Dr. Douglas R. Egerton is an expert on American history and a professor of history at Le Moyne College. A prolific historian, his latest book is called, Heirs of an Honored Name: The Decline of the Adams Family and the Rise of Modern America (Basic 2019). His books include Thunder At the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America (2016), The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America's Most Progressive Era (2014), Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War (2010) and Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America (2009). His first book, Charles Fenton Mercer and the Trial of National Conservatism (1989), examined the career of the founder of the American Colonization Society, a group of conservative white antislavery politicians who wished to send freed slaves to Liberia. His other books, Gabriel's Rebellion (1993), He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey (1999), and Rebels, Reformers and Revolutionaries (2002) explore slave rebelliousness.Egerton has also written numerous essays and reviews regarding race in early America; some of the latter have appeared in the Sunday Boston Globe and The Nation.  He has appeared on the PBS series "The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross" (2013), "Africans in America" (1998) and "This Far by Faith" (2002). During the 2011-­12 academic year, he held the Mary Ball Washington Chair (Fulbright) at the University College Dublin. In spring 2015, he was the Merrill Family Visiting Professor of History at Cornell University. In 2017, he won the Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize for Thunder at the Gates (2016).

Read the Book:

From the Publisher: An enthralling chronicle of the American nineteenth century told through the unraveling of the nation’s first political dynasty

John and Abigail Adams founded a famous political family, but they would not witness its calamitous fall from grace. When John Quincy Adams died in 1848, so began the slow decline of the family’s political legacy.

In Heirs of an Honored Name, award-winning historian Douglas R. Egerton depicts a family grown famous, wealthy — and aimless. After the Civil War, Republicans looked to the Adamses to steer their party back to its radical 1850s roots. Instead, Charles Francis Sr. and his children — Charles Francis Jr., John Quincy II, Henry and Clover Adams, and Louisa Adams Kuhn — largely quit the political arena and found refuge in an imagined past of aristocratic preeminence.

An absorbing story of brilliant siblings and family strain, Heirs of an Honored Name shows how the burden of impossible expectations shaped the Adamses and, through them, American history.

Some highlights:

Biographical approach to history

Reading the letters of an "unsolved family"

Modern Political Dynasties

American history as seen through one important family

Charles Francis Adams

Thunder at the Gates

Family Values of the Adams

The importance of going abroad

Class tensions and interaction from the top

"Clover" Adams and her photography

Reception of the book release

Modern parallels to the Adams

Suggestions:

Douglas:

The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality

 

Steven: Talk to your family, what is your history?

Cover image: From A Cycle of Adams Letters (Charles Francis and Henry Adams Pictured)

Dr. Hope Harrison is an expert on the Berlin Wall, East and West Germany, united Germany, international history of the Cold War and the author of the new book, After the Berlin Wall: Memory and the Making of the New Germany, 1989 to the Present (Cambridge 2019). She is currently Associate Professor of History and International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. Dr. Harrison is the recipient of fellowships from Fulbright, the Wilson Center, and the American Academy in Berlin, she is the author of Driving the Soviet up the Wall (2003), which was awarded the 2004 Marshall Shulman Book Prize by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and was also published to wide acclaim in German translation. She has served on the National Security Council staff, currently serves on the board of three institutions in Berlin connected to the Cold War and the Berlin Wall, and has appeared on CNN, the History Channel, the BBC, and Deutschlandradio. You can follow her on Twitter here.

Read the Book:

After the Berlin Wall: Memory and the Making of the New Germany, 1989 to the Present

Description from Cambridge University Press: "The history and meaning of the Berlin Wall remain controversial, even three decades after its fall. Drawing on an extensive range of archival sources and interviews, this book profiles key memory activists who have fought to commemorate the history of the Berlin Wall and examines their role in the creation of a new German national narrative. With victims, perpetrators and heroes, the Berlin Wall has joined the Holocaust as an essential part of German collective memory. Key Wall anniversaries have become signposts marking German views of the past, its relevance to the present, and the complicated project of defining German national identity. Considering multiple German approaches to remembering the Wall via memorials, trials, public ceremonies, films, and music, this revelatory work also traces how global memory of the Wall has impacted German memory policy. It depicts the power and fragility of state-backed memory projects, and the potential of such projects to reconcile or divide."

Some Highlights:

Approaches to the fall of the Berlin Wall

Fight over memory at Bernauer Strasse

Who tells the story?

