Historically Thinking

Hello: Autumn, 1949. Fortune editor Bill Furth, flinty-eyed gatekeeper, scans a manuscript from 30-year-old whiz kid Daniel Bell. Spots the word “charisma.” Snorts. Blue pencil meets page. Word dies swiftly, without much appeal. Fast forward ten years: charisma is everywhere. Eggheads bandy it, pundits quote it, preachers peddle it. Bell—vindicated. 

Since the 1950s, Americans have grown used to the word “charisma” being applied to everyone, often as a synonym for “charm”.. But what if charisma is more than charm or personal magnetism—what if it’s a key to understanding the moral and spiritual crises of American life itself? That’s the argument of Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump, a sweeping new book by my guest historian Molly Worthen. In it, she traces the tangled story of charisma across four centuries of American history—from the Puritans through Andrew Jackson, to Malcolm X and Donald Trump.

Charismatic leaders, Worthen argues, don’t simply stir emotions or win votes. They offer something deeper: a sense of cosmic meaning, spiritual clarity, and moral urgency in moments when traditional institutions seem hollow or adrift. In times of upheaval, we look for figures who promise to reveal hidden truths and restore a broken order. 

Molly Worthen is a scholar of American religious and intellectual history. She is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and writes regularly on religion and politics for the New York Times and other national outlets. Spellbound is her third book; she has previously authored Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism and The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost, a biography of the diplomat, Yale professor, and  Bridgeton, NJ native Charles Hill. (That last for my five listeners in South Jersey.)

Shipwrecks as events are probably humanity’s most common form of disaster”, writes my guest James Delgado 

“As such, shipwrecks–aside from epidemics, warfare on land, or great natural disasters—have been the cause of the greatest number of human deaths throughout history. Thanks to ships and other watercraft, humanity did not just walk across the globe from its ancestral home in Africa. We made use of the ocean as a source of food and as a means of travel on our global journey. Humanity’s relationship with the water has also been shaped by the reality that for as much as is taken from the sea, something is lost. Those losses are ships, the goods on them, and people. Shipwrecks as events therefore ­have ­inspired ­one­ of ­the­ oldest­ genres­ of ­human ­reflection ­on­ the nature of life; [they] have been and remain a muse for religious thought, literature, music, and art.”

These are some of Delgado’s introductory observations in his new book The Great Museum of the Sea: A Human History of Shipwrecks, a deep dive into the surprisingly rich history of human disaster at sea, and what those wrecks can tell us, both about the past, and about ourselves. From the cause of shipwreck to the beginnings of maritime archaeology, Delgado offers a history, a meditation, and pieces of a maritime archaeologist’s autobiography. 

James Delgado is Senior Vice President of SEARCH, Inc., the leading cultural resources firm in the United States. Previously he has been Director of Maritime Heritage for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; President and CEO of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA); and host of the National Geographic international television series "The Sea Hunters". He was last on the podcast in Episode 292 to discuss his book The Curse of the Somers, in the course of which conversation he became the only guest in the over four hundred episodes of this podcast to break into song. He has a very pleasant baritone.

For Further Investigation



• "The Blake Ridge Wreck: A Deepwater Antebellum Fishing Craft"
• Cynthia Kierner on disasters, including shipwrecks, in antebellum America

There is a U-boat in the middle of Chicago. It’s attached to the Museum of Science and Industry in Hyde Park. Generations of Chicagolanders, and their cousins from far away, have walked through U-505, but they don’t always ask how in the world it got to Chicago.

A crucial moment in the journey of U-505 to its permanent berth was on June 4, 1944. On that day for the first time in the history of the US Navy  since, perhaps, October 7, 1864, the command “Away all boarders!” was given on the USS Pillsbury, part of the task force that had been searching for U-505 off the northwestern coast of Africa. Their challenge was to capture an underwater boat from the surface, and then keep it from sinking.

How they got to that point, and what happened afterwards, is the subject of Alexander Rose’s new book Phantom Fleet: The Hunt for U-505 and World War II’s Most Daring Heist. In the course of describing one of the most audacious naval actions of the Second World War, Rose also reveals the secret war against German U-Boats.

Alexander Rose is the bestselling author of Washington’s Spies, as well as American Rifle, Men of War, The Lion and the Fox, and Empires of the Sky. Born in the United States, he grew up in Australia, was semi-educated in England, worked in Canada, and now lives in New York. He also claims to be a committed listener to Historically Thinking. 

For Further Investigation

• “U-505. The Captured U‑Boat”: A museum-led walkthrough of the sub at the Museum of Science and Industry
• Official exhibit page: Learn how U‑505, the only German U-boat in the U.S., made its way to a bunker in Hyde Park and what visitors can experience on the on-board tour  
• U.S. Naval History (History.Navy.Mil): Overview of the capture operation and the submarine’s eventual transfer to the Museum of Science and Industry 

The liturgy of the Christian church is often dismissed today as archaic, arcane—or dead. But as Cosima Clara Gillhammer shows in her new book Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy, these ritual forms were once the very heartbeat of Western culture and continue to shape not only our cultural memory but even contemporary cultural practice.

In this episode, we explore how liturgical practices shaped medieval life, art, and literature—and why echoes of the liturgy still resound today in movie soundtracks, national ceremonies, and even the architecture around us. Gillhammer argues that far from being merely theological abstractions, liturgical forms were deeply human, and gave language to joy, grief, awe, and the cycles of time. We trace how those patterns wove themselves into everything from Michelangelo’s Pietà to John Trumbull’s Battle of Bunker Hill—and even to James Bond’s Skyfall. Far from being obscure or antique, liturgy turns out to be the roots of much what we take for granted.

Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy is published by Reaktion. Cosima Clara Gillhammer is Career Development Fellow in English at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. She teaches and researches medieval literature, culture, and liturgy. 

His friend the great scholar Desiderius Erasmus referred to Thomas More as “a Man for all seasons.” But which season? Or which Thomas More? Is he an advocate of conscience? A heroic defender of the Catholic faith? A saintly martyr? A fanatical zealot unwilling to listen to cool reason? An amateur inquisitor who lit the night with burning Lutherans and their books, and enjoyed little more than coming home after work for a torture session? Does every era get the Thomas More that it deserves?

Thomas More was indeed a man of many twists and turns, a Tudor Odysseus. A Londoner; the grandson of a baker and son of a lawyer; a page in a noble household; an exceptional prose stylist, in Latin or English; a lawyer of exceptional diligence and skill; a guild member; a religious controversialist, able to match Martin Luther in scatology; a subtle humanist of European-wide fame; a poet; a politician; a bureaucrat; a royal advisor; a confessor of the faith; a prisoner; and a martyr. He was all those things, and more besides. 

With me to talk about the life and times of Thomas More is Joanne Paul, Associate Professor in Early Modern History at the University of Sussex. Her research focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of the Renaissance and Early Modern periods, written widely on Thomas More, William Shakespeare, Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes. Her most recent book is Thomas More: A Life, which is the subject of our conversation today.

For Further Investigation 

• The web page of Joanne Paul
• Thomas More: A Life
• The last time we talked about the Tudors on Historically Thinking
• And the book we talked about with its author, Lucy E.C. Wooding, which is recommended by Joanne Paul 
• A very old conversation about the Protestant Reformation
• Another book by Joanne Paul on Thomas More, but focusing on his thought
• John Guy, Thomas More 
• Thomas More, Utopia, ed. by Joanne Paul

Joseph Smith was the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, known by those outside the church during his life and today as the Mormons. But Joseph Smith was many things besides: the child of a struggling family gradually moving westward in search of opportunity, a day laborer, visionary, seer; treasure hunter; translator; revelator; prophet; elder, banker, prisoner, wrestler, real estate speculator, polygamist, Lieutenant General, Master Mason, Mayor, and martyr.

“America,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1844, “is the country of the future…[a] country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations.” My guest John Turner observes that Joseph Smith might not have been what Emerson had in mind when he spoke of new beginnings and bold projects. But those were part of his life, in addition to vast designs and great expectations. Indeed, it is not too much to say that few nineteenth century Americans have an enduring legacy that can compare to Joseph Smith’s.

Yet John Turner’s new book Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet also describes how this very untypical man was yet absolutely typical of his times. From his religious awakening among the religious revivalism of western New York, to his founding of utopian communities in the midwest, to his dietary concerns, and even to his experience of brutal mob violence that amounted to religious pogroms against his church, Smith’s experiences–and those of his followers–were far from atypical. 

John G. Turner is professor of religious studies and history at George Mason University. His previous book was They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty, which we talked about in Episode 157.

For Further Investigation

• In Episode 181, Sara Patterson and I discussed the practice of Mormon pilgrimage.
• For a conversation about a very different but equally charismatic and controversial 19th century American, see my conversation in Episode 198 with Bob Elder about John C. Calhoun, whom Elder describes as the "American heretic"; a nice pairing with an American prophet.
• The Joseph Smith Papers