History Author Show

November 25, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.

Today we are talking about some important topics. We will be visiting with Seneca and getting his take on a “good life”. This Roman statesman and philosopher believes that too many of us are wasting our lives and that very few of us are actually engaged in the duties of life.

Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.

November 23, 2015 - The Old '76 House in Tappan, New York, is a National Landmark, one where you can eat a meal fit for overthrowing a king. The building itself predates the American Revolution by over a century, and served an active role in the fight for independence. Every major figure including General George Washington spent time at this great American tavern. In 1780, it even served as a make-shift prison for Major John Andre, the British spy caught conspiring with America's most infamous traitor, Benedict Arnold.

And it was here that the British met Gen. Washington to officially recognize the war's end, and recognize America as a free and independent nation.

Learn more about America's oldest tavern at 76House.com, or by following them at Facebook.com/TheOld76House. And don't miss our interview with tavernkeeper, Robert Norden, who restored and preserves this unique piece of American history.

November 20, 2015 – It’s History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster.

Today, author Clint Hill shares his eyewitness account of President John F. Kennedy's assassination fifty-two years ago on November 22, 1963. Mr. Hill was the Secret Service agent assigned to protect Mrs. Kennedy that day, and the man seen leaping onto the back of the car after the fatal shots rang out in Dealey Plaza.

His latest book is titled, Five Days in November. It's a follow-up on his previous recollections in the #1 New York Times best-seller, Mrs. Kennedy and Me.

History in Five Friday.

It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past

November 16, 2015 - Today, we travel back 75 years to a dark period of the Second World War. But the battlefield where liberty and tyranny clash isn't Midway or Normandy Beach. It's the hallowed halls of the United States Supreme Court. Our guide into this world is Kermit Roosevelt. His novel is Allegiance, a legal thriller built around the internment of Americans with Japanese ancestry -- 62% of them American citizens -- under Franklin Roosevelt's infamous Executive Order 9066.

Kermit Roosevelt happens to be distantly related to FDR through his great-great grandfather, Theodore Roosevelt. He's also a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, winner of the Philadelphia Athenaeum Literary Award for his previous novel, In the Shadow of the Law, and a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

Nelson DeMille wrote, "My favorite World War II historical novel was Herman Wouk's The Winds of War. Now I have two favorites. Kermit Roosevelt's Allegiance is an instant classic." We also mentioned our interview with David O. Stewart, and his book on the Father of the Constitution: Madison's Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America.

November 13, 2015 - Today we're going to hear from writer/journalist Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute and author of  The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, and the acclaimed biography: Steve Jobs.

The Innovators includes names like Grace Hopper, Lord Byron’s daughter, Bletchley Park's Alan Turing, ENIAC, John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, and many others that gave us the computer devices we find indispensable to modern life.

And remember to subscribe to the History Author Show on iTunes, like our iHeartRadio page, or make us appointment listening on your Android device, so you don’t miss an installment of History in Five Friday. It’s the perfect way to kick off your modern weekend… with people from the past.

November 11, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.

Today we are going to consider the legend of Atlantis. You read that right, dear listener, we are talking about THAT Atlantis. While it is often considered legend, there is one classical writer who tells us otherwise. Prepare to suspend your disbelief, because we are going to consider the possibility that Atlantis was real.

Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.

November 9, 2015 - In honor of Veterans Day and Remembrance Day on November 11th, Bristol writer Jacqueline Wadsworth takes us back to "the war to end all wars" in Letters from the Trenches: The First World War by Those Who Were There. We hear from soldiers on the Western Front, Mesopotamia, Gallipoli, Italy, Northern Russia -- and, of course, from the women and children suffering through the Great War back home.

In addition to the book, you can visit SoldierLetters.Blogspot.com for tons of additional content, and follow Jacqueline Wadsworth on Twitter @SoldiersLetters.

Discover Your History magazine calls Letters from the Trenches, "A warm evocation of how ordinary people's lives were affected by a devastating conflict," and they highly recommend it. But Jacqueline's book is more than a pile of letters, more than another poetic retelling of the romance and tragedy of the war. It's a book where real people speak for themselves, as war upends their daily lives.

November 4, 2015 - It’s Classical Wisdom Wednesday, presented by Classical Wisdom Weekly — bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds, every Wednesday morning before your first cup of coffee.

Today we are visiting with Aristotle, a man who is often considered to be the most influential philosopher to ever live. We are looking at Aristotle’s Poetics and we will talk about how the idea of a “good story” has remained essentially unchanged for over two thousand years! Then we will consider the notion that reading tragic literature might actually contribute to our health and well-being.

Your guide through the classical landscape is Van Bryan, Associate Editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly. You can catch Classical Wisdom Wednesday every week before your first cup of coffee, right here on the History Author Show.

November 2, 2015 - For our first historical fiction author, we're pleased to introduce Jennifer Kincheloe's debut novel: The Secret Life of Anna Blanc. Join us in 1907 Los Angeles, where Anna Blanc chafes under the thumb of her controlling father and yearns for a life of crime -- solving them that is.

Inspired by the wild Santa Anna winds, Anna joins a suffragette protest, lies to everyone in her life, and takes a job as an LAPD police matron -- under a not particularly convincing fake name.

"If the police find out, she'll get fired; if her father finds out, he'll disown her; and if her fiancé finds out, he'll cancel the wedding and stop pouring money into her father's collapsing bank."

And so the stakes are set, in the secret life of our spunky heroine: Anna Blanc.

You can follow Jennifer Kincheloe @JenKincheloe on Twitter, or like the novel's Facebook page. And if you're hungering for more of LA at the dawn of the 20th Century, check out Jennifer Kincheloe's Pinterest page. It features over 35,000 images from her extensive research on the period.

 

 

Additional books discussed on this episode:

October 29, 2015 - In this special, Halloween episode, we're traveling back to the days before the American Civil War, when doctors would take their scalpels to fully awake patients -- the pre-microbial era when the causes of common diseases remained a mystery, and when oil lamps and flammable clothing combined to engulf a staggering number of people in flames.

This, was the age of monsters. Yes, monsters. Not costumed Groovie Goolies, but human beings so scarred and broken, that they often longed for death. And so they were called... monsters.

Enter the brilliant surgeon who gave these monsters hope, and made it his life's work to piece their lives back together. His name, was Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter. Poet and author Cristin O'Keefe Aptowitcz tells the story of his amazing medical breakthroughs in Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine. Cristin is an award-winning writer and the author of seven books. You can visit her website, Aptowicz.com and follow her on Twitter @COAptowicz.

We're also giving away two tickets to the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia on our Facebook page, courtesy of the author. To enter, just listen to the show, visit the page and leave a comment.

Because the only thing better than a trip into the past, is a free trip into the past for you and a friend.

 

 

Additional books discussed on this episode: