History Author Show

January 25, 2021 - When George Washington accepted the responsibility of being the first president of a new nation, he felt the weight of history on his broad shoulders, knowing that every step he took, would set precedents for generations. So, how did he pick a team of advisers to keep his path straight on the long march to nationhood?

We explore how he pioneered the presidential cabinet with Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky. She's a historian of Early America, the presidency, and government who brings us The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.

Lindsay Chervinsky is Scholar in Residence at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona College, Senior Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, and Professorial Lecturer at the School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University. She earned her Ph.D. in history from UC Davis.

Find her at LindsayChervinsky.com, or on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where you can also find the page for QuincyTheHistoryHound.

Previous interviews on the period:

David Head: A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution

Bob Drury and Tom Clavin: Valley Forge

Peter Stark: Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America’s Founding Father

Fergus Bordewich: The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government

January 11, 2021 - In 2017, Sports Illustrated named Mike "Doc" Emrick the greatest sportscaster of all time. But how did a kid from a tiny town in the American Midwest, grow up to be a voice synonymous with Canada's game, the first media member inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, a TV heavyweight, and the winner of eight Sports Emmys?

How did Doc sound just as excited about the 10,000th goal he saw, as he did when he was a boy in the 1950s, watching the Fort Wayne Komets put the biscuit in the net for the very first time? We get those insights in his memoir, Off Mike: How a Kid from Basketball-Crazy Indiana Became America's NHL Voice.

In a career that spanned 47 years, Doc had stops everywhere from ESPN and CBS, to Fox, SportsChannel, MSG, NBC, and beyond. He survived prostate cancer along the way, and spent 5,000 nights away from his beloved wife, Joyce. They've certainly earned their retirement. The Emrick's are also lovers of all creatures great and small. In fact, Doc is donating proceeds from sales of Off Mike to animal charities.

The History Author Show will be dropping the gloves to fight for animals in need alongside Doc and Joyce. Amazon gives us a portion of every book you purchase through their links on this page. We'll be matching triple that amount times three and donating to pets in need. So if you're thinking of picking up a copy of this inspiring, entertaining memoir, please consider doing it through us.

December 28, 2020 - What's it like being the great-grandson of one of the greatest leaders of the 20th Century, the man called "the Greatest Briton"? In this episode, we pay tribute to Jonathan Sandys, Winston Churchill's great-grandson, who passed away at just 43 years old on December 29, 2018. With the two-year remembrance upon us, we reached back into the archives to share a speech he delivered to the English-Speaking Union at the Fort Orange Club in Albany, NY, about his book, God and Churchill: How the Great Leader’s Sense of Divine Destiny Changed His Troubled World and Offers Hope to Ours.

You can also enjoy our full interview about God & Churchill from October 6, 2015 in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com, our iHeartRadio Channel, iTunes, etc.

Jonathan, like his famous ancestor, had the power to uplift even in the darkest times. We hope this speech will inspire you to "never surrender," to "Never, never, never give up," as we approach 2021. As Winston Churchill said, "When you're going through hell, keep going."

December 14, 2020 - In 1880, Maria Longworth Nichols Storer founded Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati, aiming to give American artists a place to produce quality pieces to beautify the home, but also practical ceramics and tile.

It grew into a world-renowned success, one that endures to this day.

Spinning the pottery wheel for us is Bob Batchelor who brings us the illustrated history Rookwood: The Rediscovery and Revival of an American Icon -- a Publishers Weekly Holiday Gift Guide 2020 Selection.

We previously caught up with Bob to chat about his books The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius and Stan Lee: The Man behind Marvel. Bob Batchelor is a cultural historian who has written or edited more than two dozen books on popular culture and American literature, including books about John Updike, The Great Gatsby, and Mad Men.

Find him at BobBatchelor.com, on Facebook, or at the Twitter and Instagram handle @BobPBatchelor.

November 30, 2020 -What are your favorite stories from growing up? Well, make room on your bookshelf for the chickens who dreamed of speaking Yiddish. We dive into a treasure trove of children's literature, brought together here for the first time by Miriam Udel. Her book is Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children's Literature.  Perfect for anyone on your Hanukah or Christmas list.

That's right. Santa can clean out the bookshelves on this one -- a great gift for any young person year 'round.

Storytelling binds us all together, so you don't have to be of the Jewish faith to enjoy these tales, although they'll speak in a different way to those readers. Miriam Udel is associate professor of Yiddish language, literature, and culture at Emory University. She holds an AB in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and a PhD in Comparative Literature, both from Harvard. In 2019, she was ordained a rabbi at Yeshivat Maharat.

Her previous book is  Never Better! The Modern Jewish Picaresque, which earned the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. For more, visit MiriamUdel.com or Miriam Udel on Twitter and Instagram.

November 16, 2020 - "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." The phrase is the stuff of legend, but who wrote that memorable lyric? In this episode, we meet the street poet with a heart of gold, Drew "Bundini" Brown, Jr., one of boxing’s most mysterious and misunderstood figures -- and the one who motivated Muhammad Ali to be the greatest.

Join us in the corner of Sugar Ray Robinson and the young Cassius Clay as he transforms into a transcendent sports icon. Bundini kept the boxer grounded, sticking by him despite opposition from the Nation of Islam, who tried to bully, bribe and brush him out of the entourage for marrying a Jewish woman. Born in the Jim Crow South, Bundini struggled out of poverty and a broken home, to enlist in the U.S. Navy, appear in several Hollywood films (including the Blaxploitation classic Shaft), and break convention to uplift everyone around him.

