American History Too!

By Recorded History Podcast NetworkSociety & Culture History

American History Too! episodes

March 22, 2015 Episode 11 - The JFK Assassination
On episode eleven of American
History Too! we delve into one of the most chilling moments in US history –
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963. To aid us in the voyage through fear,
conspiracy, and legend we are joined by the University of Glasgow’s Fraser
McCallum.
What is uncontested about that day? What are the most
plausible and most outlandish conspiracy theories to prosper in the fifty years
since the assassination? Why do these conspiracies
matter? And how were Lyndon Johnson and
Bobby Kennedy the original conspiracy
theorists?
Finally, does the myth of the fallen President match the
reality of the Kennedy presidency? Find
out all this and more on this episode of American
History Too!
We’ll be back with our next podcast on the Vietnam War in
the next two weeks.
Cheers,
Mark and Malcolm

Reading/Viewing List
-
Kathryn Olmsted, Real Enemies:
Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War 1 to 9/11(Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009)
-
William Manchester, The Death of a President: November 20–November 25, 1963 (US: Harper & Row, 2013)
-
(Film) - Dir. Oliver Stone, JFK (1991)

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50 min
March 01, 2015 Episode 10 - LBJ and the Great Society
On episode 10 of
American History Too! we arrive at the tumultuous 1960s. To help us better understand this
controversial decade, Malcolm assumes host duties as Mark guides us through the
presidency of Lyndon Johnson and his ambitious search for the ‘Great
Society’. What did Johnson mean by a
‘Great Society’? What did he
achieve? And why did he leave the
presidency as a ‘broken and dispirited’ figure?
And what in the world does a bill about rat extermination have to do
with all of this?
Serious academic rigour aside, we engage in a discussion
about the tallest and shortest presidents, Mark (briefly and horribly) attempts
a Southern accent, while Malcolm marvels in the historical amnesia of ‘Guns or
Butter’ advocates.
Finally, we depart to the dulcet tones of one-hit wonder and
apparent crystal ball owner, Barry McGuire, wand his eerily accurate 1965 song,
‘Eve of Destruction’.
Thanks again for listening and we’ll be back soon with a
discussion of the JFK assassination.
Cheers,
Mark and Malcolm
Reading List
Andrew, John
A., Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society
(Chicago : Ivan R. Dee, 1998)
Bernstein,
Irving, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
Converse, Phillip, Clausen, Aage R., Miller, Warren E.,
‘Electoral Myth and Reality: The 1964 Election,’ The American Political Science Review, Vol. 59, No. 2 (June 1965)
< http://www.jstor.org/stable/1953052 >
Dallek, Matthew, The
right moment: Ronald Reagan’s first
victory and the decisive turning point in American politics (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2000)
Dallek, Robert, Flawed
Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times
1961-73 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998)
Davies,
Gareth, From opportunity to entitlement :
the transformation and decline of Great Society liberalism (Lawrence, KS:
University Press of Kansas 1996)
Johnson, Robert David, All
the way with LBJ: the 1964 presidential election (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009)
Patterson, James T., The
Eve of Destruction: how 1965 Transformed America, (New York: Basic Books,
2012)

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45 min
February 14, 2015 Episode 9 - McCarthy and the Second Red Scare
On episode nine of American
History Too! we turn our attention to a period in American history that has
become indelibly linked to one man: the Second Red Scare and Senator Joseph
McCarthy. But is McCarthy the be all and end all of anti-communism? What
influence did he really have? And were
there other figures in the United States who played more prominent and
important roles in creating what the historian David Caute called ‘the great
fear’? Is ‘Hooverism’ – or even ‘Nixonism’
– a better name to understand this period?
We take you through a tour of the interesting, and often distasteful,
figures that the Second Red Scare brought to prominence. We also discuss the parallel rise of the so-called ‘Lavender Scare’ which saw gay
Americans targeted – on some occasions more aggressively – than suspected
communists.
Stay tuned until the very end when you’ll be treated to a
Cold War “anthem” from Carson Robison!
We will back in two weeks to discuss Lyndon Johnson and the
Great Society.
Cheers,
Mark and Malcolm
Reading
-
Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (first published 1964)
-
Kyle A. Cuordileone, ‘"Politics in an Age
of Anxiety": Cold War Political Culture and the Crisis in American
Masculinity, 1949-1960,’ Journal of American History, 87:2 (Sep., 2000),
515-545
-
Jennifer Delton, “Rethinking Post-World War II
Anticommunism,” The Journal of the Historical Society (March, 2010),
1-41
-
David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The
Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004)-
-
Kathryn Olmsted, Real Enemies: Conspiracy
Theories and American Democracy, World War 1 to 9/11 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009)
-
Nelson W. Polsby, “Towards an Explanation of
McCarthyism,” Political Studies 8 (1960), 250-271-
-
Ellen Schrecker, “McCarthyism: Political
Repression and the Fear of Communism,” Social Research 71.
(2004),1041-1086.
-
Gregg Marshall, Tricky Dick and the Pink
Lady: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas--Sexual Politics and the Red
Scare, 1950 (New York: Random House, 1998) Chp.1 - http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mitchell-tricky.html

