On the cover of R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s memoir is a photo of him holding a 3-olive martini. It was obviously his choice and part of a message he chooses to send his readers about his life after 79 years. Mr. Tyrrell founded the American Spectator magazine in 1967. In the author's bio in the back of the book it says: "He has never had another job, though he came terrifyingly close in the late 1960s when the Vice President asked him to join his staff. After strenuous negotiations, the Vice President settled for Tyrrell as a consultant. After that the Vice President resigned." The Vice President was Spiro Agnew.

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British-born author Nick Bunker, our guest this week, has written books on the Mayflower Pilgrims, the Revolutionary War, and a biography of Benjamin Franklin. Lately he has turned his attention to America and the world in 1950. His book is titled "In the Shadow of Fear." Nick Bunker, a graduate of King's College, Cambridge, and Columbia University, focuses on names like Joseph McCarthy, Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, Margaret Chase Smith, George Marshall, Robert Taft, Alger Hiss, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong. In addition, Bunker pays close attention to the Korean War.

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Michael S. Bryant, our guest this week, is a professor of history and legal studies specializing in the impact of the Holocaust. He's based at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island. Among his many writings he co-edited and contributed an essay to a book titled "Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' and the Holocaust." In the introduction, the editors point out that: "When the Bavarian government's copyright to Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' lapsed on January 1, 2016, the opportunity to reissue the book in German arose for the first time since 1945."

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It's not normal to hear what a politician really thinks about his or her colleagues in the United States House and Senate while they are still in office. McKay Coppins of the Atlantic magazine, our guest this week, tried to change that with his bestselling book about Senator Mitt Romney of Utah. The book, called "Romney: A Reckoning," is, according to the publisher, "a redemptive story about a flawed politician who summoned his moral courage just as fear and divisiveness were overtaking American life."

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At the beginning of November, the George Washington Presidential Library in Mount Vernon celebrated its 10th anniversary with a symposium titled, "The Great Experiment – Democracy from the Founding to the Future." Guests on this panel included: Historians H.W. Brands of the University of Texas, Douglas Brinkley of Rice, Joanne Freeman of Yale, and Edna Medford of Howard University. One point of the discussion was the Mount Vernon poll that found that 2/3rds of Americans are pessimistic about the country's direction and dissatisfied with the political climate. 

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Sarah Ogilvie spent 8 years studying the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Her book is called "The Dictionary People." Ogilvie, who has a PhD in linguistics from Oxford University, studied over 3,000 original contributors to the dictionary. In her introduction to the book, she writes: "I was thrilled to discover not one but three murderers, a pornography collector, Karl Marx’s daughter, a president of Yale, the inventor of the tennis-net adjuster, a pair of lesbian writers who wrote under a male pen name, and a cocaine addict found dead in a railway station lavatory." 

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Martin Gurri is a former CIA analyst who writes about the relationship between politics and media. Gurri was born in Cuba and came to the United States with his parents in the 1950s. In 2014 he self-published an e-book titled "The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium." It was republished in hardback in 2018. Martin Gurri says his thesis is a simple one: "The information technologies of the twenty-first century have enabled the public, composed of amateurs, people from nowhere, to break the power of political hierarchies of the industrial age."

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When you read about the political history of Illinois, you often see the word "corruption." For instance, from January 1961 until January 2009 Illinois citizens elected 8 different men to be their governor. Four of those eventually went to prison, all convicted after they were out of office. Our guest this week, Robert Hartley, has written 11 books about the politicians of Illinois, including one titled "Power, Purpose & Prison." Mr. Hartley writes that these men met their downfall under different circumstances. He asks: "Where did they go wrong?" and "Were they able to recover self-respect in spite of their punishment?"

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Ben Stein, our guest this week, is close to 80 years old. When he was in his 20s he wrote speeches for Richard Nixon. He wants you to know that he still calls Mr. Nixon his hero. Mr. Stein also tells you in his latest book about what he's done since those early years: "I've worked as a university teacher, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, a scriptwriter, a novelist, an investigator into financial fraud for Barron's, a columnist for the late greatly lamented Los Angeles Herald Examiner, a writer and a commentator on economics, an actor, a game show host, a talk show host, a father, and a husband." His book is called "The Peacemaker: Nixon – The Man, President, and My Friend."  

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John Hancock is one of the most famous signatures in the history of the United States. Most people don’t know much more than that about him. Brooke Barbier, our guest this week, who is the founder of Ye Olde Tavern Tours of Boston, wants to change your perception of this American signer of the Declaration of Independence. Barbier's newest book is called "King Hancock." He got that moniker back in the middle of the 1700s. The author writes: "His stature eventually rose so high that he became known by both his friends and enemies by that name." 

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