, and journalist whose work has been published in a range of outlets including The New Yorker , Smithsonian , and Paris Review Daily . She has worked in editorial roles at several independent presses, and her first book came out in 2020, titled Citizen Reporters: S. S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, and the Magazine that Rewrote America . Her second book, which came out...

In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Padraic Scanlan . Padraic is an associate professor at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the history of labor in Britain and the British empire. He's the author of three books, including Freedom's Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolutions and Slave Empire: How Slavery Made Modern Britain . His newest book, out this ye...

Drafting the Past is a show about the craft of writing history, hosted by historian and writer Kate Carpenter. In this episode, Kate is joined by historian Dr. Omar Valerio-Jiménez . Omar is a professor of history at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he is also an associate dean for graduate studies. He originally worked as an engineer before going back to school to become a historian....

Welcome back to Drafting the Past, a podcast where we talk all about the craft of writing history. I'm Kate Carpenter and for this episode, I'm delighted to be joined on the podcast by Dr. Emily Herring . As you'll hear, I've been following Emily's career for a while now, and I was eager to ask about her first book and her shift from academia to full-time writing. Her book is called Herald of a Re...

Welcome back to Drafting the Past. I'm Kate Carpenter, and this is a podcast about the craft of writing history. In this episode, I'm joined by historian and writer Dr. Surekha Davies . Surekha is a former history professor who now writes full-time, and she can also be found speaking about history and consulting on monsters. In fact, monsters have played a major role in much of her research. Her f...

In this episode of Drafting the Past, host Kate Carpenter is joined by historian Dr. Lyndal Roper . Lyndal is a professor at the University of Oxford and the author of six books on gender, religion, witchcraft, and German history. Her newest book out this year is a history of the sixteenth-century German Peasants' War titled Summer of Fire and Blood . The book follows the movement, beliefs, hopes,...

In this episode of Drafting the Past, host Kate Carpenter is joined by Dr. Judith Giesberg . Dr. Giesberg is a historian and professor at Villanova University. She is the author of six books focused on the U.S. Civil War and its aftermath. She is also an active digital and public historian, and her newest book is the culmination of these interests. Inspired by an ongoing digital project, Last Seen...

In this episode Kate is joined by writer and historian Dr. Rebecca Brenner Graham . Rebecca is a post-doctoral research associate at Brown University, but before that she taught high school history, an experience that we talk a lot more about in this episode. Her first book, out now, is called Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins's Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany , and it is not...

This is Drafting the Past, a podcast about the craft of writing history. In this episode, host Kate Carpenter is joined by historian Dr. Marlene Daut . Marlene is a professor at Yale University and is the author of four books, as well as an editor of several more. The most recent two of those books are Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution , which was a winner of t...

In this episode, host Kate Carpenter is joined by Dr. James Tejani . James is an associate professor of history at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. His first book, A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles—and America came out last year with Norton, and it's a fascinating history that covers Western settlement, slavery, the Civil War, science and engineering, and much more....