History Author Show

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.

March 9, 2020 - Jerry Mitchell joins us with Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era.  In addition to what we today know as the Mississippi Burning case, this unique memoir covers our guest's efforts in the assassination of Medgar Evers, the 16th Street Church bombing, and the firebombing of Vernon Dahmer.

By refusing to ignore pleas for justice when everyone else had given up hope, Mitchell's dedication that ultimately landed four members of the KKK in prison for the rest of their lives.

Jerry Mitchell has been a reporter in Mississippi since 1986, earning over 30 national awards and founding the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit that carries on his work of exposing injustices and raising up a new generation of investigative reporters. Follow him @JMitchellNews on Twitter.

February 24, 2020 - What if the Revolution sparked in 1776 had collapsed? In this episode, our time machine travels back to the last days of the American Revolution, to track down rumors of an unthinkable plot by the Continental Army to mutiny over lack of pay. Only George Washington stood against the passions of men that may have included such patriots Alexander Hamilton and James Madison?

Infiltrating the plot against the government to see just how far it goes is Professor David Head, who brings us A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution. Professor Head is a history professor at the University of Central Florida whose work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and George Washington's Mt. Vernon.

Visit him online at DavidHeadHistory.com, on Facebook at David Head History, or @DavidHeadPhD on Twitter.

Featured in The New York Sun - Biden’s Tumble at Air Force Ceremony Stands Out in Long List of History’s Presidential Pratfalls - Dean Karayanis

February 10, 2020 - Recorded live at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, our time machine travels back to the end of the Great War and the dawn of Prohibition. Jazz Age America picks a president, with flappers in all 48 states casting ballots for the first time as a half dozen once and future presidents compete for victory.

They are: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge and the eventual winner, Ohio's Warren G. Harding.

Returning to share his historical wisdom is David Pietrusza, who brings us, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents. We last chatted with the award-winning historian about his books TR's Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy, and, 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 1932, 1948, and 1960.  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.

Featured in The New York Sun - Gorbachev, Reagan, and ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ - Dean Karayanis

January 27, 2020 - Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fred Kaplan drops in on the key flashpoints of the Nuclear Age, from Harry S Truman first getting word that the Manhattan Project had birthed its radioactive fruit, to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Reagan's peace offerings to Gorbachev, to modern fears of rogue nations and terrorists gaining access to the ultimate firecrackers.

Fred Kaplan is the national-security point man for Slate, and is the author of five previous books including Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, and the Pulitzer finalist The Plot to Change the American Way of War.

January 13, 2020 - Our time machine travels back to the Civil Rights era, to meet a man who fought the racial discrimination of his day on the basketball court, while using his platform to support those battling in courts of law. In the process, he was the first man ever described as a "superstar."

We enjoy this 6' 5"pioneer's story in Elgin Baylor: The Man Who Changed Basketball. Giving us play by play courtside for the man who invented hangtime is award-winning cultural critic and sportswriter, Bijan C. Bayne. Bayne is a member of United States Basketball Writers Association, a founding member of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, and an executive board member and media relations director for the Association for Professional Basketball Research.

You can find our guest at Twitter @BijanCBayne and his blog at BijanC.WordPress.com. You can also enjoy our previous chat about Martha's Vineyard Basketball: How a Resort League Defied Notions of Race and Class.

December 16, 2019 - Our time machine travels back to the death throes of the Confederate States of America with New York Times best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist S.C. Gwynne who brings us Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War.

Click here for an excerpt -- "Chapter One: The End of Begins."

You can also enjoy our History in Five Friday segment on our guest's previous book, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson, or pick up Empire of the Summer Moon, the 2011 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in General Nonfiction that recounts the rise and fall of the Comanche. Learn more about our guest by visiting him at SCGwynne.com or @SCGwynne on Twitter.

Sam Gwynne previously joined me in the fall of 2016, when we played four quarters with  a gridiron revolutionary in The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football. Find that interview in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com, iHeartRadio, iTunes, or wherever you listen to on-demand audio.