July 27, 2020 - Video killed the radio star, and the talkies killed Vaudeville, but some legends adapt to changing times. In this episode, we meet one such innovator, who made a series of leaps from New York City's Hippodrome to Hollywood, with many entertaining stops and in between.

Born in the San Francisco of 1883 as Katherine Gertrude Hay, Gertrude Hoffman broke into show business as a mimic, copying highbrow performances from Europe and popularizing them for a broader American audience. She started as a pantomime ballet girl in the Gay Nineties, grew up with Vaudeville, and later worked as a choreographer and teacher, living well into the 1960's.

Joining us in our time machine is the Hargis associate professor of American literature at Auburn University, Sunny Stalter-Pace, who brings us, Imitation Artist: Gertrude Hoffmann's Life in Vaudeville and Dance. Find our guest online at SunnyStalterPace.com or on Twitter @SLStalter.

July 13, 2020 - He's the ultimate Civil War baby gone bad, born in 1866 with the modest handle of Robert Leroy Parker. So how did that dirt-poor son of a Mormon farmer grow up into a horse thief, rustler, and bank robber who ran with the Wild Bunch? Charles Leerhsen explores the origin story of a famous outlaw who never killed a soul in Butch Cassidy: The True Story of an American Outlaw.

If you're familiar with sensationalized, thinly researched Hollywood depictions of Butch, you'll find the real man even more entertaining and charming. Charles Leerhsen previously joined us to discuss one of my all-time favorite books Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty. In it, he redeems one of baseball's all-time greats, stripping away the lies of the sensationalist sportswriter, Al Stump, who concocted tales of a brutal, belligerent racist.

Now, he aims the same careful eye to Butch, digging through legends and tall tales to paint a complete picture of an American original who just wanted to be liked -- and to avoid the 19th Century version of the cubicle life.

You've Charles Leerhsen's 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. Find him @CharlesLeerhsen on Twitter and at Leerhsen.com.

June 29, 2020 - Doctor. Major General. Hero of the American Revolution. Martyr who spilled his lifeblood fighting the British at Bunker Hill. And yet most of us have never heard of him.

Our guide on this journey is Christian Di Spigna, who brings us Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution's Lost Hero. Christian Di Spigna is a regular speaker and volunteer at Colonial Williamsburg, and an expert on the history of the era with a real passion for bringing the Revolution to life.

Visit him at FoundingMartyr.com or Martyr1776 on Twitter.

Since Dr. Warren stoked the flame of liberty in taverns, we also discussed my interview with Robert Norden at The '76 House in Tappan, New York. It's America's oldest restaurant, and a spot where all the major Continentals -- including George Washington -- spent time and took their meals.

It's also where the patriots held Benedict Arnold's British conspirator, Maj. John André, on the evening before his execution, as we discussed with Selene Castrovilla in her illustrated book, Revolutionary Rogues: John André and Benedict Arnold.

June 15, 2020 - Investigative journalist and attorney Gerald Posner shares the highpoints of the pharmaceutical industry's transformational successes, as well the moments they'd prefer to keep buried. We go along for the ride in his latest book, Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America. It's a page-turning journey to meet the scientists whose successes have improved the lives of every human being on earth, and the marketers who gave us infamous scourges like Thalidomide and the opioid crisis.

Yes, for every polio vaccine, there are those who lose sight of their noble mission to first do no harm, in the face of massive piles of corrupting cash and compliant congresses that are more lap dogs than watch dogs.

Gerald Posner is a distinguished attorney, Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, and an Honors Graduate of Hastings Law School. He's written definitive books on everything from the Nazi "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele, the Oklahoma City Bombing, 9/11, and Motown, to the JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinations. He previously appeared on the History Author Show to discuss his 2015 book, God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican.

We also welcomed Gerald's wife and research partner, Trisha, who shared the story behind her chilling biography, The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story.

Visit Posner.com for more on our guest, and follow him @GeraldPosner on Twitter, Facebook, and Posnergram on Instagram.

June 1, 2020 - Meet the commanders who led America to Victory in mankind's most terrible conflict before they had stars on their shoulders. Our guide on this journey is 82nd Airborne veteran and paratrooper Benjamin Runkle. He brings us Generals in the Making: How Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Their Peers Became the Commanders Who Won World War II.

It's the first comprehensive history of these men during the interwar years, when the already lean U.S. Armed Forces found themselves squeezed even further by the Great Depression and isolationist sentiment, all while facing

strains on marriages, bouts with the bottle, the deaths of wives or children, backwater postings, and stagnant chances for promotion.

In addition to his service, for which he earned a Bronze Star during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Benjamin Runkle has worked as a presidential speechwriter, Department of Defense official, director at the National Security Council, and professional staff member on the House Armed Services Committee. He is currently a senior policy fellow with Artis International and adjunct lecturer in Johns Hopkins University's Global Security Program. He holds a PhD from Harvard.

Check out Dr. Runkle's previous book, Wanted Dead or Alive: Manhunts from Geronimo to Bin Laden. You can find more of his work in major newspapers and periodicals, sharing his insights as America navigates the dangers of the 21st Century world. Also in this episode, we compared the wilderness years of generals like Ike, Patton, Douglas MacArthur, Matthew Ridgway, and Omar Bradley to Ulysses S. Grant's similar struggles between the Mexican and Civil Wars.

Offering up a question on those parallels was Donald L. Miller, who recently joined us to discuss his book, Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy.

May 18, 2020 - In an iconic, ad-libbed moment at the old Yankee Stadium, a terminally ill baseball player declared himself "the luckiest man on the face of the earth." A decade earlier, he'd sat down to write the remarkable story of his career in newspaper columns that remained buried for almost a century -- until now. In Lou Gehrig: The Lost Memoir, we meet Major League Baseball's most triumphant and tragic slugger as a young man with a great career in front of him.

He had no way of knowing that one day, that career would be cut short by ALS, or that the disease would one day bear his name. Alan D. Gaff brings us this treasure trove of writings that flesh out our picture of No. 4, the man they called the Iron Horse. Mr. Gaff is a veteran, best-selling author of books on the American Civil War, and president of Historical Investigations.

Visit our guest at AlanDGaff.com or @AlanDGaff on Twitter.

May 4, 2020 - What if a former U.S. congressman told you he had a secret about the most infamous presidential assassination, but died before revealing it? It's a turn-of-the-century whodunit, courtesy of historian David O. Stewart's novel, The Lincoln Deception (A Fraser and Cook Historical Mystery).

His Holmes and Watson team features the white Dr. Jamie Fraser, and African-American former baseball player, Speedwell Cook. We previously chatted about his non-fiction books, American Emperor – Aaron Burr: The Man Who Shot Alexander Hamilton, and Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America. Check out those interviews in our archives, visit our guest at DavidOStewart.com, and find him on Facebook.

You'll also enjoy his post-Civil War non-fiction exploration of the man who found himself president after Lincoln's murder: Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy. On that topic, he was recently featured in the documentary, Going to the Devil: The Impeachment of 1868, presented by The Great Courses at Hunter College. You can enjoy the Film Screening & Discussion on YouTube.

Look for the next books in the series -- The Paris Deception and The Babe Ruth Deception -- coming in the summer and autumn of 2020.

April 20, 2020 - In 1863, the Confederate States held a last stronghold on the Mississippi River: Vicksburg. Losing it, and the slavocracy would be sliced in half, mortally wounding their cause. Donald L. Miller musters us into the Grand Army of the Republic's campaign to capture this city on its high bluff in Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy.

Donald L. Miller is the John Henry MacCracken Professor of History at Lafayette College, and was awarded the prestigious Fletcher Pratt Prize for the outstanding book on the American Civil War in 2020. His previous books include City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America, as well as a book we discussed in one of our very first interviews, Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America.

April 6, 2020 - Pack your full-body swimsuit, everybody. We're headed for Coney Island in the summer of 1911, where we'll meet a young heiress, Peggy Batternberg. Peggy falls in love, dives into the seedy world where the other half lives, and stumbles upon the mystery of young women found murdered under the boardwalk.

Our time machine travels back to America's Playground, Coney Island, Brooklyn, with "writer, editor, and lover of words" Nancy Bilyeau, who brings us Dreamland. It's Nancy's fifth novel, following The Crown, The Blue, The Chalice, and The Tapestry. She also published a novella, The Ghost of Madison Avenue. Nancy's family tree traces back to a seed planted on Gotham's shores in 1665, when French Huguenot Pierre Billiou put down roots in what was then New Amsterdam.

Today, the stone house he built on Staten Island stands as the third oldest in New York State.

For more on our guest, visit NancyBilyeau.com, follow her on Twitter and Instagram @TudorScribe, or toss her like at Facebook.com/NancyBilyeauAuthor.

March 23, 2020 - Adolf Hitler ... had a need for speed. After all, it was the key feature in blitzkrieg, lightning war. So the Nazis poured resources into developing the fastest engines, sleekest race cars, and best drivers. Who dared stand against them? We'll meet the Jewish driver who took on these would-be Aryan supermen in Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler’s Best.

For this journey, we welcome a familiar face back into our time machine: Neil Bascomb. We previously caught up back in Norway with The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb -- and -- The Escape Artists: A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War.

Visit NealBascomb.com, follow @NealBascomb on Twitter, or like Facebook.com/NealRBascomb.