History Author Show

August 21, 2017 - This week, our time machine heads back 100 years, to a time when surging numbers of women were demanding the right to vote. Our guest is Deborah Kops, who has written more than twenty nonfiction books for children and young adults, including her latest for ages 11 to 18. It's Alice Paul and the Fight for Women's Rights: From the Vote to the Equal Rights Amendment.

Alice's name may not spark recognition and appreciation in the minds of today's Americans, but Alice Paul's bravery and dedication -- her willingness to take on policemen, presidents, and even those in her own movement -- make her a person worth remembering, and one that can inspire today's young people.

Visit DeborahKops.com, or follow our guest @DeborahKops on Twitter.

August 14, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back to the Gilded Age and pre-World War Two America, to hear the voices of those who held crowds enthralled. Our guide on this journey is Jeremy C. Young, and his book is, The Age of Charisma: Leaders, Followers, and Emotions in American Society, 1870–1940. In it, Jeremy traces the modern relationship between leaders and supporters, back to a unique group of charismatic social movements prominent in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

It was the age of magnetism, of dramatic gestures, of Christian revivals led by riveting preachers -- and it laid the groundwork, for today's mass media. Jeremy is Assistant Professor of History at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah. You have seen his editorials in many newspapers including the Chicago Sun-Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Seattle Times.

You can find him at JeremyCYoung.com, at @JeremyCYoung on Twitter, or Facebook.com/TheAgeOfCharisma.

August 7, 2017 - This week, our time machine takes to the skies of Germany as war clouds gather on the horizon, to meet two very different women, united in history by their determination to soar in the brand new -- and male-dominated -- world of human flight.This week, our time machine takes to the skies of Germany as war clouds gather on the horizon, to meet two very different women, united in history by their determination to soar in the brand new -- and male-dominated -- world of human flight. Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg shared talent and courage, but held very different views on the Nazi state -- partly because Melitta had a Jewish grandfather, which led her to support the Valkyrie plot, which very nearly succeeded in killing Hitler. Clare Mulley joins us from the U.K. to introduce The Women Who Flew for Hitler: A True Story of Soaring Ambition and Searing Rivalry. Her previous books are The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb, which won the Daily Mail Biographers’ Club Prize -- and -- The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville. Granville was Britain's first female special agent of the Second World War.

For more on our guest, visit ClareMulley.com, follow @ClareMulley on Twitter, or toss a like to Facebook.com/ClareMulleyAuthor. Special thanks to M.C. Fontaine of The Bletchley Park Podcast for connecting us with this accomplished author.

July 31, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back to the twenty-sixth year of Augustus Caesar's reign, where we'll sit down for countless scrumptious meals. Serving up this unique tale is debut author Crystal King who brings us Feast of Sorrow: A Novel of Ancient Rome. In it we meet infamous gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, credited as author of the oldest cookbook known to exist.

I packed a lot of history into the recipes when I wrote Regional Greek Cooking, so Crystal's idea made my stomach growl when it landed on my plate. Readers seem to agree, with Barnes & Noble naming it one of their 8 Fictional Beach Reads for Foodies.

Crystal has taught writing, creativity and social media at UMass Boston, Boston University, Mass College of Art, and Harvard Extension School. She also teaches classes on social media for authors at Grub Street. Hungry for seconds after Feast of Sorrow? Look forward to her serving up a second novel that's in the oven right now: The Secret Chef, featuring famous Italian Renaissance chef, Bartolomeo Scappi.

Visit CrystalKing.com, follow our guest @CrystalLyn on Twitter, or toss her a like at Facebook.com/CrystalLynKing.

July 24, 2017 - This week, we introduce children to the woman behind the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. The book (for young readers ages 4 to 8) is Maya Lin: Artist-Architect of Light and Lines, by San Francisco children's author Jeanne Walker Harvey. Just how did a college student managed to win the design competition for what's now the most frequently visited monument in the nation's capital?

To answer that question, we called up a pinch hitter to conduct the interview: Thriller author, practicing architect and father of five Tom Grace. You'll recall Tom's chats with best-selling author Gerald Posner on his book God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican and with Hugh Howard on his book Architecture's Odd Couple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson. You can enjoy those interviews in our archives wherever you're listening now, or stream it at those HistoryAuthor.com pages.

Visit our guest at JeanneWalkerHarvey.com or @JeanneWHarvey on Twitter. You can also check out her weekly blog, True Tales & a Cherry on Top, where Jeanne has reviewed over 140 picture-book biographies.

July 17, 2017 - This week, the old-time machine leads a funeral procession, starting at George Washington's crypt at Mount Vernon and ending over 200 years later paying out respects to Gerald R. Ford in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Returning for a second time-travel adventure is Louis Picone, author of: The President is Dead! The Extraordinary Stories of the Presidential Deaths, Final Days, Burials, and Beyond.

