History Author Show

  June 27, 2022 – How did revolutions in the two great English-speaking nations — the United States and the United Kingdom — give birth to the American Constitution, and what does its creation have to tell us about the challenges we face over 200 years since its ratification? In this episode, we dig into those questions, traveling back to when it all started with James D. R....

  June 13, 2022 – Before he won ten World Series titles with the New York Yankees, Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra answered a higher team’s calling, to serve his country in World War Two — a role in the Navy that ultimately led him to a rocket ship supporting the Normandy landings. For June 6, 2022, the 78 th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings, my column in the New Yor...

  May 31, 2021 – The United States of America goes to great lengths to recover the remains of those who fall in battle, to offer a headstone, a finally resting place that loved ones can visit to honor their sacrifice. But what about those who fall and cannot be identified? In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard readers ages 7 to 97, with a book that’s perfect for Memori...

  May 16, 2022 – Today, mapping the source of the Nile River is as easy as a Google search, but the mystery intrigued humanity for centuries.  In this episode, best-selling author Candice Millard introduces us to the men who won a race worthy of Indiana Jones in River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile . We last met up with Candice Millar...

  May 2, 2022 – Imagine you’re struggling to feed your family during the Great Depression, and you cause a tragic accident at work. Do you risk your precious job at a time of sky-high unemployment and breadlines, or let someone else take the fall for what you did wrong? We’ll meet a young man who faced that dilemma with award-winning novelist Sheila Myers who brings us The T...

  April 18, 2022 – If a group of World War Two-era journalists invited you out for drinks, ready to open up about their interviews with everyone from Gandhi and Neru to Mussolini and Hitler, what would say? Readers get that opportunity with Deborah Cohen who brings us Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War . In this episode, our time machine welcomes a...

  April 4, 2022 – What would you do if your estranged father died, leaving behind piles of Nazi-era documents related to the fate of your family’s café in the world wars? In this episode, our time machine travels back to the inter-war years, to meet a Jewish family rocked by the turmoil of Austria-Hungary and them Germany coming out on the losing side. Our guide on this journey is...

  March 21, 2022 – Who were the young American pilots who launched their fighter jets into the wild blue yonder during the first Gulf Wear, aiming to pry tiny Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s fist? In this episode, we’ll travel back to January 17, 1991, as Desert Shield transforms into Desert Storm high in the skies over Iraq. Once there, we’ll meet those American airmen &...

  March 7, 2022 – Best-selling author Eva Stachniak joins us to discuss her latest novel, The School of Mirrors . “During the reign of Louis XV, impoverished but lovely teenage girls from all over France are sent to a discreet villa in the town of Versailles. Overseen by the King’s favorite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, they will be trained as potential courtesans for the King. &...

  Featured in The New York Sun – Martin Luther King Jr. Drew His Moral Authority From Religion – Dean Karayanis February 21, 2022 – It was once an unattainable dream, kept out of reach by lynch mobs, police dogs and firehoses. But in 2008, Barack Obama fulfilled the promise of that all men are created equal. In this episode, we take a look back at the man who changed the fac...

  February 7, 2022 –  Theodore Roosevelt’s life is the stuff of myths and legends, a persona he carefully cultivated over his decades charging through public life. But what did those who shared his private moments think of the Rough Rider? We’ll get freshly uncovered insights from those who knew him best, meeting the 26th president through the eyes of friends, families and c...

  January 24, 2022 – What happens when an acclaimed author on figures from George Washington and James Madison to Aaron Burr and Andrew Johnson, turns his historical searchlight inward to his own family’s American story?  David O. Stewart does just that in his novel The New Land, Book One of the Overstreet Saga . This is attorney-turned-author David O. Stewart’s fifth appear...

  January 10, 2022 – Surrounded, low on supplies, and on the verge of surrender, the soldiers of Argentina — many young, barely trained conscripts — wrote home in the waning days of the Falkland War, telling tales of hardship that bore no resemblance to the propaganda woven by the military junta back in Buenos Ares. Ricky D. Phillips brings us these up-close accounts for the...

  December 13, 2021 – How did a college dropout from Missouri, grow up to win five Marconi awards and rescue AM radio — to have one U.S. president carry his bags into the Lincoln bedroom, and another award him the Medal of Freedom? It’s the amazing life story of radio’s greatest of all time, Rush Limbaugh, from his long-time friend James Golden , known better to tens o...

  November 29, 2021 – How did a high school hockey team go from being the very worst in the country to the top 5%, and what lessons can we apply to our own lives from that historic turnaround? In this episode, our time machine steps onto the ice twenty years ago with the lowly Ann Arbor Huron High School River Rats. Our player-turned-coach is best-selling author John U. Bacon , who resc...

   The New York Sun – Upcoming Dump of JFK Documents Winds Up the Conspiracy Theorists – Dean Karayanis November 15, 2021 – On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Was it a lone gunman or something more sinister? In this episode, we debunk the conspiracy theories with renowned investigative journalist and attorney Gerald Posner , a...

  November 1, 2021 – Adolf Hitler infamously told his naval commander-in-chief, Admiral Karl Dönitz, “On land, I am a hero. At sea, I am a coward.” But those battles on, under and over the Atlantic decided the fate of the world every bit as much as action in Europe and North Africa. In this episode, our time machine welcomes back Simon Read who brings us his wildly enjoyable...

  October 18, 2021 – America’s only bachelor president has had whispers about his relationship with a certain vice president for almost two centuries. But were they more than friends, and why does the answer matter in 2021? Our time machine travels back to the pre-Civil War period, to delve into the personal lives of our 15th president, James Buchanan, and his roommate William Ruf...

  October 4, 2021 – Theodore Roosevelt is invoked in contemporary politics so often, it’s easy to forget that he died in his bed 100 years ago. So who was the real flesh-and-blood man, and what would he think of his evolution into a mythical folk hero? Our time machine travels back, to meet the real TR with Michael Patrick Cullinane, author of Theodore Roosevelt’s Ghost: The Histo...

  September 20, 2021 – In 2020, we saw one what was long called impossible: Peace deal after another between Arab states and Israel in the Abraham Accords. What do the leaders of these nations see for the future, and how can we foster it by better understanding the past? Joel C. Rosenberg has seen history unfold firsthand and spoken personally to the men changing their corner of world b...

  Sep 6, 2021 – Our time machine travels back to a bright morning that turned dark, when ships of all sizes answered cries for help to evacuate Lower Manhattan after terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers. Our guide on this journey is Jessica DuLong who bring us, Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boat Lift . Jessica DuLong is an award-winning author, journalist, h...

  August 23, 2021 – Everyone has heard the timeless music of George Gershwin, but we may never have heard it in quite the same way without the love of Gershwin’s life, Katharine Faulkner Swift, who he nicknamed “Kay.” Mitchell James Kaplan brings us their Jazz Age romance in his novel, Rhapsody . In it, we meet a restless society wife who attends a concert that changes...

  August 9, 2021 – In this episode, we toss the keys to our time machine into the hands of Lincoln historian Jason Emerson , who I welcomed for Q&A about his book Mary Lincoln for the Ages and several other titles related to the 16th president and the First Lady. Jason’s guest hosting our interview with Michael Burlingame about An American Marriage: The Untold Story of Abraham...

  July 26, 2021 – You may not have heard the name Wolf the Quarrelsome. But once you meet this bold, Irish warrior — and the woman who risked her life to build his spy ring — you’ll never look at Ireland quite the same way. In this episode, our way-back machine travels ten centuries into the past, as Viking invaders storm his island, and Wolf mounts a 15-year resistanc...

  July 12, 2021 – Imagine you’re Jewish during the Second World War, but safely in bed an ocean away from Nazi Germany, secure in the vastness of Canada. Would you march into the heart of the Third Reich, risking your life to stare down Hitler’s war machine, for a country that didn’t consider you a fully loyal and equal citizen? In this episode, we meet the heroes that...