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38 min
February 01, 2015 Episode 8 - The Great Depression and the New Deal
On the eighth episode of American
History Too! we delve into one of the great crisis moments in American
History – the Great Depression. We’re
joined by special guest, Alastair Duthie (@d_alastair), who helps guide us
through the historiographical minefield that surrounds Presidents’ Herbert
Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt in their attempts to bring the American economy
and people back from the brink.
We begin by explaining some of the reasons for the global financial
collapse of the 1920s and 1930s. Malcolm
inspires his own great depression as he dips his toe into the cold waters of
economic history, Alastair reminds us that the 1920s was not all it has been
cracked up to be, and Mark wholeheartedly refuses to ever discuss the t*riff. Also, it is decided that perhaps the much maligned
Herbert Hoover was not the twentieth century’s James Buchanan (more of a
Franklin Pierce, perhaps).
The second half of the podcast is devoted to a consideration
of Roosevelt’s New Deal and the surrounding historiography – what was the New
Deal trying to achieve? What is its
legacy? And how have the political leanings
of historians continued to influence the New Deal debate?
Finally, after all the doom and gloom of the Great
Depression we end the podcast on the more optimistic note of Happy Days Are Here Again.
Thanks again for listening and we will back in two weeks to
discuss the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s!
Cheers,
Mark and Malcolm

Reading List
-
Brian E. Birdnow, “Hoover Biographies and Hoover
Revisionism”, in Katherine Sibly (ed.), A
Companion to Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover
(Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2014)
-
James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion
and the Fox (New York, NY: Harcourt Brace, 1956)
-
William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D.
Roosevelt and the New Deal (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1963)
-
Eric Rauchway, ‘New Deal Denialism’, Dissent
(Winter, 2010), 66-72
-
Amity Schlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New
History of the Great Depression (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2007)
-
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of
Roosevelt, 3 vols. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1957-60)
-
Morton Keller, “The New Deal: A New Look,” Polity 31 (1999), 657-663
-
David M. Kennedy, ‘What the New Deal Did’, Political Science Quarterly, 124:2
(Summer 2009), 251-268

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46 min
January 17, 2015 Episode 7 - Teddy Roosevelt
On the seventh podcast of American History Too! we turn our attention to the most cuddily of
all US Presidents – Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt. We pull apart ‘T.R.’s’ legacy in the context
of American imperialism abroad and the rise of progressivism at home. Malcolm argues that Roosevelt is a shining
example of why nuance is required when we discuss historical figures, while
Mark discusses the legitimacy of Roosevelt’s place on Mt. Rushmore alongside
Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. What
legacy can we ascribe arguably the first modern president? We give you our views but it’s left up to you
to decide.
Finally, find out the truth behind the ‘Teddy Bear’ story
and also how T.R. actually felt about the nickname!
We’ll be back in a couple of weeks when we’ll hopefully be joined
by another special guest to discuss the 1930s.
Until then, thanks again for listening!
Mark and Malcolm

Reading List:
-
Michael Cullinane, ‘Imperial “Character”: How
Race and Civilization Shaped Theodore Roosevelt’s Imperialism,’ America’s Transatlantic Turn: Theodore
Roosevelt and the ‘Discovery’ of Europe, eds. Hans Krabbendam and John M.
Thompson (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
-
Kathleen M. Dalton, ‘Theodore Roosevelt’s
Contradictory Legacies: From Imperialist
Nationalism to Advocacy of a Progressive Welfare State,’ A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Serge Ricard
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)
-
Peter G. Filene, “An Obituary for ‘The
Progressive Movement’,” American Quarterly
22 (1970), 20-34
-
Fabian Hilfrich, Debating American Exceptionalism: Empire and Democracy in the Wake of
the Spanish-American War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Chp.2.
Also see Ken Burns’ excellent recent documentary series The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (2014)
Our Holiday Reading recommendations
-
W. Bernard Carlson, Tesla: Inventor of the electrical age (2013)
-
Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the
Illusion of Safety (2013)
-
Gary Younge, No
place like home: A black Briton journeys through the American South (2000)
-
Raymond Arsenault, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice (2007)

