History Author Show

October 17, 2016 – This week, our time machine travels back to 1965, where we’ll meet Jonathan Daniels — a white seminary student who answered Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s call to help with voter registration in Loundes County, Alabama. After the voting rights marches, Daniels remained to assist civil rights workers — and gave his life saving black teenager Ruby Sales from...

October 10, 2016 – This week, our time machine returns to the days of the Revolutionary War, and views it through the eyes of Isabel and Curzon, two of the African-American children held in slavery. Laurie Halse Anderson’s trilogy, The Seeds of America , includes the books Chains, Forge, and the just-released blistering conclusion, Ashes. Laura Halse Anderson is a New York Times-bestse...

October 3, 2016 – This week, our time machine has a familiar face in the passenger seat. It’s Paul Kahan, who joined us previously to discuss The Bank War: Andrew Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, and the Fight for American Finance . You can catch that interview at History Author.com or wherever you’re listening now, and you enjoy the video we produced illustrating the political and jour...

September 26, 2016 – This week, our time machine spins us back to Boer War in the twilight of the 19th Century, when the republics that preceded today’s South Africa fought the British Empire over gold and diamonds. While there, we’ll see a familiar face from World War Two forty years later. The name Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill invokes the balding, cigar-chomping, Briti...

September 19, 2016 – This week, our time machine makes a return visit to 1870s, to check back in on Union Pacific Railroad tycoon Dr. Thomas C. Durant, and his children, William and Ella. We first met the Durants when we chatted about Sheila Myers’ novel, Imaginary Brightness , as they had their comfortable lives in London shattered by a Gilded Age economic panic. Book 2, Castles in th...

September 12, 2016 – It’s important to actually walk the earth where a given historical event occurred. This week, we’ll do just that at the Paoli Battlefield Historical Park & Paoli Memorial Grounds, just under an hour west of Philadelphia. Our guide is Jim Christ, vice president of the Paoli Battlefield Preservation Fund. The Battle of Paoli, also called “The Paoli Ma...

September 5, 2016 – This week, our time machine turns team bus, as we head back not so far into history, to the late ’80s and early ’90s, when your humble host was on the football field — at least at pregame and halftime — for the Cresskill High School marching band , and as a member of Rutgers University’s Marching Scarlet Knights: The Pride of New Jersey . Rut...

August 29, 2016 – In this episode, our time machine sets sail in the aftermath of World War Two, on a mission to feed the hungry that endures to this day, through Heifer International — those folks who help you give the gift of livestock. It’s a storybook for kids called The Seagoing Cowboy , and it tells the story of the ships that once carried weapons and soldiers, turning to h...

Aug 22, 2016 – For this episode, our time machine takes us back to the aftermath of the First World War, where we’ll visit a defeated member of the Central Powers that targets ethnic minorities for wholesale slaughter. It’s not Nazi Germany, but Ottoman Turkey — in the final chapter of their genocide against Greeks, Armenians and other Christians, that the nation denies to...

August 15, 2016 – This week, we follow the journey of the men and women who — in the aftermath of World War Two in Europe — dedicated themselves to visiting justice upon Hitler’s Henchmen. Veteran author and foreign correspondent Andrew Nagorski brings us these stories in The Nazi Hunters , stripping away the myths and caricatures of popular fiction. The book is also an imp...

August 8, 2016 – This week, our time machine whisks us back to meet the great master, Michelangelo: Sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer. He was also the original brooding artist, who for the first time connected the artist to the work, a link we consider essential today. Our guide is Miles J. Unger , here to explore what the great artist is whispering to us across the centuries...

August 1, 2016 – In this episode, our time machine takes us out to the ballgame, where we’ll root, root, root for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The year is 1947, and Dem Bums just signed Jackie Robinson, the first African-American player in Major League History. Sitting next to us in the 50¢ grandstand seats, is Geoff Griffin, author of the children’s book, Brooklyn Bat Boy: A Story of t...

July 25, 1016 – This week, Hildegarde Mahoney shares her memoir, Journey Interrupted: A Family Without a Country in a World at War . In 1941, seven-year-old Hillie and her family left home in New York City and set off for their native Germany. They planned to take the safe and scenic route: Across the U.S., the Pacific, and Eurasia via the Trans-Siberian Railway. But then Hitler betrayed his...

