History Author Show

October 6, 2015 - How did Winston Churchill overcome so many personal, financial and professional setbacks to lead the United Kingdom to victory during its darkest hour, when the Empire nation stood alone against Hitler? The answer may surprise you, and that's the focus of a new book. It's God & Churchill: How the Great Leader's Sense of Divine Destiny Changed His Troubled World and Offers Hope for Ours.

More than a spiritual biography, God & Churchill recounts a deeply personal quest for Jonathan Sandys, Winston Churchill's great-grandson. Along with co-author and former White House staffer Wallace Henley, Jonathan discovers how again and again, Churchill turned his eyes up to find strength here on earth. Previous books have ignored the role of faith in the Greatest Briton's life, or dismissed his invocations on behalf of "Christian civilization" as mere rhetoric.

Now, for the first time, God & Churchill debunks that myth and inspires us with a Sir Winston who remains a role model today, as we seek to unite the world in the face of the heirs to Hitler's nihilistic creed.

UPDATE: It's with a heavy heart I report that Jonathan Sandys -- a man I was proud to call friend -- passed away a few days after Christmas 2018. He is survived by his wife, Sara, as well as their children Jesse and Arizona Jane. Not to mention his family in the U.K. and so many who met him once, twice, or a thousand times. When the news hit me, I thought of the line from Watership Down: "My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today," for I will miss running with him, on to the next adventure.

 

Additional books discussed in this episode:

October 5, 2015 - On this episode, we visit the theaters, throne rooms and taverns of London 400 years ago, as seen through the eyes of William Shakespeare. History Author Show correspondent Stephen Bedford met our guide to Jacobian London in the shadow of the immortal bard's statue in Central Park. He is renowned Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, professor of English of Columbia University.

His book is The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. That was a particularly chaotic year in England with King James’ ascension and the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot. But this atmosphere of crisis inspired Shakespeare, and he went on to produce three of his greatest tragedies that year: King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra.

Professor Shapiro is historical adviser at New York City’s Public Theater, Governor of the Folger Shakespeare Library, and frequent BBC commentator. He is also the author of Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? You can find him at JamesShapiro.net.

September 28, 2015 - Even casual baseball fans can name the game's greatest heroes, and its most infamous villain: Ty Cobb. Yes, it's something that even Yankees and Red Sox fans can agree on: "The Georgia Peach" wasn't a very nice fellow. But what if everyone is wrong? What if, like Ulysses S. Grant, Ty Cobb's enemies were just more prolific writers than his friends? What if by accepting the view of Ty Cobb as a belligerent racist and dirty player, we're smearing baseball's all-time great, and abetting a century of shoddy reporting?

If so, then someone should set the historical record straight. Well, that's exactly what Charles Leerhsen set out to do in his New York Times best-seller, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. In it, Mr. Leerhsen questioned all the accepted truths about Cobb and found the facts striking out.

And Mr. Leerhsen is not just a sports fan, but a journalist trained in facts. You've seen his work everywhere from Sports Illustrated and Esquire to The New York Times Magazine and People. He has also been an editor at SI, Us Weekly, and Newsweek. You can find him @CharlesLeerhsen on Twitter and at Leerhsen.com.

We hope you'll pour yourself a cold one, tear open a box of Cracker Jacks, and play ball with Charles Leerhsen and Ty Cobb ... A Terrible Beauty.

Meet Buster - Mascott of New Jersey's Lakewood BlueClaws

September 25, 2015 – It's History in Five Friday, presented by Simon & Schuster -- kicking off your modern weekend, with people from the past.  Today, we offer up Charles Leerhsen's incredible book: Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. It exposes the cruel smear of baseball's most exciting player, debunking the caricature of him as a dimwitted, belligerent, drunken racist.  You can enjoy our full interview on or after Monday, September 28, 2015.   For more, follow our H5F author on Twitter @CharlesLeerhsen or visit his website, CharlesLeerhsen.com.

 

September 24, 2015 - This is a special, Pope-in-America edition of the History Author Show. Pope Francis began his visit to the United States on September 22, 2015 with stops in Washington, D.C., New York City and Philadelphia. Top on his agenda were calls for Americans to spend more on the poor. But what about the church's finances? How did a humble ministry started by St. Paul two thousand years ago, grow into the largest and wealthiest on earth?

Attorney, best-selling author, and award-winning investigative journalist Gerald Posner explores that question in his book: God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican. It's a book not about faith, but about finances. And it begs the question: Can the man called the people's pope, Francis, overcome the resistance to change in the Vatican’s inner court, and rein in its excesses? Can the new pontiff, in short, succeed where all his predecessors failed?

