History Author Show

May 2, 2016 – In this episode, our time machine touches down during the months after Pearl Harbor, as Hitler’s U-boats bring the Second World War to the Gulf of Mexico. On board the doomed steam merchant ship Heredia, we’ll bear witness to disaster with the Downs family, through the eyes of eight-year-old Sonny. We’ll also meet the commanders of two U-Boats, dispatched by G...

April 29, 2016 – This weekend, the Greek and Eastern Orthodox Churches take us back in time to the early days of the church, when Christ’s resurrection was celebrated after Passover in order to be historically sequential. After all, the Last Supper was a Passover Seder — which some of you might have celebrated a few days ago. This special episode is presented by Luke Historians , and f...

April 25, 2016 – In this episode, we’ll step through the Guardian of Forever and meet two founding fathers who were best friends, then bitter enemies, and finally friends again: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third presidents of the United States, and the first and second vice presidents. Our guide on this journey is Daniel L. Mallock, and his book is Agony and Eloquen...

April 18, 2016 – Today, we’re traveling back in time by rappelling down the steep face of New Jersey’s Palisades Cliffs, and down to the Alpine Boat Basin, just north of the George Washington Bridge. Our destination is the historic The Kearney House , formerly called the Cornwallis Headquarters, based on the local legend that the British general stopped here for a night during th...

April 11, 2016 – Today, our time machine will wend its way through the tight mountain passes of Southern France, and across the blue seas of the Mediterranean to the principality of Monaco. Yes, Monaco. The name itself conjures up images of glamour and gambling, of royalty and race cars. But how did it get that way? It’s about half the size of Central Park, the second-tiniest nation in...

April 4, 2016 – Today, our time machine is whisking us back to the very earliest days of America’s republic. Our guest is Fergus Bordewich , and his book is, The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government . It’s the untold story of the most productive Congress in US history, in 1789–1791. Mr. Fergus Bordewich is...

March 28, 2016 – Step through the Guardian of Forever and back in time to colonial North America, in the heat of King William’s War. Our guide on this journey is Jay Atkinson, called “the bard of New England toughness” by Men’s Health magazine for his approach to writing and his topics. He shares the story of another tough New Englander in his new book, Massacre on the Merr...

March 21, 2016 – Today, we time-travel back to the times after the times that tried men’s souls. The date is October 19, 1781, and a combined French and rebel force defeats the Redcoats at the Battle of Yorktown, Virginia. But contrary to two centuries of grade school and academic histories, the war for independence didn’t end with the surrender of General Cornwallis’s swor...

March 14, 2016 – Today, our time machine touches down on one of America’s darkest days: The capture of Washington, DC, and the burning of the White House, Capitol Building and a other public buildings. The man who lit the match? British Major General Robert Ross. A horseman, prankster, loving husband and daring commander who served under Wellington, Ross has fallen into obscurity over...

March 7, 2016 – Today, we’re climbing into the Wayback Machine and setting the dial for the early 1700’s, when temperatures ran high in politics, the press, and from a smallpox epidemic burning through Boston. Leading us on this journey is Stephen Coss: author, ad guy, and “close personal friend of Ben Franklin.” Everything, Stephen says, that Franklin really needed t...

February 29, 2016 – Our time machine for this trip is tricked out like James Bond’s Aston Martin, and we’re speeding back to the height of the Cold War. Our driver on this journey is Paddy Hayes , who was kind enough to call into the show from Dublin, Ireland. His book is Queen of Spies: Daphne Park, Britain’s Cold War Spy Master . Until this book, no biography has been wri...

February 22, 2016 – This week, we sling-shot around the sun at high warp, sending us tumbling back in time to the Summer of 1832 — and America, at war. It’s not a conflict over land or of arms, but over the fiscal system of the young republic. Our guide on this journey is Paul Kahan, and his book is The Bank War: Andrew Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, and the Fight for American Finance...