July 18, 2016 – This week, we strapping our time machine to a canal boat, and sail down the modern marvel of early American commerce: The Erie Canal. The 360-mile slash between Lake Erie to Albany, and down the Hudson River to New York Harbor isn’t just one of engineers and back-breaking, dangerous manual labor, but of fascinating human drama and America itself. The book is Heaven&#821...

July 11, 2016 – Today, we travel back in time to World War Two, and hear from a veteran who served on the front lines. Our guest is Roger Boas, and his book is Battle Rattle: A Last Memoir of World War II . It focuses not only on the fighting, but the scars it left on the inside. Roger Boas was born in San Francisco, 1921, so he’s just five years from celebrating his centennial. That l...

July 8, 2016 – On Monday, July 11, 2016, we’ll commemorate the tragic death of one Founding Father — Alexander Hamilton — at the hands of another, Vice President Aaron Burr. With “ Hamilton: An American Musical ” racking up Tonys on Broadway, the face on the $10 bill is more popular than he has been in 200 years. But in this episode,  David O. Stewart introduces...

July 4, 2016 – On this Independence Day, our time machine takes us out to the ball game, on a July 4th neither side of the Revolutionary War could possibly have envisioned during the conflict. The place is Chelsea, England. The time: The Great War. The book is titled, Nine Innings for the King: The Day Wartime London Stopped for Baseball, July 4, 1918 . We’ve chatted previously with to...

June 27, 2016 – Today, we jump through the Guardian of Forever and into New York City during the American Revolution — just in time for Independence Day 2016. Once there, we meet twelve-year-old Gabriel Cooper, an orphaned patriot who sets out to join the Continental Army. Our guest is Chris Stevenson, and his book is The Drum of Destiny , historical fiction for readers 9-12 years of a...

June 20, 2016 – Our Monday, June 20th interview is with award-winning author Neal Bascomb. We’re airing our conversation a few days early because his book — The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s Atomic Bomb — is a perfect gift for Father’s Day. If you think the book might be right for Dad, History Author Show listeners can enjoy a free sampl...

June 13, 2016 – Today, we’re spinning back in time to the days when America tore itself apart: The Civil War. But we’ll be talking about a different sort of union, exploring the bond between the men who led the northern armies, and the women by their sides in Lincoln’s Generals’ Wives: Four Women Who Influenced the Civil War — for Better and for Worse . With 70,...

June 6, 2016 – Today, our time machine heads back to our show’s past, serving up a special, all-new paperback interview with a familiar voice. Back in August of 2015 , we kicked off the show with the words, “Three mules, two brothers, and a Jack Russell terrier named Olive Oyl.” Our guest was Rinker Buck, and his book — The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey —...

May 30, 2016 – In this episode, we’re going to cast our eyes back at how we memorialize those we lose in wars, tragedies, terrorist attacks and public outrages. It’s a delicate topic, but we owe it to people who’ve lost their lives to get it right. Our guest is Harriet F. Senie , author of Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11 . Professor Senie is Director of the M....

May 23, 2016 – Lynn Sherr’s book is titled: Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space . It includes unique insights from her friendship with the astronaut, tennis player, astrophysicist, children’s book author, and genuine American legend, as well as exclusives from Dr. Ride’s family, partner, and countless friends and colleagues. You can enjoy more from our guest @L...

May 16, 2016 – Our time machine drops us off in December 1892, during the planning for Chicago’s Columbian Exposition — a forerunner of the 20th Century world’s fairs — with the perfect story for the boardwalks and carnivals of Summer 2016. At the ticket booth is Betsy Harvey Kraft, and she’s sharing The Fantastic Ferris Wheel: The Story of Inventor George Ferri...

May 9, 2016 – In this episode, our time machine door opens into the wardrobe of our First Ladies, that Narnia of fashion that trends back to the very first days of our republic, when the role of the president’s wife had — like the role of the president himself — yet to be defined. Our valet is Feather Schwartz Foster, a presidential historian who focuses on our First Ladies...