The Providence Journal called God's Bankers "As exciting as a mystery thriller." So I thought, who better to interview Gerald Posner than thriller author Tom Grace. Among Tom's best-selling novels in the Nolan Kilkenny series is, The Secret Cardinal. It's an adventure that races from the grandeur of the Vatican across the vastness of Asia, ultimately involving China, the Mafia, and the conclave of cardinals that will elect the next pope.

Tom has vast knowledge of the Catholic Church, so he and Gerald had a lot to talk about in this bonus episode.

 

Additional books discussed in this episode:

September 21, 2015 - Join us in Manhattan's Madison Square Park -- next to the statue of President Chester A. Arthur -- as we travel back to the days when Latin was very much a living language. Our tour guide is Van Bryan, associate editor of Classical Wisdom Weekly: "Ancient Wisdom for Modern Minds." It's an online publishing house that shares information, commentaries, and opinions on literature of antiquity with iPad-enabled readers like us.

You can also follow them @ClassicalWisdom on Twitter or get their newsletter via email, just by signing up right here. When you do, you'll get three free books: The Guide to the Greek Gods and Goddesses, an introduction to ancient ethical philosophy, and a guide to the Peloponnesian War. You have nothing to lose and so much wisdom to gain, why not give it a try?

Visit "The Thirsty Philosopher," Dr. Frank McCluskey's blog.

September 18, 2015 - One of the most acclaimed political biographies of our time, Jeffrey Frank’s Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage takes you inside the strained and complex relationship of two fascinating American leaders—hailed as "top-drawer as political history" by the New York Review of Books and "one of the best books ever written about Richard Nixon" by the New Yorker."

 

September 14, 2015 - From Thomas Edison to Dr. Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters, the idea of the quirky, driven scientist working in solitude is a popular one in the American imagination. But today, you need big machines like particle accelerators, electron microscopes, and super computers to advance human knowledge.

So how did we get from Alexander Graham Bell in his lonely lab to Robert Oppenheimer assembling and leading a massive team to beat Hitler to the atom bomb, or the U.S. racing the Soviets to the moon? Today's book introduces us to the man behind this revolution, one that touches all aspects of our modern life. It's called, Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex.

The author is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik. He's a graduate of Colgate and the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia, and has written previous books on the Hoover Dam and The New Deal. You can follow him on Twitter @HiltzikM and visit his website, MichaelHiltzik.com.

 

Additional books discussed in this episode:

September 11, 2015 - End your week with a taste of the past.  It's History in Five Friday!  Here's Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik, author of Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex.  You can enjoy our full interview on or after Monday, September 14, 2015.   You can follow him on Twitter @HiltzikM or visit his website, MichaelHiltzik.com.  And enjoy more of Simon & Schuster's History in Five shorts at Facebook.com/HistoryInFive.

September 7, 2015 - This journey into the past is our tastiest yet. Our guest is Dan DeMiglio, heir to a legendary Callahan's hot dog shop, a landmark in Fort Lee, New Jersey, just across the George Washington Bridge. Our goal is to do more than books here on the program, to remind people that we're all the author of our own chapter in the great human story, so Callahan's -- which closed in 2006 after fifty years serving the "so big, so good" best --seemed like a natural.

In 1950, Leonard "Artie" Castrianni didn't know it, but he was writing history -- not with ink, but with ketchup and mustard. The story began when he opened a road-side food stand and gas station on the Palisades cliffs. From it, he served deep-fried hot dogs, hand-cut fries, Birch Beer and more to hungry families -- first from the nearby Palisades Amusement Park, and later to anyone who wanted a taste of the past.

Callahan's was an institution in Fort Lee, and from age 7, Daniel DeMiglio -- Artie Castrianni's grandson -- had a single goal in life: To carry on the family legacy. Even when his dad and uncle sold the old place in 2006, Daniel -- then just out of college -- refused to let the delicious dog dream die. How could he? "Callahan Dan" had relish in his blood.

You can follow the reborn Callahan's @EatCallahans on Twitter. You can also like them at Facebook.com/CallahansHotDogs, and find out when their food truck ("The Yellow Beast") will be in your neighborhood. It travels all around the New York/New Jersey area and like many of our locals entering their 60s, the truck has set its sights on Florida for the winter.  You can also visit CallahansHotDogs.com from more on this historic family business.