When you hear the name Theodore Roosevelt, a face, personality, and image all pop into mind - Just the way Roosevelt wanted. Presidents have always dealt with and nurtured the press, but Teddy was a quantum leap forward in presidential PR, and he used the media to advance his career, his policies, and to create an image of himself that has lasted 100 years.

Join me as I interview Harold Holzer, director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College in New York City,  Chairman of the Lincoln Forum, and author of The presidents vs. the Press: The endless battle between the white house and the media, from the founding fathers to Fake News on how Roosevelt mastered the media and built the bully pulpit.

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Theodore Roosevelt is one of the biggest personalities to ever inhabit the presidency, so of course he was born in New York City. Roosevelt was  heir to one of the city's oldest families and a civil servant at nearly every level - state assemblyman, police commissioner, and governor of the Empire State.

Join me as I talk with Ted Kohn, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Norwich University and author of Heir to the Empire City: New York and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt, on how Roosevelt's years in New York shaped him into the President we know.

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Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Theodore Roosevelt is one of the most unlikely champions of progressive reform. Yet there he is, ushering in the American progressive era, promising a "square deal" to all.

Join me as I talk with Alycia, host of the excellent Civics and Coffee podcast, about the origins and impact of TR's environment, economic, and civil service progressivism. How does one of the most privileged presidents in American history become its first champion of labor and the common man?

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In 1898, Theodore Roosevelt was a pencil-pushing desk jockey with no clear political future. Six months later, he was the war-hero governor-elect of New York and well on his way to the presidential ticket. How'd he do it?

Follow along as Roosevelt pushes the nation toward war with Spain, quits the safety of his Washington desk job to fight in Cuba, comes home a war hero with a bright political future, rises to the white house, then father's the modern progressive movement and overcomes treaties, disease, jungles, and international intrigue to build the Panama Canal.

Bibliography
1. T.R. the last Romantic – H.R. Brands
2. The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century – Scott Miller
3. William Howard Taft – Jeffrey Rosen
4. The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made – Patricia O’Toole
5. Grover Cleveland – Henry F. Graff
6. Rutherford B. Hayes – Hans. L. Trefousse
7. The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur – Scott S. Greenberger

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How did a country founded by anti-imperial revolutionaries come to own an empire of its own? The answer starts with William McKinley, whose administration exploded onto the international stage by carrying the American flag to Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii, and China.

Join me as I talk with Robert Merry, a 40-year veteran of Washington journalism and author of five books, including President McKinley: Architect of the American Century, about the arguments for and against McKinley's international actions and the legacy those decisions left behind.

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When William McKinley ran for president in 1896, he out-raised his opponent 7-to-1, printed more campaign literature than all previous GOP presidential candidates combined, and organized what is often called the first modern presidential campaign. How'd he do it?

Join me as I talk with professor Christopher McKnight Nichols, director of the Oregon State University Center for the Humanities; an expert on the Gilded Age, Progressive Era, World War I, and the 1918 flu pandemic; and author of Promise and Peril, America at the Dawn of the global age, to discuss what made McKinley's 1896 campaign such a game changer and how he pulled it off.

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Once upon a time, the United States stuck to its shores and big business largely stayed out of politics.

Then came William McKinley.

William McKinley took the United States international in a big way, carrying the American flag to Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and China; he revolutionized political campaigning by leveraging the power of big business against a progressive populist threat and building a national campaign that was a quantum leap forward in political organization; and he crafted a international Chinese policy that is a big part of the reason we still have a China on the map, and not some carved up mess of former European colonies like we have in the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas.

Follow along as McKinley serves in the Civil War, enters politics, becomes a champion of big business, rewrites the political playbook in a successful campaign for the presidency, and dives head-first into the modern era of American overseas imperialism, only for his life to be cut short by an assassin driven by the one looming problem McKinley had not solved - the rampant economic inequality of the Gilded Age.

Bibliography
1. The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century – Scott Miller
2. T.R. the last Romantic – H.R. Brands
3. Grover Cleveland – Henry F. Graff
4. Benjamin Harrison – Charles W. Calhoun
5. William Howard Taft – Jeffrey Rosen 

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What was Grover Cleveland hiding in 1893? When the famously honest president was diagnosed with mouth cancer, he decided to keep it from the public at all costs - even if that meant hatching a hair-brained scheme to surgically remove the tumor on a yacht at sea.

Join me as I talk with award-winning journalist and author Matthew Algeo, author of All This Marvelous Potential: Robert Kennedy’s 1968 Tour of Appalachia; Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip; and The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth, to discuss how far Cleveland was willing to go to take his secret to the grave.

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In 1892, the rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer, and a former president decided to run again against the rival who had defeated him. How similar is the Gilded Age to our modern political and economic moment?

Join me as I talk with University Kentucky professor Mark Summers, a historian of the Gilded Age and author of numerous books, including The Era of Good Stealings; The Gilded Age; and Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884, to discuss how Grover Cleveland won his revenge campaign against Benjamin Harrison and whether we currently live in another Gilded Age.

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On the final day of Grover Cleveland's first term in office, his wife turned to a member of the white house staff and said.  "I want you to take good care of all the furniture and ornaments in the house, for I want everything just as it is now when we come back again. We are coming back. Just four years from today."

Four years later, she was right.
 
Follow along as Cleveland graciously accepts defeat in 1888 only to become convinced he must run again, wins the white house, and them stumbles into one of the greatest economic depressions of the 19th century.  By the time he leaves office, the party will be done with him and his brand of small-government politics forever.

Bibliography
1. Grover Cleveland – Henry F. Graff
2. Benjamin Harrison – Charles W. Calhoun
3. The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century – Scott Miller
4. T.R. the last Romantic – H.R. Brands
5. The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made – Patricia O’Toole

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