Doing more than 100 interviews on the Berlin Wall

Buying segments of the Berlin Wall

Checkpoint Charlie

Master plan from the Berlin Senate

Harald Jaeger - the man who opened the Wall

Peaceful response in 1989

Polish and Hungarian contributions to the fall of the Wall

Pastor Manfred Fischer - "Pastor of the Berlin Wall"

Beethoven and the Concerts of Berlin

The death of Michael Schmidt

Additional Content:

German national Berlin Wall Memorial website

The key part of the live international press conference in East Berlin on November 9, 1989, where Guenter Schabowski mistakenly announced the Berlin Wall was open.

Dr. Harrison on Voice of America discussing the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Wall

Dr. Harrison discussing the Wall on the Wilson Center's Youtube channel

The Wilson Quarterly - excellent photos combined with Dr. Harrison's work 

"Who got to decide what history gets told here?"

"Berlin needed to heal from its terrible past"

Remembering Michael Schmidt

Suggestions:

Dr. L. Benjamin Rolsky is an expert on American Religion and the author of the new book, The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left (Columbia 2019). Dr. Rolsky received his PhD in American Religious Studies from Drew University. He is currently an adjunct instructor at Monmouth University in History and Anthropology and a part-time lecturer at Rutgers University- New Brunswick in Religion. You can read more at his website here. You can follow him on twitter here.

Read Benji's Book:

Some Highlights:

TV Producer Norman Lear

People for the American Way

Mister Rogers

History trying to be relevant

All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons

Op-eds and the abuse of writing

Defining Christian Right and Christian Left

The Moral Majority

South Park, The Office, and modern television

Adjuncting and contingent labor (NB: Check out HoH Ep 72 w/ Herb Childress)

Elizabeth Warren, Mayor Pete, and the 2020 Presidential Election

Works mentioned in the episode:

 

Suggestions:

Benji: Watch more TV!

Steven: A Very Broad History of Werewolves and Other Things - A Podcast by Travis Roy

https://youtu.be/AdltjllCCM4

Dr. Mimasha Pandit is the author of the new book, Performing Nationhood: The Emotional Roots of Swadeshi Nationhood in Bengal, 1905-12 (Oxford, 2019). She was awarded PhD degree from the University of Calcutta and is currently an Assistant Professor in the History Department of Mankar College, Mankar, Burdwan. Dr. Pandit has written widely on the Swadeshi movement in Bengal. You can read previously published articles about Swadeshi Circus (The Inclusive), Placards and Handbills in the Swadeshi Age (Indian History Congress), Performing History (Social Scientist).

 

 

 

Read the Book:

Performing Nationhood: The Emotional Roots of Swadeshi Nationhood in Bengal, 1905-12 (Oxford, 2019)

Some Highlights:

Background to the idea of nation-building

The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903-1908, by Sumit Sarkar

Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities

How performative spaces led to the growth of nationalism in Bengal

From 1857 to 1905 - important moments in the history of India

The British Raj

Sources for reconstructing songs, theatre, and jatra in Bengal

Rural and Urban nationalist growth

Swadeshi Jatra Performances

The "Glass Wall" in performance

Building a national "Self"

Siraj ud-Daulah in theater

Priyanath Bose and the Great Bengal Circus

Dramatic Performances Act and British Censorship

The Storehouse of Collective Memory

Communities of Emotion

Nil Darpan and the Indigo Mirror

Anandamath and Bande Mataram

The importance of the Mother as an archetype

Examples of performance still exist throughout Bengal

Hours of hard work go into preparation and performance of stories that are accessible and recognizable to wide audiences.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suggestions: 

Mimasha - Look at yourself in the mirror, take away the make-up or mask and use it as a corridor to yourself.

Steven - Go watch a LIVE performance. Take a break from the screens and connect with real performers.

 

https://youtu.be/97IT8qOU8GY

 

Additional Reading Suggestions from Mimasha Pandit: 

Cover image: Jatra as portrayed in a 1912 American Baptist missionary photo book of life in Bengal.

**This episode first appeared here. I am re-releasing it because of an error that puts the wrong audio on certain podcast platforms (Spotify/iTunes/GooglePlay).

This week on the Hour of History Podcast, I visit the home of Joseph Stalin, the infamous leader of the Soviet Union (1922-1953).

Some Highlights:

Gori, Georgia

Visiting the home of a dictator

Public History in a post-Soviet state

Who runs the Stalin museum?

Who visits the Stalin museum?

Dark Tourism

Honoring a dictator or learning history?

The construction of a memorial museum

Some Further Reading:

SRB Podcast - great podcast that specializes on Russia

The Death of Stalin

Young Stalin

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator

Suggestions:

Visit a local museum - Engage in public history and study history!

