Reckoning with Jason Herbert

This week  Brian DeLay drops in to share a milkshake about There Will Be Blood and the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis. We explore the complexity of the protagonist, Daniel Plainview, and his lack of change throughout the film as well as the historical context of oil barons and the era of titans in American history. The conversation delves into the relationship between Plainview and capitalism, highlighting his refusal to let the big guys win, even at the cost of his own success.  The conversation touches on the violent ending, the absence of Native peoples in the narrative, and Brian DeLay's work on the West including the differences between writing for trade presses and academic presses. Brian is a titan in the field so I hope you enjoy this conversation

About our guest:
Brian DeLay is a scholar of 18th- and 19th-century North America, specializing in transnational, borderlands, and Native American histories. Most of his writing explores connections between U.S., Latin American, and Indigenous histories in order to better understand power and inequality in the Western Hemisphere.

His first book, War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War
recovers the forgotten, transnational story of how Comanches, Kiowas, Apaches, Navajos and other Indigenous peoples shaped the transformative era of the U.S.-Mexican War. He is now working on three interconnected projects about the history of the international arms trade. The first is a book called Aim at Empire: American Revolutions through the Barrel of a Gun, 1750-1825. The book explains how the international arms trade made anticolonial rebellion a practical possibility in British North America; how arms dealers from the newly-independent United States equipped the Haitian Revolution and the Spanish American Wars for Independence; and how privileged control over war material empowered U.S. empire in the trans-Appalachian West. Aim at Empire will be published by W.W. Norton in 2024. The second project is another book under contract with W.W. Norton: Means of Destruction: Guns, Freedom, and Domination in the Americas before World War II. 

This week marks a first in HATM Podcast history as Dr. Sarah Myers takes control, joined by mainstays Luke Truxal and Colin Colbourn. This week we e focus on ground crews and the tension of waiting for missions. The conversation then delves into the significance of the number of missions and the experiences of aircrews reaching their 25th mission. The gang also explores the portrayal of resistance movements and the complexities of their actions. Finally, they discuss the role of the Red Cross and USO in providing support and entertainment to the troops. This episode delves into the experiences of women serving with the USO and Red Cross, highlighting the complexities of romantic and sexual relations during wartime. The impact of Buck's death and the reactions of the characters are explored, shedding light on the psychological toll of losing a leader and friend. The role of pets in boosting morale is also touched upon, showcasing the importance of companionship during challenging times. Additionally, the episode raises questions about the deterioration of Chick Harding as a commander and the challenges faced by ground crews in maintaining aircraft and morale.

Hope you dig it.

This week @ColinColbourn buckles in to talk about Formula 1 racing, the Mille Miglia, how Ferrari recovered from WWII, and Colin’s work to find and repatriate American missing in action with Project Recover. 

About our guest:
Colin Colbourn, Ph.D., is Project Recover’s Lead Historian and a Postdoctoral Researcher with the University of Delaware. Since 2016, he has managed historical operations including archival research, data management, case analysis, and field investigations. Through these efforts, Project Recover has developed a massive internal archive comprised of thousands of historical reports, maps, and images. 

As a Postdoctoral Researcher, Colin Colbourn works closely with Mark Moline, Ph.D., co-founder of Project Recover. In this capacity, he develops MIA cases with the team of oceanographers and AUV/ROV experts at the University of Delaware. It is a collaboration that, like Project Recover, relies on mutli-disciplinary expertise to approach the MIA mission from different angles.

That...was intense. Sarah Myers and Luke Truxal are back for Episode 3 in what could be called A Very Bad Day over Germany. We'll set the tone of the episode, give you the backstory, then get into the nitty gritty with a detailed analysis of what we saw and what we didn't in Episode 3. We talk about the challenges of flying, such as the concept of 'max effort' and the impact of cloud cover. We also highlight the bloody and chaotic nature of the battle, as well as the difficult choices faced by the pilots and commanders involved. The Luftwaffe's situation in 1943 is discussed, highlighting the heavy losses they are facing. The decision of pilots and crews to abandon their planes and parachute out is explored, along with the various outcomes they may face. The condition of the planes after the raid is a concern, with some being damaged beyond repair. We finish by talking about how dark the series is about to get.

If you're like me, Carl Weathers was everywhere in your life from the late 70s until today, when we learned of his passing. I asked two friends, Craig Bruce Smith and Robert Greene II, to join in and talk about what he meant to Generation X and the Millenials, his role as THE Black action star of the 1980s, and how he changed his performances over time to new audiences. We refuse to be sad today because Carl Weathers was amazing. We hope you enjoy.

