History Author Show

July 2, 2018 – Our time machine strikes gold in Nevada’s Comstock Lode — a world-record vein so immensely valuable that it changed the destiny of the United States as the Civil War loomed. Our guide on this journey is Gregory Crouch who brings us: The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle over the Greatest Riches in the American West . It’s the history-making, rags-to-riches story o...

June 18, 2018 – Our time machine travels back to the days of poodle skirts, I Like Ike and I Love Lucy. Once there, we’ll meet Kitty Tessler — a saucy, scheming socialite out to settle scores with snobs. Our guide on this whirlwind tour of Manhattan, Miami, and parts of Havana brewing with an anti-Batista revolution, is Amber Brock, author of Lady Be Good: A Novel . Amber Brock t...

June 4, 2018 – Our time machine travels back to the Tudor and Stuart period of the British monarchy, to meet a prince on track to be the great King Henry the IX, had his life not been cut short. Our guide on this royal journey is Sarah Fraser, author of The Prince Who Would Be King: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart . Henry Stuart’s life — subject of the BBC 2 documentary The Best Kin...

May 21, 2018 – In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard the daughter of an American national treasure: Rod Serling. Best known for his ominous exposition in TV’s groundbreaking anthology, The Twilight Zone, Serling also produced landmark screenplays such as Planet of the Apes, Seven Days in May, Playhouse 90’s The Velvet Alley, and Requiem for a Heavyweight. He was a Wor...

May 7, 2018 – Our time machine travels back to meet rival Cherokee chiefs in the decades leading up to and through the American Civil War, when the supporters of John Ross and The Ridge engaged in a blood feud that led to war, the infamous Trail of Tears, and the devastation of a once-proud nation encompassing what today is several southern states. Our guide on this journey is John Sedgwick...

April 23, 2018 – Our time machine travels back 100 years, to witness the split-second explosion that blew a chunk of Halifax, Nova Scotia off the map. On December 6, 1917, this key city in supplying the Allies in the Great War, suffered the largest man-made explosion prior to the bombs that ended World War Two — something that caught the attention of physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the &...

April 9, 2018 – Our time machine travels back to 1931 to conclude the Durant Family Trilogy. Moving on from the Gilded Age, we’ll catch up with William and Ella, the adult children of Union Pacific Railroad tycoon Dr. Thomas C. Durant, in the final years of their complicated lives. Our guest, Sheila Myers, first introduced us to the family in her novel, Imaginary Brightness , as they h...

March 26, 2018 – It’s a special episode, recorded live on the campus of New York University at the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference , co-sponsored by the American Journalism Historians Association and the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The spot at No. 20 Bowery is in sight of the Cooper Union where Abraham Li...

March 12, 2018 – Our time machine travels back to the Philippines during the Japanese occupation the Second World War. Once in the South Pacific, we’ll bear solemn witness to crimes against women who have been denied the justice and compensation for the atrocities they suffered in the name of the emperor. Our guide on this journey is M. Evelina Galang who brings us Lolas’ House:...

February 26, 2018 – Our time machine travels to 1960 and pulls over at a secluded bridge on a lonely Colorado road. We’re there to witness a crime of greed and envy, when a bitter escaped convict with delusions of high IQ snatches the 44-year-old CEO of Coors as he makes his way to the family brewery. We follow this tale of true crime in the new book: The Death of an Heir: Adolph Coors...

February 12, 2018 – For Black History Month, our time machine piles readers 4 to 8 years old into their car seats, and introduces them to a hero who overcame segregation and many other obstacles, to pursue his artistic dream — and that’s after being a star NFL player. Returning to the show is Sandra Neil Wallace, who last joined us with her husband and co-writer Rich Wallace to d...

January 29, 2018 – Our time machine heads south to the other land down under for a chilly Jazz Age adventure. Our guide on this journey is Laurie Gwen Shapiro who brings us the story of a scrappy Polish-American kid from Manhattan’s Lower East Side, who explores the Roaring ’20s final frontier. Her book is The Stowaway: A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica . It&#82...

January 15, 2018 – Our time machine travels back to the Union-occupied city of Alexandria, Virginia, to get an abolitionist woman’s perspective during America’s Civil War. Our guide on this journey is Paula Tarnapol Whitaker, author of A Civil Life in an Uncivil Time: Julia Wilbur’s Struggle for Purpose . Paula met up with us in Virginia at the Lyceum , Alexandria’s H...

