History Author Show

April 18, 2022 - If a group of World War Two-era journalists invited you out for drinks, ready to open up about their interviews with everyone from Gandhi and Neru to Mussolini and Hitler, what would say? Readers get that opportunity with Deborah Cohen who brings us Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War.

In this episode, our time machine welcomes aboard journalists John Gunther, H. R. Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean, and Dorothy Thompson, who have do their job before and during the war, confronting the likes of Hitler and Mussolini, but also isolationist forces who think dictators might not be so bad.

Deborah Cohen is the author of The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914-1939, Household Gods: The British and Their Possessions, and Family Secrets. She is also the Richard W. Leopold Professor of History at Northwestern University, focusing on modern Europe. Visit her at DeborahCohen.com or @DeborahACohen on Twitter.

Special thanks to Cara Robertson for sending this great book our way. In our archives, you can listen to Cara chatting about her book The Trial of Lizzie Borden: A True Story.

April 4, 2022 - What would you do if your estranged father died, leaving behind piles of Nazi-era documents related to the fate of your family's café in the world wars? In this episode, our time machine travels back to the inter-war years, to meet a Jewish family rocked by the turmoil of Austria-Hungary and them Germany coming out on the losing side.

Our guide on this journey is Meriel Schindler who brings us The Lost Café Schindler: One Family, Two Wars, and the Search for Truth. After her father Kurt's death, Meriel was left to confront their broken relationship, and untangle the truth behind the tales he spun -- stories of an extraordinary family tree featuring Franz Kafka, Oskar Schindler, the Jewish doctor who treated Hitler’s and his mother, and others. Only one thing was concrete: The café that the Nazis stole when her family was forced to flee.

Find our guest at MerielSchindler.com, or at @MerielSchindler on Twitter.

Special thanks investigative journalist Gerald Posner for submitting a video question on anti-Semitism for The Lost Café Schindler, and also providing a blurb for the book. Gerald has done three previous interviews about his books:

God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican

Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America

Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK

We also cite my conversation with Gerald's wife and writing partner, Trisha, and her book The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story .

March 21, 2022 - Who were the young American pilots who launched their fighter jets into the wild blue yonder during the first Gulf Wear, aiming to pry tiny Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's fist? In this episode, we'll travel back to January 17, 1991, as Desert Shield transforms into Desert Storm high in the skies over Iraq.

Once there, we'll meet those American airmen -- and the teams on the ground that kept their F-15C's flying against Soviet MiG-29 Fulcrums -- with internationally acclaimed military historian and U.S. Army veteran Mike Guardia who brings us Skybreak: The 58th Fighter Squadron in Desert Storm.

Mike Guardia served six years on active duty as an Armor Officer and is widely praised for his acclaimed biography Hal Moore: A Soldier Once…and Always, chronicling the life of LTG Harold G. Moore, whose leadership you may recall from the Mel Gibson's portrayal in the film We Were Soldiers. Mike has been nominated for the Army Historical Foundation’s Distinguished Book Award not once but twice. In 2021, he was named Author of the Year by the Military Writers Society of America.

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

March 7, 2022 - Best-selling author Eva Stachniak joins us to discuss her latest novel, The School of Mirrors. "During the reign of Louis XV, impoverished but lovely teenage girls from all over France are sent to a discreet villa in the town of Versailles. Overseen by the King’s favorite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, they will be trained as potential courtesans for the King. ... The students at this 'School of Mirrors' rarely ask questions, and when Louis tires of them, they are married off to minor aristocrats or allowed to retire to one of the more luxurious nunneries."

It's a rich and enjoyable story, focusing not just on the ribald details, but on the relationship between a mother and her daughter, who succeeds despite the many obstacles to women at the time, but longs to know the truth about her father's identity.

Eva Stachniak was born in Wrocław, Poland, moved to Canada in 1981, and has worked for Radio Canada International and Sheridan College, where she taught English and Humanities. She is the bestselling author of The Winter Palace, Empress of the Night, Necessary Lies, and  Garden of Venus, in addition to The Chosen Maiden.

You can find our interview on The Chosen Maiden in our archives. I was also honored that Eva asked me to MC an event and Q&A at the Kosciuszko Center in Manhattan some years back. You should absolutely check them out if you're interested in preserving the history of this dual American and Polish hero.

Visit our guest at EvaStachniak.com or find her at Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Featured in The New York Sun - Martin Luther King Jr. Drew His Moral Authority From Religion - Dean Karayanis

February 21, 2022 - It was once an unattainable dream, kept out of reach by lynch mobs, police dogs and firehoses. But in 2008, Barack Obama fulfilled the promise of that all men are created equal. In this episode, we take a look back at the man who changed the face of the Oval Office forever, just in time for Presidents' Day and Black History Month.

Our guide on this journey is Professor Claude A. Clegg III who brings us The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama. He is the Lyle V. Jones Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a joint appointment in the Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies and the Department of History.

Visit him at ClaudeClegg.com and @ClaudeClegg on Twitter.

