With the Bark Off: Conversations on the American Presidency

This week we address the history of the presidency writ large with Jeremi Suri, the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair in Global Affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and a professor in the Department of History at The University of Texas. He is a frequent commentator on current affairs and writes for op-ed pages and book reviews all over the country. He hosts his own podcast,  This is Democracy...

Raj Patel is a  New York Times  bestselling author and a Research Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. An expert on the world food system, he has testified about hunger and food sovereignty to the U.S., British and European Union governments.    His latest book  Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice,  written with co-author Rupa Marya, reveals the links between health and...

Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of our most respected and celebrated historians. She is the author of seven books, including No Ordinary Time , which won the Pulitzer Prize for history, and Team of Rivals , which was adapted into Steven Speilberg’s film Lincoln .   Her latest book,  Leadership in Turbulent Times , looks at four Presidents she has studied closely as a biographer: Abraham Lincoln, Theod...

Dr. Mark Lawrence is the Director of the LBJ Presidential Library and a former professor of history at The University of Texas at Austin. An expert on the Lyndon Johnson years, he is the author of three books relating to America’s foreign policy during the period. His latest,  The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era , looks at how America’s once thriving ambit...

Since this episode drops on Veterans Day, we thought we would devote it to one of our nation’s most respected veterans. Robert M. Gates spent half a century of his life devoted to public service. He started his career in the Air Force before being recruited to the CIA, where he climbed the ranks to become the agency’s director under President George H. W. Bush, one of eight U.S. presidents Secreta...

Mark Twain once said “Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.” If so, as the greatest humorist of his day, Twain himself blessed our country throughout much of his life. How appropriate then, to name our nation’s highest award for comedy in his honor.    Cappy McGarr co-created the John F. Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which launched in 1998. Appointed to the Kennedy Center b...

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019, Dr. Anthony Fauci has become a household name. As the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical advisor to the President, Dr. Fauci is the public health official who has been most visible around the pandemic. But his service to our country goes well beyond combating COVID-19. In his nearly 40 years at the NI...

For 25 years Dr. Leonard Moore, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has been teaching Black history—mostly to white students. He describes his engaging and provocative new book,  Teaching Black History to White People , as “part memoir, part Black history, part pedagogy, part how-to guide.” He argues that Black history should be an essential part of student curriculum as a means of u...

The astonishing fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban after nearly 20 years of American occupation has had many wondering what went wrong in our nation’s longest war, not just in recent days but in the two decades that preceded it.    Award-winning investigative reporter Craig Whitlock offers an authoritative perspective. Whitlock has covered the war in Afghanistan for the  Washington Post  as a fore...

The 20th anniversary of the attacks on 9/11 is a time for reflection for many Americans. Most of us remember indelibly where we were when the attacks on our homeland changed the course of history. In this episode, we draw on an LBJ Library program with three pivotal members of the George W. Bush Administration who have their own unique perspectives on that fateful day: Karen Hughes served as Couns...

For over 50 years J. Edgar Hoover reigned supreme over the Federal Bureau of Investigation, wielding outsize political power as he inspired fear in enemies and allies alike. Through the course of eight presidencies, the Director waged battle against anyone he considered to be a possible enemy of state –from suspected Communists and instigators to terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Weat...

In spite of our country’s most basic democratic principles, the struggle for voting rights has been consistent throughout our history. But, in the face of voting right suppression, the inability of Congress to enact meaningful voting rights reform, and the efforts of a number of Republican-led states to restrict voting have many concerned about the state of our democracy.  Nicholas Fandos, congres...

The legend of the battle of the Alamo is not only an intrinsic part of Texas lore but is enshrined in the American imagination—a band of fiery rebels fighting for independence who die as martyrs in the cause of liberty. But a new book, “Forget the Alamo!” argues that the Alamo myth is just that—an allegory that tells us what we want to believe about the Alamo, but not what actually happened.    Wr...