January 1, 2018 – Happy New Year, history lovers! To kick off 2018, we welcome thriller author Tom Grace to discuss the sixth novel in his series featuring ex-Navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny: Undeniable . Tom’s novels feature cutting-edge technology, and we discuss how DNA science is solving historical mysteries. Did Adolf Hitler have a son? Was Warren G. Harding our first black president? Wh...

December 25, 2017 – This week, our time machine visits 1939, clicks on the radio, and listens to The Campbell Playhouse production of A Christmas Carol hosted by Orson Welles and staring Lionel Barrymore as Ebenezer Scrooge. When Charles Dickens published the story in 1843, he did so as what we’d call social commentary, reflecting the soul-searching of his fellow Britons about the true...

December 18, 2017 – This week — just in time to get stuffed into your young reader’s stocking — we travel back to a familiar location, at a pivotal moment in the American Revolution. The year is 1780, when one of the greatest heroes of the Continental Army — General Benedict Arnold — decides to betray the patriot cause by surrendering West Point to the British w...

December 11, 2017 – This week, our time machine travels back to the American Civil War in All the Fighting They Want: The Atlanta Campaign from Peach Tree Creek to the City’s Surrender, July 18-September 2, 1864 . Our guide on this journey is Stephen Davis, a longtime Atlantan and Civil War enthusiast since the fourth grade. All the Fighting They Want serves as a companion to his previ...

December 4, 2017 – This week, our time machine travels back 50 years to one of the Vietnam War’s massive set pieces: The Tet Offensive. This series of simultaneous attacks by the communist North on 36 cities, aimed to weaken support both within the Vietnamese republic in the South and across the Pacific in the United States. Our guest, Doug Stanton, embeds his readers with 46 fresh, yo...

              The New York Sun – McKinley High: Cancel Culture Targets Assassinated President in Hawaii – Dean Karayanis November 27, 2017 – This week, our time machine visits the Gilded Age to witness William McKinley’s rise to the White House. Little remembered or misremembered today, at the time of his assassination in 1901, the Civil W...

              Featured in the New York Sun – How Capitalism Paved the Way for the First Thanksgiving – Dean Karayanis November 20, 2017  – This week — just in time for Thanksgiving in America — we set sail with the intrepid Pilgrims on The Mayflower. Once aboard, we’ll meet the Winslow family, and gain a perspective that links...

November 13, 2017 – This week, we’ll see a familiar face in the passenger seat of our time machine under a big cartwheel hat, as we travel back to 1908 Los Angeles. Our guest is Jennifer Kincheloe, here to chat about her second novel, The Woman in the Camphor Trunk — An Anna Blanc Mystery . Since we last spoke, Jen has earned the Colorado Gold Award for Mystery, and spots as a fi...

November 6, 2017 – This week, our time machine travels back to a time when the United States fought its first major overseas conflict, joining a fight idealized as making the world safe for democracy. Our guide on this journey is Margaret E. Wagner, a senior writer/editor in the Library of Congress Publishing Office. She brings us America and the Great War: A Library of Congress Illustrated...

October 30, 2017 – This week, our time machine bolts on its studded snow tires for a freezing journey to the North Pole — a trip we’ll make long before GPS, cell phones, or Gortex gloves — with Gilded Age explorers aboard the schooner USS Jeannette.  Returning to the show are husband-and-wife writing team Rich Wallace and Sandra Neil Wallace. They last joined us to discuss...

October 23, 2017 – This week, our time machine shuttles back and forth between the 1880s and the 1980s, with a story anchored at the ends of family trees and DNA strands. Our guide on this journey is Fiona Davis, author of The Address: A Novel . It builds a bridge between two women, united across a century by the legendary Dakota apartment building. Famous today as the home to celebrities an...

October 16, 2017 – This week, our time machine travels back to a date of infamy: September 9, 1971, when inmates seized control of Attica Correctional Facility in Western New York State. A four-day standoff resulted, ending when police and corrections officers stormed Attica, leaving 29 inmates and 10 guards dead and dying. In the immediate aftermath, newspapers and television reported the s...