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43 min
December 19, 2014 Episode 6 - Nuclear Fallout
On the sixth episode of American
History Too! we leave the tawdry goings-on of the Gilded Age far behind and
for this cheery Christmas special we examine the subject of Nuclear Fallout in
the context of the early Cold War (1945-1960).
Malcolm, who specialises in this area, guides us through the
history of the nuclear bomb: How was it
first conceived and why was it deployed? How close were the Nazis to securing the
bomb? What’s so special about a hydrogen
(or ‘super’) bomb? Is it conceivable
that a bomb could be constructed that would destroy the entire world? In what ways have governments chosen to
educate (or not) their citizenry about what would happen in the case of nuclear
war? Duck and cover as Malcolm takes us
on this tour de force of nuclear
history.
We hope all of our listeners have a great holiday season and
we’ll be back with the force of nature that was Teddy Roosevelt early next year. As usual, we would love to hear feedback on
the podcasts as we are very receptive to making improvements for future episodes.
Thanks again for listening this year, we really appreciate
it!
Cheers,
Mark & Malcolm
Reading List
-   Hennessey, Peter, The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst, 1945-2010, 2nd
edition (London: Penguin, 2010)
-   Hughes, Jeff, ‘The
Strath Report: Britain Confronts the H-Bomb, 1954–1955,’ History
and Technology: An International Journal, 19:3 (2003), 257-275
-
Jones,
Matthew, After Hiroshima: The United
States, Race, and Nuclear Weapons in Asia, 1945-1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010)
-
Winkler,
Allan M., Life Under A Cloud: American
Anxiety About the Atom (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1993)
-
Shapiro, Jerome F., Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film (London:
Routledge, 2002)
-
http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/index.html

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43 min
December 06, 2014 Episode 5 - The Gilded Age
On the fifth episode of American
History Too! we dive into a time period that, economic history aside,
often gets lost in historical discussion – The Gilded Age. We parse out the main issues of the era such
as the end of Reconstruction and the establishment of segregation in both North
and South, the prevailing culture of corruption, and the inexorable rise of big
business.
We encounter colourful characters along the way, including
Boss Tweed and the Molly Maguires, while Malcolm reveals his distaste for one
of the Gilded Age’s shining lights (terrible pun intended), Thomas Edison. In case you were wondering who invented the
modern world – it was all down to the Serbian Nikola Tesla. Also, find out what presidential election,
according to Mark, featured the best named combatants in American History.
All this and much more on this week’s American History Too!
We hope you enjoy the podcast and we will be back in two
weeks with a Christmas special.
Remember to get in touch at @ahtoopodcast, @contestedground
and @markmclay1985
Cheers,
Mark and Malcolm
Reading List
Kevin Kenny, ‘The Molly Maguires in Popular Culture’, Journal of American Ethnic History, 14:4
(Summer, 1995), pp. 27-46
Richard Schneirov, ‘Thoughts on Periodizing the Gilded Age:
Capital Accumulation, Society, and Politics, 1873-1898,’ Journal of the Gilded Age and
Progressive Era 5:3 (July 2006)
Nicolas Barreyre,
‘The Politics of Economic Crises: The Panic of 1873, the End of Reconstruction,
and the Realignment of American Politics,’ The Journal of the Gilded Age and
Progressive Era, 10:4 (Oct. 2011)
Kenneth D.
Ackerman, Boss Tweed: The Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New
York (Carroll & Graf, 2005)
Podcast
Recommendation
In Our Time on
Social Darwinism - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03vgq1q

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40 min
November 17, 2014 Episode 4 - The American Civil War
The fourth episode of American
History Too! delves into the United States’ deadliest conflict to date –
The American Civil War. To help us with
this mammoth task we bring on board University of Edinburgh lecturer, Dr David
Silkenat. David teaches a course here at
Edinburgh on the American Civil War and, among his various publications, he has
published a well-received, award-winning book entitled Moments of Despair:
Suicide, Divorce, and Debt in Civil War Era North Carolina.
David guides us
through how the Civil War legacy’s remains a contentious bone in the American
South. We then turn our attentions North
and discuss the role of Copperheads (opponents of the war) in fomenting
dissension – both rhetorical and violent – against the both the conflict and
Abraham Lincoln. In particular, David –
a native New Yorker – offers us his take on the New York Draft Riots of July
1863 that ended with roughly 120 dead and 2,000 wounded in the nation’s biggest
metropolis.
In addition, we
hear how the Bush Administration used Abraham Lincoln as a justification for
Guantanamo Bay, Mark tells the story of the first African American scientist
who now has a coffee shop named after him in Glasgow, and Malcolm lets us know
from which historical event the San Francisco 49ers took their name. All this and much more this week on American
History Too!
Thanks again for
listening and as always any feedback is always welcome. Find us at @ahtoopodcast, @contestedground
and @markmclay1985
Also, please check
out David’s podcast at @AHuntucked
Cheers,
Mark & Malcolm