Khalilah Camacho-Ali, Muhammad Ali’s second wife, said, "When you talk about Bundini, you are talking about the mouthpiece of Muhammad Ali, an extension of Muhammad Ali’s spirit. There would never have been a Muhammad Ali without Drew 'Bundini' Brown." This enigmatic figure of the sweet science is the subject of today's biography, Bundini: Don't Believe the Hype.

Bringing us ringside is Todd D. Snyder, an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at Siena College in Albany, New York, and Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Ohio University. His previous books include The Rhetoric of Appalachian Identity and 12 Rounds in Lo's Gym: Boxing and Manhood in Appalachia. He's also the son of a boxing trainer where he grew up in West Virginia.

Find Todd D. Snyder online at HillbillySpeaks.com, on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

November 2, 2020 - One of Europe's greatest monsters. One of America's greatest presidents. We'll dig into the parallel paths that led these men and their nations to very different final destinations with renowned historian David Pietrusza. We sat down at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y., to discuss his book 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR ―Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal, and Unlikely Destiny.

We last chatted with the award-winning historian about his books... 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents, and, TR's Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy, as well as, Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series. David Pietrusza has written or edited a stack of best-selling, award-winning books, including those on pivotal presidential election years 1948 and 1960, in addition to the '20 and '32 campaigns. He's appeared everywhere from C-SPAN and the History Channel, to ESPN and Fox Sports Channel, and AMC's Making of the Mob: New York. It's easy to see why he's been called one "one of the great political historians ... of all time."

Follow him @DPietrusza on Twitter and DavidPietrusza.com. You can also explore the 32nd U.S. president's legacy online at FDRLibrary.org or on Twitter @FDRLibrary.

October 19, 2020 - In 1887, the New York World newspaper laughed off 23-year-old Elizabeth Cochrane's dreams of being a reporter. Today, she's a New York City legend, known to history by the pen name Nellie Bly. But to sew up that dream job, Nellie had to go undercover in the closest thing Gilded Age Gotham had to hell: The asylums of Blackwell's Island on the East River.

Tonya Mitchell brings us a meticulously researched, fictionalized account of Nellie's mission in her debut novel, A Feigned Madness. It follows Nellie's quest to expose the corrupt officials running the asylum, and blow up the conventional wisdom that women just can't hack it in a newsroom.

You've seen Tonya Mitchell's award-winning fiction in the Copperfield Review, Words Undone, the Front Porch Review, and various anthologies. She's also earned a BA from Indiana University in the field Nellie Bly pioneered, journalism, and describes herself as obsessed with the Victorian Era, as we'll see in the rich, transportive detail of her fiction.

Visit her at TonyaMitchellAuthor.com or on , Facebook and Instagram.

You can learn more about the fact behind the fiction of this episode, in our interview with Stacy Horn about her book, Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York.

October 5, 2020 - In 1881, an assassin shot President James A. Garfield just four months into his term, ending this noble leader's plans for carrying out Abraham Lincoln's legacy of equality for formerly enslaved Americans. But how did he get into the big chair?

Our time machine heads into the hurly burley of the 1880 election, the only time two Civil War veterans faced off across the Mason-Dixon line of politics. It's the ultimate winner, James A. Garfield of Ohio, who we meet in the book The Last Lincoln Republican: The Presidential Election of 1880. Our campaign manager on the road to the White House, is Benjamin Todd Arrington, site manager of the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio.

Learn more about the 20th president's life and unfulfilled potential at the National Parks Service website, or on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.

Special thanks to Candice Millard for submitting a question for Todd. She's author of the landmark James A. Garfield book Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President. You find our conversation her latest book, Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill, in our archives.

Also mentioned in this episode: Johnny Cash's rendition of the Western ballad, "Mr. Garfield," and Benjamin R. Justesen, author of Forgotten Legacy: William McKinley, George Henry White, and the Struggle for Black Equality. Watch for that interview in the coming months.

September 21, 2020 - The Great War is over, but the Spanish Influenza continues to deliver the butcher's bill. Everywhere, children are dying. But in Philadelphia, they're also disappearing -- and they all have one thing in common: They're immigrants. We dive into a riveting novel set 100 years ago that's eerily familiar today with acclaimed novelist Ellen Marie Wiseman.

She brings us The Orphan Collector, a Target Book Club Pick and an Editor’s Choice in Historical Novel Society magazine. Her 13-year-old heroine, Pia, and her mother care for twins, Ollie and Max, even as prejudice and the Purple Death beset them on all sides. Like so many German immigrants, her patriotism was immediately suspect, and her father -- feeling the need to prove his loyalty -- did so by enlisting to fight the Kaiser.

With Armistice Day, they dare to hope for a return to normalcy. But when Pia leaves quarantine at home in a desperate search for food, she can't imagine that she'll return to find her brothers have evaporated into thin air.

Ellen Marie Wiseman's previous novels include best-sellers The Life She Was Given: A Moving and Emotional Saga of Family and Resilient Women, and, What She Left Behind: A Haunting and Heartbreaking Story of 1920s Historical Fiction -- which sold over half a million copies -- and The Plum Tree: An Emotional and Heartbreaking Novel of WW2 Germany and the Holocaust.

Visit EllenMarieWiseman.com for more on her fictional adventures, and follow her at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.