History Author Show

September 3, 2022 - On the morning of September 8th, 1900, disaster struck the vibrant, prosperous island of Galveston, Texas, tearing out its heart. In this episode, our time machine travels back to the turn of the last century to meet sixteen-year-old Clara and the Gladys family, against the backdrop of the worst natural disaster to ever strike the United States -- that killed between 6,000 and 8,000 on the island of Galveston.

Our guide on this journey is international award-winning author Anna J. Walner who brings us Saltwater and Driftwood: A Historical Novel.

Anna is a native Texan and began her career as a fantasy novelist, delivering the Enrovia Series and the four-volume Uluru Legacy, a story of vampires and werewolves.

Visit our guest at AnnaJWalner.com, or on social media through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

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

August 22, 2022 - What if you were a Midwestern haberdasher-turned-senator, who served just three months as vice president, before finding yourself thrust into the Big Chair, charged with winning World War II?

In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard journalist Jeffrey Frank who brings us, The Trials of Harry S. Truman: The Extraordinary Presidency of An Ordinary Man, 1945-1953.

Jeffrey Frank is the best-selling author Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage. He has published four novels, among them the Washington Trilogy — The Columnist, Bad Publicity, and Trudy Hopedale — and is the coauthor, with Diana Crone Frank, of The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen: A New Translation from the Danish, which won the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Prize.

He was a senior editor at the New Yorker, the deputy editor of The Washington Post’s Outlook section and is now a contributor to major publications nationwide. Visit him at JeffreyFrank.com, or on Facebook and @JeffreyAFrank on Twitter.

Special thanks to Sally Mott Freeman for offering her insights in a video question for this interview. You can check out our conversation about her excellent book, The Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family's Quest to Bring Him Home.

August 8, 2022 - In the late summer of 1942, the First Marine Division sought to wrest Guadalcanal from the Japanese Empire. We’ll meet one of only two reporters on hand to record the carnage, as the spot in the Pacific earned its nickname, the Island of Death.

In this episode, our time machine travels back war zones to meet in intrepid journalist who told soldiers’ stories to the folks back home. Our guide on this journey is Ray E. Boomhower, a senior editor at the Indiana Historical Society Press, biographer, and former reporter, who brings us Richard Tregaskis: Reporting under Fire from Guadalcanal to Vietnam.

For more, visit RayBoomhower.Blogspot.com and @RayBoomhower on Twitter.

Special thanks to Deborah A. Cohen for submitting a video question for this interview. In the History Author Show archives, you can watch or listen to our conversation about her book Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War.

July 25, 2022 - How did the worlds of hip-hop and boxing unite, blending together music, race, sports, and politics? In this episode our time machine welcomes back Dr. Todd D. Snyder who brings us Beatboxing: How Hip-Hop Changed the Fight Game. We previously caught up to discuss his previous book: Bundini: Don't Believe the Hype.

Meeting Muhammad Ali's hype man, Drew "Bundini" Brown, was an experience that really stuck with me, in a way that made me scared to think I might never have known a thing about him, if not for today's guest.

Todd D. Snyder, an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at Siena College in Albany, New York, who grew up in West Virginia as the son of a boxing trainer. He's excellent at divining the poetry in rap and how it developed this symbiotic relationship with the sweet science. His previous books include 12 Rounds in Lo's Gym: Boxing and Manhood in Appalachia.

Visit him at HillbillySpeaks.com, or on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

July 2, 2022 - Who were the citizen spies who risked their lives to bring General George Washington the intelligence he needed to win the War for Independence? In this episode, we take a fictional trip back to the American Revolution, to meet the people who fought for liberty with their wits and secrecy, not muskets and cannon.

Our guide on this journey is S.W. O'Connell who brings us, The Patriot Spy, Book One of the Yankee Doodle Spies Series, followed by Book 2, The Cavalier Spy, and Book 3, The Winter Spy.

S.W. O'Connell is a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer who has served in a wide variety of counterintelligence assignments around the world. Upon retirement, he decided to mix his love and study of history with his military experiences to craft historical novels.

Visit him at Yankee Doodle Spies Dot Blog Spot Dot Com, on Facebook, or @SWOconnell on Twitter.

Special thanks to Thomas J. Howley for submitting a video question for this interview. Watch or listen to the History Show interview about his novel Wolf of Clontarf: The Irish, the Vikings and the Foreigners of the World.

June 27, 2022 - How did revolutions in the two great English-speaking nations -- the United States and the United Kingdom -- give birth to the American Constitution, and what does its creation have to tell us about the challenges we face over 200 years since its ratification?

In this episode, we dig into those questions, traveling back to when it all started with James D. R. Philips, a lawyer and visiting lecturer at the University of Sydney’s Law School in Australia. His book is Two Revolutions and the Constitution: How the English and American Revolutions Produced the American Constitution.

In the interview we discussed the dispersion of power that makes the U.S. government almost coup-proof, as well as the New York Sun column where I quoted James Philips: It’s Dangerous for January 6th Hearings To Portray Our Republic as a Fabergé Egg.