About our guests:
Craig Bruce Smith is an associate professor of history at National Defense University in the Joint Advanced Warfighting School (JAWS) in Norfolk, VA. He authored American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era and co-authored George Washington’s Lessons in Ethical Leadership.

Robert Greene II Robert Greene II is an assistant professor of history at Claflin University and publications chair for the Society of US Intellectual Historians and lead associate editor for Black Perspectives.

This week we wanted to do something special. We talking about Edward Zwick's Civil War masterpiece, Glory, starring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes, Morgan Freeman, and a host of other amazing performers. We talk about how the role of slavery in antebellum America, the specific experiences and dangers of the 54th Massachusetts, Glory compares to other films about the war, and why these conversations still matter today. This is easily the most important conversation we've had and I hope you like it.

About our guests:
Hilary Green is James B. Duke Professor of Africana Studies at Davidson College. Her first book, Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (Fordham University Press, 2016), explored how African Americans and their white allies created, developed, and sustained a system of African American education schools during the transition from slavery to freedom in Richmond, Virginia and Mobile, Alabama. Her in-progress second book focuses on how African Americans remembered and commemorated the American Civil War and its legacy.

Chris Barr is a Park Ranger at Reconstruction Era National Park in Becufort, South Carolina, where he has spent a career in the National Park Service teaching about the Civil War, Reconstruction and their legacies.

Holly Pinheiro is an Assistant Professor of African American History in the Department of History at Furman University. His research focuses on the intersectionality of race, gender, and class in the military from 1850 through the 1930s. Counter to the national narrative which championed the patriotic manhood of soldiering from the Civil War through the 1930s, his research reveals that African American veterans and their families’ military experience were much more fraught. Economic and social instability introduced by military service resonated for years and even generations after soldiers left the battlefield. He has published articles in edited volumes and academic journals, in and outside of the United States. My manuscript, The Families’ Civil War, is under contract with The University of Georgia Press in the UnCivil Wars Series. The study highlights how racism, within and outside of military service, impacted the bodies, economies, family structures, and social spaces of African Americans long after the war ended.

Adam Domby is a historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction. His first book, The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory (University of Virginia Press, 2020), examines the role of lies and exaggeration, in the creation of Lost Cause narratives of the war, as well as their connections to white supremacy. Looking at pension fraud, Confederate monument dedications, and other myths reveals that much of our understanding of the Civil War remains influenced by falsehoods and racism. Domby has written on a variety of topics including prisoners of war, guerrilla warfare, and genealogy. His current book project At War with Itself, focuses on southerners fighting their neighbors during the American Civil War and examines the legacy of those local fights that civil wars inevitably create. His research centers on the role these conflicts played in three divided southern communities during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Close examination of the social dynamics of these southern communities reveals new insights into why the Confederacy lost, why Reconstruction ended the way it did, and the distinctiveness of southern society, culture, and politics.

It's here! After years in development, we finally have Masters of the Air as a follow-up to Band of Brothers and the Pacific. Guests Dr. Sarah Myers and Dr. Luke Truxal join in to talk about the first two episodes, where the United States is in 1943, our first impressions, how what we see onscreen compares to historical reality, and where we think the show is going. This episode starts with a spoiler-free introduction and then moves into a recap with spoilers. We note this in the episode so you can stop if you haven't seen the episode yet. This series has a lot of promise, and we are excited to bring it to you.

About our guests:
Dr. Sarah Myers is a historian of public history, gender history, and war and society. As a public historian, she has conducted numerous oral history interviews for her own research on female pilots in World War II and with Pennsylvanian veterans of various wars and conflicts. In her previous role as director of The Keirn Family World War II Museum, a museum she created and opened, she hosted living history events and museum exhibition openings. She has also conducted interviews with documentaries and local and national media outlets on women in aviation, the U.S. military, and the anniversary of historic events. She recently received a National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) grant to generate dialogue with female veterans at five institutions around the U.S. You can find her new book here: https://a.co/d/hbdy3uV

Dr. Luke Truxal is an American military historian who focuses on the application of American air power during the Second World War. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Texas in 2011 and 2018.  His teaching fields include Europe in the twentieth century, United States history, United States military history, and United States political history in the twentieth century. Truxal’s main research interest is the air war in Europe from 1942 to 1945. He is the author of the forthcoming book Uniting against the Reich: The American Air War in Europe, which comes out in fall 2023. He is also an assistant editor for the scholarly web journal Balloons to Drones. He previously published “Bombing the Romanian Rail Network,” in the Spring 2018 issue of Air Power History.  He is currently researching the air war over Romania from 1942 to 1944 with a particular emphasis on American and Soviet coordination and joint operations.

