History Author Show

Sep 7, 2020 - On September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda sought to break the American union, aiming at what they saw as fatal flaws in our democratic system. Two decades later, the man who was governor of the Empire State on that day of infamy dares to ask, "Did the terrorists win?" In this episode, the 53rd governor of New York, George E. Pataki, joins us to discuss Beyond the Great Divide: How a Nation Became a Neighborhood, co-authored with former congressman Trey Radel of Florida.

Governor Pataki spent twelve years at the helm of the Empire State and delivered the lone remarks at Ground Zero on the one-year commemoration of the attacks, choosing to recite the Gettysburg Address. He discusses how 2020 America, like Lincoln's, faces domestic divisions that would've seemed impossible as the rubble of the Twin Towers smoldered.

Then as now we find ourselves asking: Can this nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to equality, long endure? This former presidential candidate, state legislator, mayor of Peekskill, and three-term Republican governor of a deep-blue state, shares optimistic solutions for reuniting that wartime neighborhood in an era of domestic division and partisan strife that we all have a civic duty to combat.

You can learn more about binding up the nation's wounds at GeorgePatakiCenter.com or @GovernorPataki on Twitter.

Aug 24, 2020 - What if your grandparents had narrowly escaped a genocide that left one million people dead, just because they shared your faith and ethnic background? That's part of the Karayanis family story, in the mass murder of Greeks by Ottoman Turkey that followed the Great War.

Our guide back to the 20th Century's first genocide, is Greek-Australian Aris Tsifidis, who brings us The Genocide of the Greeks in Turkey: Survivor Testimonies from The Nicomedia (Massacres of 1920-1921). It's the first English translation of journalist Kostas Faltaits work, published in 1921 under the title, These are the Turks: Survivor Testimonies from the Nicomedia Massacre.

Aris administers the Greek Genocide Resource Center, an online portal containing bibliography, photos, testimonies and other documentation of the mass slaughter that left up to 1.5 million people dead, and forced over a million others out of the homeland where they'd lived for centuries. Connect on Twitter @Greek_Genocide and on Facebook at TheGreekGenocide and IzmitMassacres pages.

August 10, 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.

 

August 10, 2020 - Lizzie Borden has been testified against by generations of children in a nursery rhyme, and continually convicted in the court of public opinion. But did she swing the axe that whacked her parents, or didn't she? We dig into the 1893 murder trial with first-time author Cara Robertson. She brings us The Trial of Lizzie Borden: A True Story.

Based on transcripts of the proceedings, newspaper accounts, unpublished recollections of citizens in Fall River, Massachusetts -- and recently unearthed letters from Lizzie -- the book brings us inside a case that shook the deeply held convictions, assumptions and social anxieties of the 19th Century's twilight.

Cara Robertson began researching the Borden case as an undergraduate at Harvard and continued while earning an Oxford PhD and JD from Stanford Law School. She clerked at the Supreme Court of the United States for two justices and served as a legal adviser to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague.

Learn more about the book and cast your verdict -- guilty or not guilty -- at TrialofLizzieBorden.com.

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.