For the Ages: A History Podcast

The conflicts that have marked the past 60 years have seen new weapons, new strategies, and complex new webs of alliance, enmity, and proxy violence. However, the evolution of warfare shows that certain challenges and solutions echo across history. General David H. Petraeus (US Army, Ret.) and Lord Andrew Roberts examine the nuances of warfare over the last 20 years, including the complications of...

While the Supreme Court is often presented in American history as a protector of civil liberties, its record across the centuries provides a more complex picture. While the short period of the 1930s to the 1970s saw the Court end segregation and safeguard both free speech and the vote, during the preceding period, the Court largely ignored or suppressed basic rights for many Americans. The succeed...

The US Constitution did not create or provide for the presidential cabinet. When George Washington called for the first convening of his department secretaries two and a half years into his presidency, he drew on his military experience to seek counsel on the wide array of challenges facing the new nation. Presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky dissects the reasons behind the cabinet’s creation...

Exploring the final installment of the Liberation Trilogy, historian Rick Atkinson discusses the titanic battle for Western Europe that defined the later years of the Second World War. Beginning with the commencement of D-Day, this period of the war saw the final campaign for European liberation, including the pivotal fight at Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the disaster of Operation Market Gar...

In this first of two conversations, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson dives into the first two volumes of his monumental Liberation Trilogy, looking at North Africa during WWII and the harrowing campaigns that took place in Sicily and Italy. A pivotal point in history, this period of the war saw American and British armies clash with Vichy France forces in Morocco and Algeria, and then take on t...

Since the dawn of civilization, land stewardship has served as the foundation for how societies coalesce and interact. In a wide-ranging conversation that examines European imperialism, the dispossession of Native American populations, and Joseph Stalin’s brutal collectivization in Society territories, bestselling author Simon Winchester illuminates how humanity’s conquest to acquire territory and...

In the harsh New England winter of 1692, a minister’s daughter began to scream and convulse, as if possessed by a demonic spirit. This incident marked the beginning of a year-long panic in Salem, Massachusetts, which culminated in the infamous witch trials and the execution of 20 individuals. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff uncovers the origins of this phenomenon and the impact it had o...

While American presidents are only eligible to serve two terms in office and are beholden to protect the peaceful transfer of power to their successors, their influence in politics and public service can span decades following their presidency. Douglas Brinkley joins David M. Rubenstein to look at the post-presidential lives of the commander-in-chief from George Washington to Donald Trump, some es...

Although Jimmy Carter left the White House in January 1981 following a failed bid for reelection, his career in public service was far from over. Outside the boundaries of the Oval Office, he dedicated himself to finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts and fighting for human rights. Award-winning historian Douglas Brinkley explores the lessons of Carter’s life and legacy, drawing fro...

Making up the earliest class of United States presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe were all born and raised within the same sixty-mile circle east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, making up a “Virginia Dynasty” that came to shape America during the formative decades following the revolution. Author Lynne Cheney examines the friendships and rivalries within t...

Historian Alan Shaw Taylor continues his conversation with David M. Rubenstein on the decades that followed the American Revolution. This defining era saw Native Americans seeking to defend their homes from a flood of American settlers, the intertwining of slavery in American politics, economics, and daily life, and an emerging expansionist vision pushing the country westward. Alongside these char...

Contrary to the popular narrative of a confident and stable young republic, the United States emerged from its constitution as a fragile, internally divided union of states still contending with European empires and other independent republics on the North American continent. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and the author of American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-185...

Hailed as the founding father of America’s conservation movement, President Theodore Roosevelt championed the protection of the nation's natural treasures and embarked on visionary initiatives to preserve 234 million acres of wilderness for posterity. In conversation with David M. Rubenstein, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley explores Theodore Roosevelt’s complex legacy as one of Americ...

In 1961, as the Cold War cast a shadow across the globe, John F. Kennedy inspired Americans to look up to the sky as he announced his goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley dives into the history of the unprecedented expansion of the American space program under President Kennedy, and how the project aimed to promote science, exploration...

Flora MacDonald’s life continued to be marked by dramatic political upheaval following her involvement in the escape of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. In this second conversation with David M. Rubenstein, Flora Fraser details Flora MacDonald’s marriage, her move to the American colonies, and how her family was eventually swept up in the Revolutionary War before she finally returned to the Isle of S...

Biographer Flora Fraser tells the thrilling story of the young Scotswoman who helped Prince Charles Edward Stuart evade capture following the defeat of the Jacobite army at Culloden, Scotland, which marked the end of the House of Stuarts’ attempts to reclaim the British throne. While the story of Flora MacDonald has become the subject of songs, storybooks, and films in the two centuries that have...

World War II in the Pacific entered its endgame in June 1944, after the U.S. waged a crushing assault on the Japanese navy in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. In a conversation that explores the conflict’s harrowing final year—from the maritime war front to the halls of power in Washington and Tokyo—historian Ian W. Toll illuminates the grand strategic decisions and naval operations that allowed...

The period of Reconstruction following the Civil War saw a transformation of the United States from a slaveholding republic into an interracial democracy, all alongside the rise of industrial capitalism and the violent and ambitious conquest of the American West. What was the historical significance of this monumental transformation? Manisha Sinha explores the evolution of American democracy durin...

For decades, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist George F. Will has been regarded as one of this country’s leading columnists and public intellectuals. In an expansive conversation that encompasses American history, the Supreme Court, and beyond, Will shares his perspective on the political, social, and cultural trends that have shaped the national experience since 2008. Recorded on Octob...

Half a century later, the contested history of the war in Vietnam continues to elicit national debate, deep soul-searching, and purported lessons for America's role overseas. In a conversation that visits new historical terrain of the Vietnam War past, award-winning historian and former war refugee Lien-Hang T. Nguyen draws on her personal and professional journey researching that war to offe...

Long before the first battle of the American Revolution, the conflict between Loyalists and Patriots swept through all facets of American society, with colonists, Native Americans, and the enslaved all forced to choose a side. Would this constitute America’s first civil war, beginning before the Revolution had even been won? Pulitzer Prize finalist H.W. Brands examines this question and looks at t...

The post-World War II economic boom came at a high cost: smog made breathing difficult in cities, the oceans were dying, wilderness vanished, and species went extinct at alarming rates. Acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles how Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, launched an eco-revolution and inspired the rise of environmental activism during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy, L...

In the United States, World War II is often regarded as a time of unrivaled national unity and optimism, however in reality this traumatic period tested the American resolve in the most significant way since the Civil War. How did the nation rise to the occasion? Author and historian Tracy Campbell, in conversation with David M. Rubenstein, examines the critical year of 1942, when a series of setb...

Whether you are looking at proxy conflicts during the Cold War, the power of the Cuban-American voting bloc, or how Cuban-American relations are used as a cipher for a president’s foreign policy, the power of Cuba on American politics is undeniable. From the severing of diplomatic relations in 1961 to the hard-won normalization of Cuba-U.S. relations under the Obama administration and the subseque...

Adam Hochschild, author of American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis, once again joins David M. Rubenstein to discuss the culture of violence, vigilantism, and censorship that permeated US government and society in the years during and immediately following World War I. In this conversation, they explore the grim economic conditions that followed the...