History Does You

In the long history of American demagogues, from Huey Long to Donald Trump, never has one man caused so much damage in such a short time as Senator Joseph McCarthy. We still use “McCarthyism” to stand for outrageous charges of guilt by association, a weapon of polarizing slander. From 1950 to 1954, McCarthy destroyed many careers and even entire lives, whipping the nation into a frenzy of paranoia, accusation, loyalty oaths, and terror. When the public finally turned on him, he came crashing down, dying of alcoholism in 1957. To help explain his complicated life we interview Larry Tye who is a New York Times bestselling author who has written numerous books including Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon, Rising from the Rails, and recently wrote DEMAGOGUE: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Previously, he was an award-winning reporter at The Boston Globe, where his primary beat was medicine. He also served as the Globe’s environmental reporter, roving national writer, investigative reporter, and sportswriter. Before that, he was the environmental reporter at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, and covered government and business at The Anniston Star in Alabama.

Nuclear Weapons are the most destructive invention ever created in human society but they only have been used twice in armed conflict. The global threat of these weapons has only deepened in the following decades as more advanced weapons, aggressive strategies, and new nuclear powers emerged. We explore how the Cold War initially shaped the policies regarding Nuclear Weapons as well as the Nuclear era after the Cold War. To help explain we interview Dr. Francis Gavin who is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. In 2013, he was appointed the first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies and Professor of Political Science at MIT. Before joining MIT, he was the Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs and the Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas. He has written numerous books including Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age and Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy.

As the United States steadily expanded west acquiring new territory by buying it and war, the overarching question regarding slavery in these territories sowed the seeds of the civil war. When the south seceded and war broke out, fighting was not limited to the Eastern and Western theatres, but even in the territories of present day Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Native American tribes that had been steadily pushed westward tried to navigate the messy politics of North and South in order to preserve their lands. To help explain this complicated theatre of the war, we interview Dr. Megan Kate Nelson, she received her BA in History and Literature from Harvard University and her PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa. She has taught U.S. history and American Studies at Texas Tech University, Cal State Fullerton, Harvard, and Brown before leaving academia to write full-time in 2014. She has written several articles and books including The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West and is currently writing This Strange Country: Yellowstone and the Reconstruction of America which will be published in 2022. 

As Rome headed into the 1st Century BC, its power continued to expand, they had destroyed its rival in the Mediterranean, the Carthaginian Empire and various Greek Warlords who attempted to keep their independence. But with tremendous success came costs as a series of civil wars and unrest transformed the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. But Rome had a well functioning representative democracy for centuries, so how did it all come to an end? To help explain we interview Dr. Edward Watts; he is a professor of History at UC San Diego focusing on the intellectual and religious history of the Roman Empire and the early Byzantine Empire. He has written several books including City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, Riot in Alexandria: Historical Debate in Pagan and Christian Communities which was a 2010 PROSE Award Honorable Mention. He also wrote The Final Pagan Generation which was awarded the 2015 Phi Alpha Theta Best Subsequent Book Prize and Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny. We also explore how the Roman government function and how Roman society was transformed as a result of this transition. 

In October of 1962, US spy planes discovered evidence of Soviet Missiles on the Island of Cuba. What came next was a thirteen days of confusion, backchannel diplomacy, and the threat of Nuclear War. But to understand the leadup to the crisis, one must look back at the making of the Atomic Bombs and the decision to use them against Nagasaki and Hiroshima which brought World War II to an end. It set the Soviet Union and the United States on a collision course over who could use the weapon most effectively. To help explain the crisis and the policies that led to it, we interview Dr. Martin Sherwin who is an author and historian specializing in the development of atomic weapons and nuclear policy. Along with Kai Bird, he co-wrote American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2006. In addition, Sherwin has advised a number of documentaries and television series relating to the Manhattan Project, including The Day after Trinity: A History of Nuclear Strategy, and War and Peace in the Nuclear Age. He also recently wrote, Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis

By 1914 the great powers of Europe were sliding inexorably toward war, and they pulled the Middle East along with them into one of the most destructive conflicts in human history. No region experienced more change as a result of the war than the Middle East. The Ottoman empire ceased to exist after dominating the region for more than four centuries and borders were redrawn piecemeal by the victorious allies. This set the stage for the modern Middle East and all of the conflict that will follow, much of which continues to this day. To help explain we interview Dr. Eugen Rogan who is a Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Oxford and a Fellow of St Antony's College. He is the author of several books on the Middle East including The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, which was An International Bestseller and Economist Best Book of the Year. His other work includes The Arabs: A History and Outside In: On the Margins of the Modern Middle East

The Battle of Manila was fought by forces from both the United States and the Philippines against Japanese troops in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines. The month-long battle, which resulted in the death of over 100,000 civilians and the complete devastation of the city, was the scene of the worst urban fighting in the Pacific Theater. Japanese forces committed mass murderer against Filipino civilians during the battle. Along with massive loss of life, the battle also destroyed architectural and cultural heritage dating back to the city's founding, and Manila became one of the most devastated capital cities during the entire war. To explain we interview James Scott, a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, is the author of Rampage, which was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by the editors at Amazon, Kirkus and Military Times and was chosen as a finalist for the prestigious Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History by the New York Historical Society. His other works include Target Tokyo, a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist in history, he also write the The War Below and The Attack on the Liberty, which won the Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award.