Reading List:
-
Jennifer Weber, Copperheads: the rise and fall of Lincoln’s opponents in the North
(New York: Oxford University Press,
2006)
-
Joan E. Cashin (ed), The war was you and me : civilians in the American Civil War (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, c2002)
-
Kenneth D. Ackerman, Boss Tweed: The rise and fall of the corrupt pol who conceived the soul
of Modern New York (2005)

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47 min
November 01, 2014 Episode 3 - Andrew Jackson and Indian Removal
This third episode of American
History Too! is all about one man – the seventh President of the United
States, Andrew Jackson (1829-1837). In
particular, we debate Jackson’s role in the removal of Native Americans from
their ancestral homes in the East to newly allotted land west of the
Mississippi in the 1830s.
Before jumping into the Indian controversy, we bring you up
to speed with what’s being happening the US since our last podcast on the
Constitution – all in two minutes! We
then dive straight into work of historian Francis Prucha and explain – with the
help of other historians such Mary Young and Jon Meacham – why his attempt to
rehabilitate Jackson’s image is greatly flawed. We also debate Jackson’s legacy with regards to
the Native Americans – is Jackson a game changer or merely a colourful
character?
In addition, Richard Nixon is mentioned an obscene amount of
times for a nineteenth century podcast, Malcolm misguidedly attempts to rank Jimmy
Carter in the higher echelons of American presidencies, and we most definitely do not discuss the tariff.
Finally, we answer our listener Francesca’s question on
whether – as suggested in The West Wing
– Andrew Jackson really did have a big block of cheese in the White House.
We hope you enjoy this third episode (which also features
improved audio quality from our first two efforts) and please let us know if
you have any comments, questions, or suggestions.
Cheers,
Mark & Malcolm
(Contact us on Twitter at @ahtoopodcast or by email at [email protected])
Reading List:
Francis
Paul Prucha, ‘Andrew Jackson’s Indian Policy: A Reassessment’, Journal of American History 56 (1969), pp.527-539 (available on JSTOR).
Mary
Young, ‘The Cherokee Nation: Mirror of the Republic’, American Quarterly, 33 (1981), pp.502-24.
Ronald
N Satz, "Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era," in Leonard Dinnerstein
and Kenneth T. Jackson (eds.), American Vistas 1607-1877 (New York and
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995), 211-227.
Jon
Meacham, American lion: Andrew Jackson in
the White House (New York : Random House, 2008)

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46 min
October 19, 2014 Episode 2 - The Constitution
The second episode of American History Too! focuses on the Constitution of the United States. To help us understand the goings-on down
eighteenth century Philadelphia way, we bring aboard our very own American, and
revolutionary scholar, Jane Judge.
During the podcast we examine why the US even needed a
constitution, and whether it was all an exercise in elites getting richer or
just a way of giving the British the intellectual middle-finger. Malcolm also gets put on the spot regarding
his comments in the last podcast, Jane tells us that Charles Beard is not a man
to be listened to, and Mark argues that this is the first moment in American
History where the axiom of the ‘New World’ is justified. What’s more, we investigate whether
Anti-Federalists were indeed ‘men of little faith’ and why Massachusetts was
the most high-maintenance of all the former colonies.
Finally, we leap forward into the twenty-first century and discuss
the relevance of the second amendment (hello AK-47s) and the legacy of the
Founding Fathers in modern America.
All this and much more on this week’s American History Too!.
Thanks to all of you who listened to the first podcast and we will be
back in two weeks with a discussion of ever-fascinating Andrew Jackson.
Cheers,
Mark & Malcolm
  Saul Cornell, ‘Aristocracy Assailed: The
Ideology of Backcountry Anti-Federalism’, Journal
of American History 76 (1990), pp.1148-1172
Cecelia M. Kenyon, ‘Men of Little Faith: The
Anti-Federalists and the Nature of Representative Government’, William and Mary Quarterly, 12 (1955),
pp.3-42
Lance Banning, ‘Republican Ideology and the
Triumph of the Constitution, 1789 to 1793’, William
and Mary Quarterly, 31 (1974), pp.167-188
  Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States
(New York: Macmillan, 1921 [c1913]) – for full text see http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433080136850;view=1up;seq=1
Pauline Maier,
Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788, (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 2010)
   Pauline Maier, American scripture : making the Declaration of Independence (New
York: Knopf, 1997)
   Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the people the rise of popular sovereignty in England and
America, (New York: Norton, 1988)

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41 min