Special thanks to Bijan C. Bayne who offering up a question for Professor Clegg. I previously interviewed Bijan for his books Elgin Baylor: The Man Who Changed Basketball and Martha’s Vineyard Basketball: How a Resort League Defied Notions of Race and Class. He's also the writer-producer of the docuseries, "Six Degrees of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar."

February 7, 2022 -  Theodore Roosevelt's life is the stuff of myths and legends, a persona he carefully cultivated over his decades charging through public life. But what did those who shared his private moments think of the Rough Rider? We'll get freshly uncovered insights from those who knew him best, meeting the 26th president through the eyes of friends, families and confidants, through 14 lost oral histories from the 1950s.

Our guide on this journey is Michael Patrick Cullinane who brings us these never-before-heard stories in Remembering Theodore Roosevelt: Reminiscences of his Contemporaries. We previously caught up with Michael when we compared our busts -- our TR busts, that is -- to discuss his book, Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon, which earned the TR Book Prize. (Watch or listen here.)

Michael Patrick Cullinane is Professor of U.S. History at the University of Roehampton, London, and host of The Gilded Age and Progressive Era podcast. Find him at MichaelPatrickCullinane.com, or on his Twitter and LinkedIn.

January 24, 2022 - What happens when an acclaimed author on figures from George Washington and James Madison to Aaron Burr and Andrew Johnson, turns his historical searchlight inward to his own family's American story?  David O. Stewart does just that in his novel The New Land, Book One of the Overstreet Saga.

This is attorney-turned-author David O. Stewart's fifth appearance on the show. I previously caught up with him to chat about his non-fiction books George Washington: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father, Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America, and the epic, American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America. We also discussed The Lincoln Deception, a novel in his Fraser and Cook Historical Mysteries.

David's new trilogy lands on the rocky shore of Broad Bay, Maine, in 1753, where we meet Johann Oberstrasse, a Hessian mercenary who's had enough of war after being hired out to the King of England. Johann's wife, Christiane, resolves that their son will never march in his father's footsteps. But the New World brings old problems, challenging the rebranded Overstreet family's longing for a peaceful life.

Find our guests at DavidOStewart.com, or on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Special thanks to Lindsay M. Chervinsky, Ph.D, who submitted a question for David about Washington’s biggest regrets. Watch or listen to our conversation about her book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.

January 10, 2022 - Surrounded, low on supplies, and on the verge of surrender, the soldiers of Argentina -- many young, barely trained conscripts -- wrote home in the waning days of the Falkland War, telling tales of hardship that bore no resemblance to the propaganda woven by the military junta back in Buenos Ares.

Ricky D. Phillips brings us these up-close accounts for the first time in Last Letters from Stanley: The Unpublished Argentine Battle for the Falklands, who we previously chatted with about his book The First Casualty: The Untold Story of the Falklands War. Visit Ricky at his military history blog, Making History, or find him on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.

December 13, 2021 - How did a college dropout from Missouri, grow up to win five Marconi awards and rescue AM radio -- to have one U.S. president carry his bags into the Lincoln bedroom, and another award him the Medal of Freedom? It's the amazing life story of radio's greatest of all time, Rush Limbaugh, from his long-time friend James Golden, known better to tens of millions of listeners as Bo Snerdley.

The book is Rush on the Radio: A Tribute from His Sidekick for 30 Years, an intimate portrait of someone who strove for excellence every day, even as he battled terminal lung cancer. This is a unique and special episode for host and guest, since Dean joined Rush's TV show in 1995 and rejoined the website in 2000, having been part of the EIB Network team ever since. The result is a unique and heartfelt interview.

His most recent Washington Times column cites some of the parallels between Rush opening up talk radio to all voices and upstart Rumble's efforts to take on YouTube. The piece is titled, "All Americans should join Rumble's free speech fight."

James Golden is a long-time radio producer, call screener, and the host. You can catch him on 77 WABC New York at 4-5PM Weekdays and 8-10AM Saturday mornings, or via his show podcast. You can also listen to his iHeartRadio series, Rush Limbaugh: The Man Behind the Golden EIB Microphone.

Visit him at JamesGolden.com, or find him on social media at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, where you can find me as well.

November 29, 2021 - How did a high school hockey team go from being the very worst in the country to the top 5%, and what lessons can we apply to our own lives from that historic turnaround? In this episode, our time machine steps onto the ice twenty years ago with the lowly Ann Arbor Huron High School River Rats.

Our player-turned-coach is best-selling author John U. Bacon, who rescued a team with a tradition of losing so engrained, they hadn't won a game in a year and a half, going 0-22-3. He brings us Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America’s Worst High School Hockey Team.

John U. Bacon teaches at Northwestern and the University of Michigan, and has written several New York Times bestsellers, including Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines, Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football, and, Endzone: The Rise, Fall, and Return of Michigan Football. For history beyond sports, enjoy our archived conversation about The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism.

Visit LetThemLeadByBacon.com for more or find him on social media at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.