We previously caught up with Louis on Presidents Day at the Church of the Presidents in Long Branch, N.J. to talk about his book, Where the Presidents Were Born: The History & Preservation of the Presidential Birthplaces. This time, we met at another gem of presidential Jersey Shore history: The Township of Ocean Historical Museum, which calls itself "an open door to history."

If love walking in the final steps or baby steps of our presidents, be sure to like Louis Picone at Facebook.com/LouisLPicone, where he actively shares his enthusiasm for the men who've served in America's highest office.

July 10, 2017 - This week, infamous bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde carjack our time machine, and take us back to the days of jazz and Prohibition, years before their bullet-riddled fate in 1934. Just who were those two people as individuals, before they melted into an infamous and romanticized duo swaddled in myths? We'll dive into Bonnie Parker's origin story, by riding shotgun with debut novelist Jenni L. Walsh, author of Becoming Bonnie: A Novel, a book that boasts about, quote, "the crash of the century, when Bonnie met Clyde."

We'll get to know Bonnie during her wholesome, hardscrabble upbringing, leading up to the day Clyde enters the picture, and she becomes a gangster's moll. It's a fun, vivid account that adds to the myth of Bonnie, while keeping us grounded in history. The book has gotten such rave reviews by the way, that there's already a sequel in the works: Being Bonnie hits in 2018.

Visit our guest at JenniLWalsh.com or follow her on Twitter at Jenni L Walsh.

Featured in The New York Sun  - Discover the Fallen Heroes in Your Family Tree This Memorial Day Weekend - Dean Karayanis

Featured in The New York Sun - After 77 Years, Hiroshima Bombing Stands Up to Second-Guessing - Dean Karayanis

July 3, 2017 - This week, our time machine enlists in the U.S. Navy with a trio of my fellow Garden State natives -- brothers Bill, Benny and Barton -- who serve in every corner of the World War Two fight in the Pacific. FDR taps Bill to run his first Map Room. Benny serves as the gunnery and anti-aircraft officer aboard the legendary USS Enterprise, which served in all but two Pacific engagements after Pearl Harbor.

Barton, the youngest,  ended up a prisoner of war under cruel, brutal conditions, after the Imperial Japanese overran his post in the Philippines, and the family never learned his true fate. Our guest this week is Bill's daughter, Sally Mott Freeman, who solves the mystery in her debut book, The Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family's Quest to Bring Him Home.

These three brothers are seemingly everywhere in the Pacific fight, from Pearl Harbor all the way through Bill briefing President Harry S. Truman on casualty projections for a U.S. invasion of Japan, solidifying the decision to drop the atomic bombs to bring a swift end to the conflict. Sally Mott Freeman is a former speech writer who's currently Board Chair of The Writer’s Center. You can follow her @MottFreeman on Twitter or toss her a like at Facebook.com/MottFreeman.

Watch our visit to the stern plate of the USS Enterprise, which is preserved next to the public library in River Vale, NJ.

June 26, 2017 - This week, our time machine visits New York City's oldest bar, McSorley's Old Ale House. Our theme song, "New York Ain't New York Anymore," laments the loss of places where "the sawdust is gone from the floor." Well in this East Village landmark, where the clock has literally stopped, and that means still spreading the sawdust every morning -- and that they refused to admit women until a federal court forced them to in 1970 (or build them their own bathroom until 1986).

Founded in 1854 by John McSorley and carried on by his son Bill, this saloon serves only two kinds of ale -- light or dark -- and always by the pair. Our guest this week, author Rafe Bartholomew, grew up in the bar like Old Bill before him. Rafe's father is Geoffrey "Bart" Bartholomew, who has spent half a century behind the taps and had thousands of New York Moments, from serving the New York Rangers ale out of the Stanley Cup in 1994, to bringing U2's Bono down to earth with a curt, "Boner who?"

Rafe's book is titled: Two and Two: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me, and it's as an heir to Joseph Mitchell's famous 1940 piece in the New Yorker: "The Old House at Home."  Rafe is also the author of Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball, and was one of the original editors of Grantland. Find Rafe at Rafeboogs on Twitter or RafeBartholomew.com, and check out Bart's works of saloon-inspired verse in The McSorley Poems: Voices from New York City's Oldest Pub, as well as Volume 2: Light or Dark, at TheMcSorleyPoems.net.

June 19, 2017 - This week, our time machine joins up with legendary explorers Lewis and Clark, and traces the clash of cultures between the Europeans and Native American Nez Perce tribe through William Clark's son, Daytime Smoke. Our guide on this journey is David Osborne, who shares his ambitious debut novel, The Coming.

David has five nonfiction books to his credit, and you've seen his work in the Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, Harper's, and many other places popular opinion writing is found. He is also a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, directing the Reinventing America's Schools Project. Find him on Twitter at Osborne David.