Off the Deaton Path

What does it mean to be an American? Historian Daniel J. Boorstin, Librarian of Congress and one of the most important public intellectuals of the 20th century, spent a lifetime pondering that question. Stan’s guest this week is Boorstin’s son Jon Boorstin, a novelist and Oscar-nominated filmmaker, who discusses his new book, The American: The Hidden History of Daniel J. Boorstin and His Twentieth Century (University of Georgia Press). Jon tells the biographical story his father never told, going back to his grandfather Sam Boorstin, the youngest lawyer in Georgia’s history. After his good friend and fellow Atlantan Leo Frank was lynched in a notorious antisemitic incident, Sam moved his family to boomtown Tulsa, where Daniel was raised in the shadow of the infamous Tulsa Massacre of 1921. Jon also explores his father’s enduring friendship with the distinguished Black historian and fellow Tulsan John Hope Franklin, both unwavering proponents of the American Dream in the face of extraordinary prejudice.

Stan’s guest this week is author and historian Keri Leigh Merritt, discussing her new book, An Inconvenient Woman: The Extraordinary Life of Lillian Smith, the Southerner Who Defied Jim Crow America (St. Martin’s Press, 2026). Smith, born in 1897, was a white Southern woman living in the Jim Crow South who defied all stereotypes: she passionately championed racial equality and integration while living openly with her partner, Paula, at their home on Old Screamer Mountain in Clayton, Georgia. Best known as the author of Strange Fruit (1944) and Killers of the Dream (1949), she continued to fight for both civil and human rights—all while receiving death threats—until her death in 1966.

Stan’s guest this week is historian Craig Fehrman, author of This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark (Avid Reader Press, 2026), an exciting new history of the Corps of Discovery. Thirty years after Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage, Fehrman offers a fresh and more accurate account of one of the most important episodes in American history, humanizing forgotten figures and shattering long-held myths.

Stan welcomes back to the podcast historian David Henkin of the University of California, Berkeley, to talk about his latest book, Out of the Ballpark: How to Think About Baseball (Oxford University Press, 2026). Henkin strips away the mythology that has accumulated around baseball in the United States and rejects the notion that understanding the game requires focusing solely on what happens on the diamond, choosing instead to explore the game’s history, it’s obsession with rulebooks and statistics, the game’s “clubs” and “leagues,” mass media, and the international appeal of this wonderful and enduring pastime.

Stan’s guest this week is distinguished historian Peter Mancall of the University of Southern California, author of Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c.1000 – 1680, the new and first volume in the renowned Oxford History of the United States series. Contested Continent recounts the origins of “America” and how it came to birth the United States, from the Viking expeditions to the end of the 17th century. The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. Mancall recounts how North America was forged from the experiences of millions of Indigenous, European, and African women and men, from the Arctic to the West Indies.

Stan’s guests this week are three members of the Whitfield Remembrance Project, a community remembrance initiative in Dalton, Georgia, inspired by the Equal Justice Initiative. Their mission is to honor victims of racial injustice in Whitfield County, beginning with efforts to memorialize the last known lynching in Whitfield. Their current project focuses on honoring Juliette Derricotte, a gifted speaker, educator, and peacemaker who died in 1931 after a car accident near Dalton, when segregation prevented her from being taken to a whites-only hospital.

As part of GHS’s ongoing commemoration of the US250, Stan’s guest this week is acclaimed historian H.W. Brands, talking about his new book, American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington (Doubleday, 2026). The biographer of American luminaries Ben Franklin, Andrew Jackson, U.S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, and Reagan, turns his attention to Washington, from his early military career in the French and Indian War and his rise among the Virginia gentry, to his leadership during the American Revolution and the Constitutional Convention, to his reluctant return to public service as the first president of the United States.

As part of GHS’s ongoing US250 commemoration—and just in time for July 4—Stan’s guest is author and historian Michael Auslin, talking about his new book, National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 2026), the inspiring story of the Declaration from the Philadelphia boardinghouse where Jefferson drafted it to its removal from Washington in 1814 to its evacuation to Fort Knox during World War II, its ink fading until it was painstakingly preserved and enshrined. Through it all, Jefferson’s words have inspired immigrants to become American and fueled a multitude of causes, from abolitionists to suffragists and Civil Rights leaders to groups waging war on the US government. As Jefferson hoped, the Declaration became a beacon to the world. But what lessons should we take from the Declaration today?

As part of GHS’s ongoing US250 commemoration, Stan and GHS President & CEO Todd Groce discuss Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s historical classic, The Imperial Presidency, first published in 1973. Writing In the shadow of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, Schlesinger ominously argued that the presidency had become uncontrollable, king-like, and unaccountable to Congress or the people, exceeding its Constitutional authority in war-making and foreign policy, governing instead through executive orders and secrecy, ultimately threatening American democracy.

Stan’s guest this week is historian John Garrison Marks, discussing his new book, Thy Will Be Done: George Washington’s Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory (University of North Carolina Press, 2026), which tells the story of Americans’ long struggle to come to terms with Washington’s legacy of slavery. He traces how politicians, abolitionists, educators, activists, Washington’s former slaves and their descendants, and others have remembered, forgotten, and manipulated slavery’s place in Washington’s story, and how they have wielded versions of that story in the political and cultural fights of their time. Marks shows how generational struggles over our collective memory of Washington and slavery have always been part of a bigger conversation about defining the United States and its people.