This week Sarah Keyes and Josh Garrett-Davis drop in to talk about settlers, Native Americans, the Overland Trail, and yes, dysentery via Taylor Sheridan's 1883. We also talk about the West on film, how the West has been portrayed in movies, books, tv, and video games, as well as question why the West is in a pop culture revival in current moment. This is a really fun conversation. Hope you dig it.

About our guests:
Sarah Keyes is a historian of the United States. She specializes in the 19th century and the history of the U.S. West with a focus on the environment and intercultural interactions between Indigenous peoples and Euro-Americans. Her current work explores these topics along the overland trails to Oregon and California in the mid-19th century. Her first book, American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in October 2023. Keyes has also begun work on her second project, a regional and transnational study of suffrage in the U.S. West, for which she was recently awarded a Mellon-Schlesinger Summer Research Grant from the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University.

Josh Garrett-Davis is a writer, historian, and curator. His work focuses on the American West, Indigenous histories, and art/media history. He is the author of two books: What Is a Western? Region, Genre, Imagination (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019), which won the Outstanding Western Book award from the Center for the Study of the American West; and Ghost Dances: Proving Up on the Great Plains (Little, Brown, 2012), a personal geography of his home region. His article “The Intertribal Drum of Radio: The Indians for Indians Hour and Native American Media, 1941–1951” appeared in Western Historical Quarterly in 2018 and won the Oscar O. Winther Award. He has written for numerous other publications.

This week George Dehner drops in to talk about 12 Monkeys (1995) and the history of epidemic diseases. We talk not only about the possibilities of a dystopian world caused by global contagion, but about how the fields of both environmental history and disease history evolved in the latter half of the 20th century. George is one of my former professors and it was awesome to sit down and talk to him. This is a cool conversation with one of the most influential scholars in my life. Hope you like it.

About our guest:
George Dehner is a world environmental historian who examines the intersection of humans and disease in the modern era. His first book Influenza: A Century of Science and Public Health was published in April 2012 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. His second book Global Flu and You: A History of Influenza was published in December 2012 by Reaktion Press. His article “WHO Knows Best? National and International Responses to Pandemic Threats and the ‘Lessons’ of 1976” published in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences received the 2011 Margaret T. Lane/Virginia F. Saunders Memorial Research Award by the American Library Association Government Documents Roundtable. He is currently beginning a research project on Legionnaires’ Disease.

This week environmental historian Sara Dant drops in to talk about a new history of the West, wolf reintroduction in Colorado, public land management, and Seth MacFarlane's homage to classic western films. This is a fun conversation about a silly movie that actually has a lot to say. I hope you like it.

About our guest:
Sara Dant is Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor and Chair of History at Weber State University whose work focuses on environmental politics in the United States with a particular emphasis on the creation and development of consensus and bipartisanism. Dr. Dant’s latest book is a new, completely revised and updated edition of Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West (2023, University of Nebraska Press) with a foreword by Tom S. Udall. Dr. Dant is also an advisor and interviewee for Ken Burns' The American Buffalo documentary film (October 2023), the author of several prize-winning articles on western environmental politics, a precedent-setting Expert Witness Report and Testimony on Stream Navigability upheld by the Utah Supreme Court (2017), co-author of the two-volume Encyclopedia of American National Parks (2004) with Hal Rothman, and she has written chapters for three books on Utah: “Selling and Saving Utah, 1945-Present” in Utah History (forthcoming), “The ‘Lion of the Lord’ and the Land: Brigham Young's Environmental Ethic,” in The Earth Will Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays in Mormon Environmental History, ed. by Jedidiah Rogers and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2019), 29-46, and “Going with the Flow: Navigating to Stream Access Consensus,” in Desert Water: The Future of Utah’s Water Resources (2014). Dr. Dant was the 2019-2020 John S. Hinckley Fellow at Weber State for excellence in scholarship, teaching, and service and was recognized as a Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor in 2020. She serves on PhD dissertation committees, regularly presents at scholarly conferences, works on cutting-edge conservation programs, and gives numerous public presentations. Dr. Dant teaches lower-division courses in American history and upper-division courses on the American West and US environmental history, as well as historical methods and the senior seminar.