Teddy Roosevelt, one of only four U.S. presidents to grace Mount Rushmore, consistently ranks as one of America’s best presidents. But what makes him so great? And how did the volunteer army he organized to fight the Spanish American War in Cuba, the legendary Rough Riders, lead to his meteoric rise in American life?    Clay Risen, a senior politics editor at  The New York Times  and author of  Th...

For over 25 years, Jean Becker served as the Chief of Staff to former President George H.W. Bush. Her new book, “The Man I Knew: The Amazing Story of George H.W. Bush’s Post-Presidency” provides an intimate glimpse of the 41st President and the ups and downs of his post presidency, revealing his heart, humor, and wisdom.    Becker takes us behind the curtain as she discusses what it was like for B...

Jeff Shesol is a historian, former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, and the creator of the comic strip “Thatch.” He is the author of three books including “Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade” and “Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. The Supreme Court.” His latest book, “Mercury Rising” chronicles astronaut John Glenn and President John Ken...

Lisa Napoli’s new book,  Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie  is the story of the “founding mothers” of NPR – Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer, Nina Totenberg, and Cokie Roberts – wrapped around the emergence of public radio and second-wave feminism in the seventies. She talks about the friendship between these remarkable women, how they overcame gender barriers to become icons of their industry, and refle...

Ronald C. White’s latest book,  Lincoln in Private , explores the lesser-known and most personal aspects of President Abraham Lincoln, using 111 notes that Lincoln made to himself over the years. White discusses why Lincoln should be considered our greatest President, personifying the American Dream, while reflecting on how the notes reveal Lincoln’s intellectual curiosity, ambition, and melanchol...

Along with her partner Ken Burns, director and producer Lynn Novick has set the standard for documentary film. She has created more than 80 hours of PBS programming with Burns, including  The Vietnam War ,  Baseball ,  Jazz , and  The War , which together have garnered 19 Emmy nominations.    Their latest collaboration,  Hemingway , takes a hard look at one of America’s most storied and enigmatic...

Chuck Robb has spent most of his life “in the arena,” as Theodore Roosevelt called it, engaged in military and public service. As an officer in the Marine Corps, he became a White House social aide, where he met and soon married Lynda Bird Johnson, the daughter of his Commander-in-chief, Lyndon Johnson. Soon after their spectacular White House wedding, he shipped off to the war in Vietnam, where h...

Author Walter Isaacson has spent years chronicling the lives of the world’s most innovative minds. The former editor of TIME Magazine, Chairman of CNN, and CEO of the Aspen Institute has written bestselling works on Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs and others. In his latest book  The Code Breaker,  he explores the life and work of Jennifer Doudna, the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist...

In her new book “Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight,” and her complementary ABC News podcast, “In Plain Sight: Lady Bird Johnson,” author Julia Sweig takes a very different look at the former first lady. Relying heavily on rarely heard oral diaries that Mrs. Johnson made throughout her time in the White House, she depicts a Lady Bird Johnson who is far more substantive and consequential—havi...

Julián Castro rose from a low-income household in his native San Antonio, Texas, to become the city’s mayor at the age of 34. He would go on to serve as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Barack Obama, becoming President Obama’s youngest Cabinet secretary. A one-time summer intern for the Bill Clinton White House, he ran for the presidency himself in 2020. His observations on the cam...

David O. Stewart is the bestselling author of eight books on American history and historical nonfiction. His latest book,  George Washington: The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father , examines the George Washington we may not know—not the imposing, distantly formidable Washington on Mt. Rushmore but a flesh and blood younger Washington who makes mistakes, battles character flaws, and consc...

Lucinda Robb and Rebecca Boggs Roberts, whose friendship goes back generations - to their grandmothers, Lady Bird Johnson and Lindy Boggs, and their mothers, Lynda Robb and Cokie Roberts - wrote  The Suffragist Playbook: Your Guide to Changing the World  in recognition of the centennial of the 19th Amendment .  The authors discuss the women, many unheralded, who waged the 72-year struggle toward a...