Visit our guest at JamesPhilips.net, or on Twitter and Facebook.

June 13, 2022 - Before he won ten World Series titles with the New York Yankees, Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra answered a higher team’s calling, to serve his country in World War Two -- a role in the Navy that ultimately led him to a rocket ship supporting the Normandy landings.

For June 6, 2022, the 78th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings, my column in the New York Sun was titled: “Yogi Berra’s War: ‘Deja Vu All Over Again.’”  It looked at the famed catcher’s service during the Normandy invasion, and spread the word about an event you’ll be enjoying in this week’s episode.

It’s a roundtable discussion held at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center, conducted in partnership with the Bob Feller Act of Valor Foundation. It was titled: Sacrifice & Courage, A Tribute to D-Day.

I was honored to act as moderator for the conversation, which was streamed live to military personnel at posts all around the world and all the ships at sea. Our panel in Little Ferry, New Jersey, on the campus of Montclair State University featured former governor of Mississippi and Secretary of the Navy Raymond Mabus Jr., Rear Admiral Edward “Sonny” Masso (retired), Luke Epplin -- author of Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball -- and Larry Berra, the son and namesake of Yogi.

In this interview, I also recommend a few books that I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing authors about, that have covered the service of ballplayers and the Normandy Landings. One is about the son of the 26th president, the oldest man and highest-ranking officer to go ashore that day. That book is His Father's Son: The Life of General Ted Roosevelt, Jr., by Tim Brady.

The others are by baseball historian Jim Leeke:

The Best Team Over There: The Untold Story of Grover Cleveland Alexander and the Great War

From the Dugouts to the Trenches: Baseball During the Great War

Nine Innings for the King: The Day Wartime London Stopped for Baseball – July 4, 1918

May 31, 2021 - The United States of America goes to great lengths to recover the remains of those who fall in battle, to offer a headstone, a finally resting place that loved ones can visit to honor their sacrifice. But what about those who fall and cannot be identified? In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard readers ages 7 to 97, with a book that's perfect for Memorial Day.

Since 1937, an elite body of guards began the round-the-clock vigil that continues to this day, steeped in tradition, and dedicated to honoring our nameless war dead. Our guide into one of the most sacred places in the United States, within Arlington National Cemetery, is Jeff Gottesfeld who brings us the illustrated history, Twenty-One Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. You can find him at JeffGottesfeldWriter.com, as well as on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.

Gottesfeld is a novelist, playwright, screen-and-TV writer whose work (including The Tree in the Courtyard: Looking Through Anne Frank's Window) has earned awards from the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America, and the National Council for the Social Studies. Matt Tavares is the author-illustrator, who has brought his talents to many previous books including Henry Aaron’s Dream, There Goes Ted Williams, Becoming Babe Ruth, and the New York Times bestseller Dasher. Find him at MattTavares.com, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Google+.

May 16, 2022 - Today, mapping the source of the Nile River is as easy as a Google search, but the mystery intrigued humanity for centuries.  In this episode, best-selling author Candice Millard introduces us to the men who won a race worthy of Indiana Jones in River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile.

We last met up with Candice Millard to discuss her book, Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape and the Making of Winston Churchill. Regular listeners have also heard me praise Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine & the Murder of a President as well as The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey.

For more, visit CandiceMillard.com or follow her @Candice_Millard on Twitter and like her at Facebook.

Thanks to Todd Arrington, who we met up with to chat about his book, The Last Lincoln Republican: The Presidential Election of 1880.  Todd is site manager at James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio.

Music credit: "Temple of Endless Sands" by Darren Curtis.

May 2, 2022 - Imagine you're struggling to feed your family during the Great Depression, and you cause a tragic accident at work. Do you risk your precious job at a time of sky-high unemployment and breadlines, or let someone else take the fall for what you did wrong? We'll meet a young man who faced that dilemma with award-winning novelist Sheila Myers who brings us The Truth of Who You Are.

In this based-on-a-true-story work of historical fiction, we meet Ben Taylor, whose decision stateside with the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps follows him from Great Smoky Mountains all way to the France during the Battle of the Bulge and back.

Sheila Myers is a college professor of ecology in Upstate New York. Her previous work of historical fiction earned the 2017 Best Book of Fiction by the Adirondack Center for Writing.

Sheila's Durant Family Saga followed Union Pacific Railroad tycoon Dr. Thomas C. Durant, and his children, from the 1870s throughout their boom-and-bust lives. We interviewed her about each book in the trilogy.

Book 1: Imaginary Brightness

Book 2: Castles in the Air

Book 3: The Night Is Done

Visit our guest at SheilaMyers.com, or on Twitter and Facebook.

Special thanks to Rob Hilliard for submitting a question for the interview. You can hear my conversation with Rob about his book, A Season on the Allegheny, in our archives wherever you enjoy the show.