History Author Show

June 28, 2021 - We all know the name of John Henry “Doc” Holliday, but who was he in that lifetime beyond the fences of the O.K. Corral, standing guns drawn with Wyatt Earp? Our time machine travels back to meet this icon of the Old West, before and after his moment of destiny in Tombstone, Arizona, at the O.K. Corral.

Our guide on this journey is Victoria Wilcox, who brings us The World of Doc Holliday: History and Historic Images. Victoria Wilcox is founding director of Georgia’s Holliday-Dorsey-Fife Museum and the brains behind the documentary In Search of Doc Holliday. She also authored The Saga of Doc Holliday trilogy, featuring the historical fiction novels Southern Son, Dance with the Devil, and Dead Man's Hand. True West Magazine named her the Best Historical Western Novelist and her debut novel earned Georgia's Author of the Year Award.

Visit our guest at VictoriaWilcoxBooks.com, or on the social media outlets Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

June 14, 2021 - In 1982, the military junta in Buenos Aires had an idea to boost its sagging popularity: Invade the Falkland Islands, a British territory that Argentines called Las Malvinas. Only 60 Royal Marines stood in the way, 8,000 miles from home and cut off from support.

In this week's episode, we bring you "the book they said couldn’t be written about the battle that they say never happened," debunking the conventional wisdom that those Marines surrendered without a fight. That narrative does injustice their heroic defense as well as the price paid by the Argentines thrown into a war by leaders who cared little for its soldiers, and sailors on ships such as the doomed ARA Belgrano.

Our guide on this journey is Ricky D. Phillips, who brings us The First Casualty: The Untold Story of the Falklands War. His second book invokes the capital of the Falkland Islands and the soldiers of Argentina writing home, telling a very different story than their government's sunny propaganda tales of victory. That's Last Letters from Stanley: The Unpublished Argentine Battle for the Falklands.

Visit Ricky Phillips at his military history blog, Making History, or find him on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.

May 17, 2021 - When we think of George Washington, we see him carved onto Mount Rushmore -- above all of us and certainly above anything as oily as politics. But how did he get up there? Joining us to shine new light on the warrior-statesman's career from a mere state legislator to the single most dominant force in the creation of the United States, is David O. Stewart, who bring us  George Washington: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father.

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.

We previously caught up with David O. Stewart to chat about his books:

Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America

American Emperor – Aaron Burr: The Man Who Shot Alexander Hamilton

The Lincoln Deception (A Fraser and Cook Historical Mystery)

Also check out:

Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy and the documentary Going to the Devil: The Impeachment of 1868, presented by The Great Courses at Hunter College.

May 3, 2021- Who was the Roman general Marc Antony before he became a legend, before he rose as a man in full, forever linked in history with Cleopatra? We'll meet a boy struggling to redeem his disgraced family name in this week's novel, Antonius: Son of Rome. It's book one in Brook Allen's Antonius Trilogy, followed by Antonius: Second in Command and the conclusion, Antonius: Soldier of Fate.

Brook Allen introduces us to this historic figure before sculptors and Shakespeare got their hands on him, sharing her passion for ancient history, and redeeming a man whose enemies have had their say for 2,000 years.

Brook Allen earned a B.A. from Asbury University and a Master's at Hollins University with an emphasis in Ancient Roman studies, so she has the grounding in facts to really bring this story to life. Visit her at BrookAllenAuthor.com and find her on Twitter or Facebook.

Special thanks to Tonya Mitchell for recommending The Antonius Trilogy. You can find that interview in the archives, where we discuss her Nelly Bly novel, A Feigned Madness.

April 19, 2021 - How did the trauma of the First World War follow a baseball legend home, sending both his game and his life into downward spirals? Returning to introduce us to this tragic Hall of Famer is Jim Leeke, who brings us The Best Team Over There: The Untold Story of Grover Cleveland Alexander and the Great War.

Grover Cleveland "Pete" Alexander is a legendary name in baseball, but a key factor in his career -- months of service as an artillery sergeant in the Great War -- has been overlooked.  Jim is a contributor to the Society for American Baseball Research Baseball Biography Project, as well as the writer or editor of several books on U.S. and military history. Visit our archives wherever you're watching or listening now for my previous conversations with Jim Leeke.