February 15, 2016 – Today’s destination is America in the 1870s, and our guest is Sheila Myers, author of the novel Ephemeral Summer, and associate professor at Cayuga Community College. Her latest novel is Imaginary Brightness: a Durant Family Saga . At the dawn of what Mark Twain would later dub the Gilded Age, the economy suffered a panic — what we’d call a depression &#...

February 8, 2016 – Today, we’re riding in Great White Coach with the father of our country. Our teamster is author Timothy Hall Breen, and his book is George Washington’s Journey: The President Forges a New Nation . Aware of the fragile and fractured nature of the new republic after independence, Washington resolves — in a day without maps or roads worthy of the name &#8212...

February 1, 2016  – An advocate of the strenuous life, President Theodore Roosevelt saw sports as essential to developing physical fitness and character. So when 18 players died playing football in 1905, and people called to ban the game, TR leaped into action to reform the pigskin pastime. The game in those days resembled rugby much more than the game the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panther...

January 25, 2016 – In this episode, we’ll be boarding a Pullman car attached to one of the great trains connecting the North American east and west coasts, all the way up into the Alaskan and Yukon territories — and very nearly across the Bering Strait to Siberia. Our conductor on this journey is Gordon E. Tolton, author of Healy’s West: The Life and Times of John J. Healy...

January 18, 2016 – This week, we’re flying our time machine across the Equator and into South America’s turbulent past, where we’ll meet some colorful characters, present at key moments of its history. They include Pablo Escobar, Butch Cassidy, Sundance, Charles Darwin, and a 14-year-old girl, Juanita, who the Incas sacrificed atop a twenty-thousand foot volcano. Our tour g...

January 4, 2016 – In this episode, we’re racing the time machine through a bunch of stops around the world and throughout history. Our ticket is The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley . We’ll be guided along the way by Eric Weiner, author of the New York Times bestseller The Geography of Bliss , as well a...

December 28, 2015 – Today, we’re joined by Stephen F. Knott, who along with co-author Tony Williams brings us Washington & Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America . George Washington and Alexander Hamilton’s relationship has gotten renewed attention since the smash Broadway musical, ending almost 200 years of being overlooked. From the early days of the Revolutionary War o...

December 21, 2015 – Today we sit down with Barry Strauss, professor of history and classics at Cornell University. A leading expert on ancient military history who counts Mel Brooks as his greatest living inspiration, he has written or edited several books, including The Battle of Salamis , The Trojan War , and The Spartacus War . Visit him @BarryStrauss on Twitter or at BarryStrauss.com .

December 14, 2015 – Ma and Pa McGillin opened the door to their home in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln won the presidency and just after the Liberty Bell cracked. As the decades passed, their tavern endured, tucked away in an alley, as if hiding from old Father Time. Originally called The Bell in Hand, McGillin’s has survived wars, economic panics, challenges from upstart chain restaurants...

December 7, 2015 – On this Pearl Harbor Day, we mark the Japanese attack on Hawaii, and travel back 75 years to meet Aarol W. “Bud” Irish in the European Theater where he fought the Nazis. On the Memorial Day after Bud passed away in 2006, his daughter Teresa opened her father’s mysterious old Army trunk and found stacks and stacks of letters from the front. Through these, she met her father...

November 30, 2015 – Historian of First Ladies Betty Boyd Caroli introduces us to the diminutive, quiet woman who stood behind one of the most controversial presidents of the 20th Century through some of America’s most difficult years. The book is Lady Bird & Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage that Made a President . But Clauda “Lady Bird” Johnson was more than just...

November 23, 2015 – The Old ’76 House in Tappan, New York, is a National Landmark, one where you can eat a meal fit for overthrowing a king. The building itself predates the American Revolution by over a century, and served an active role in the fight for independence. Every major figure including General George Washington spent time at this great American tavern. In 1780, it even serv...

November 16, 2015 – Today, we travel back 75 years to a dark period of the Second World War. But the battlefield where liberty and tyranny clash isn’t Midway or Normandy Beach. It’s the hallowed halls of the United States Supreme Court. Our guide into this world is Kermit Roosevelt. His novel is Allegiance , a legal thriller built around the internment of Americans with Japanese...