Howell's Storm: New York City's Official Rainmaker and the 1950 Drought

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

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

Matty Boy: A Civil War Novel for Young Readers

Follow Jim on Twitter at the handles @JimLeeke and @WW1Baseball.

The New York Sun - General Petraeus Headlines Celebration of the Birth of U. S. Grant - Dean Karayanis

The New York Sun - Greatness of U.S. Grant Comes Into Sharp Relief at 200 - Dean Karayanis

April 5, 2021 - How did the general who saved the Union and served two terms as president, earn so much love from the nation that they memorialized him with what's the largest mausoleum in the Western Hemisphere? We explore this story with Louis Picone in Grant's Tomb: The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon.

Louis and I previously caught up to discuss his books Where the Presidents Were Born: The History & Preservation of the Presidential Birthplaces and The President is Dead! The Extraordinary Stories of the Presidential Deaths, Final Days, Burials, and Beyond. In Grant's Tomb, he examines how Americans memorialized one of the most significant leaders in history, and how that man defied a death sentence from cancer to write his epic memoir and provide for his wife and family.

Learn more about our guest at LouisPicone.com, or connect with him across social media platforms LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

March 8, 2021 - What happens when a legendary historian aims his keen eye in the rearview mirror, examining the places, people, and experiences that made him a great storyteller? Well, when the historian is David Pietrusza, the answer is the rich, funny and poignant memoir Too Long Ago: A Childhood Memory. A Vanished World.

Before returning us to the Amsterdam, NY, of Upstate New York in the 1950s and '60s, David Pietrusza wrote or edited a treasure trove of books and has appeared everywhere from C-SPAN and the History Channel, to ESPN and Fox Sports Channel, as well as too many fine radio shows to list. He is also featured on AMC's Making of the Mob: New York. It's easy to see why he's been called "one of the great political historians of all time."

David Pietrusza has sat down with me to discuss four of his previous books, interviews which you can find in our archives or below. They are:

TR's Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy

Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series

1920: The Year of the Six Presidents

1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR ― Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal, and Unlikely Destiny

For more, visit @DPietrusza on Twitter or DavidPietrusza.com.

The New York Sun - McKinley High: Cancel Culture Targets Assassinated President in Hawaii - Dean Karayanis

February 15, 2021 - There has been no more noble fight in all of history than the one guaranteeing equal rights for formerly enslaved people.

So how did America forget the Black congressman and a Civil War veteran president to ensure that all those Union soldiers hadn't died in vain -- and more importantly, that the words on those Reconstruction Era amendments to the Constitution guaranteeing rights to the freedmen, weren't just ink on the page, laughed at by marauding lynch mobs?

In this episode, we meet this overlooked odd couple with Benjamin R. Justesen who brings us Forgotten Legacy: William McKinley, George Henry White, and the Struggle for Black Equality. Justesen writes, "William McKinley's role as a sincere friend and benefactor of African-Americans may be one of the best-kept secrets in American political history." He also introduces us to the inspiring Congressman White, whose skill as an orator -- and later as the founder of Whitesboro, New Jersey -- is the stuff of legend.

Ben Justesen is a former journalist, teacher, and U.S. Foreign Service Officer whose previous book is George Henry White: An Even Chance in the Race of Life.

February 8, 2012 - The U.S. Navy builds modern marvels: 100,000-ton hunks of metal that glide across the ocean rather than sinking like rocks. But how do they do it? The short answer is "computers." But it was Raye Montague who first designed a ship with that technology, doing so as a single mother during the height of the Cold War, and as a Black woman born into the segregated Little Rock of 1935. She literally let nothing stand in her way.

We meet this inspirational trailblazer in Overnight Code: The Life of Raye Montague, the Woman Who Revolutionized Naval Engineering thanks Raye's son, David R. Montague, and his co-author, Paige Bowers, who  previously stopped by to chat about her debut book The General's Niece: The Little-Known de Gaulle Who Fought to Free Occupied France. You can enjoy that conversation in our archives wherever you're listening now.

Paige Bowers holds a master’s degree in modern European history and taught about French history and culture at Louisiana State University. David R. Montague earned a Ph.D. at Howard University and a BA at Morehouse College, both in Political Science, as well as an MA in Crime and Commerce at George Washington. He's the director of online learning and faculty mentoring at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

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