Special Thanks: 

Gabrielle Hauth for hosting this episode of the Hour of History Podcast

Photos from the museum:

https://youtu.be/bIHjDU_yjHs

 

Anna Aleksanyan is an expert on the Armenian Genocide, which she currently writes about as a Ph.D. candidate at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Her dissertation explores gendered aspects of the Armenian Genocide in the experiences of its victimized females. Before starting her Ph.D., Anna worked at the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, in Yerevan, Armenia, as a scientific researcher for seven years.

 

Some Highlights: 

Origins of the Armenian Genocide

Young Turk Revolution

1909 Massacres

Armenian women, orphans, and prisoners

Sources for genocide research

Women after World War I

The Ottoman Empire

Forced Marriages

April 24, 1915

"The luckiest ones were killed"

"Men were mostly killed, women were abducted."

Resistance and remembrance of the genocide

Suggestion: 

Anna: Visit Armenia! Learn about the genocide.

Steven: Armenian String Cheese

Armenian Genocide Memorial, Yerevan

 

 

https://youtu.be/S9zVqxdjQtI

 

This week, I look back on the Hour of History Podcast at 100.

Some Highlights: 

Map of the Hour of History Podcast listeners

A word of thanks to our listeners, readers, and subscribers.

A look at the fascinating guests who have contributed.

The Podcast Producer

How I create the podcast every week

The next 100 episodes!

Suggestion:

Find out what Hour of History Podcast  you missed and listen to some of our great episodes in their entirety!

Some of the faces of the Hour of History Podcast:

 

https://youtu.be/arU_W8an2tw

Dr. Mimasha Pandit is the author of the new book, Performing Nationhood: The Emotional Roots of Swadeshi Nationhood in Bengal, 1905-12 (Oxford, 2019). She was awarded PhD degree from the University of Calcutta and is currently an Assistant Professor in the History Department of Mankar College, Mankar, Burdwan. Dr. Pandit has written widely on the Swadeshi movement in Bengal. You can read previously published articles about Swadeshi Circus (The Inclusive), Placards and Handbills in the Swadeshi Age (Indian History Congress), Performing History (Social Scientist).

 

 

 

Read the Book:

Performing Nationhood: The Emotional Roots of Swadeshi Nationhood in Bengal, 1905-12 (Oxford, 2019)

Some Highlights:

Background to the idea of nation-building

The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903-1908, by Sumit Sarkar

Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities

How performative spaces led to the growth of nationalism in Bengal

From 1857 to 1905 - important moments in the history of India

The British Raj

Sources for reconstructing songs, theatre, and jatra in Bengal

Rural and Urban nationalist growth

Swadeshi Jatra Performances

The "Glass Wall" in performance

Building a national "Self"

Siraj ud-Daulah in theater

Priyanath Bose and the Great Bengal Circus

Dramatic Performances Act and British Censorship

The Storehouse of Collective Memory

Communities of Emotion

Nil Darpan and the Indigo Mirror

Anandamath and Bande Mataram

The importance of the Mother as an archetype

Suggestions: 

Mimasha - Look at yourself in the mirror, take away the make-up or mask and use it as a corridor to yourself.

Steven - Go watch a LIVE performance. Take a break from the screens and connect with real performers.

https://youtu.be/97IT8qOU8GY

Additional Reading Suggestions from Mimasha Pandit: 

Cover image: Sayamindu Dasgupta - A jatra actor prepares before the performance, Sunderbans

David Brydan is a lecturer in the modern history of international relations at King’s College London. He previously worked as a lecturer and researcher at Birkbeck, University of London, and received his PhD from Birkbeck in 2016. Between 2013 and 2017 he was a member of the Wellcome Trust-funded Reluctant Internationalists project at Birkbeck, and is currently a member of the Centre for the Study of Internationalism. In 2014 he was a visiting researcher at the European University Institute in Florence. He is currently a Reviews Editor for Contemporary European History.

David’s book, Franco’s Internationalists, is available as an Open Access ebook from Oxford University Press. His twitter handle is @DavidBrydan.

Read his work (OPEN ACCESS!): 

Some highlights:

The Reluctant Internationalists

Center for the Study of Internationalism

Background to the Spanish Civil War

Francisco Franco's dictatorship

Why does Spain matter?

Who were Franco's internationalists?

Working with the Nazis and Italian Fascists

Measuring motivations - what evidence does one use?

Colonial Health and international imperial cooperation

Turn towards the "west"

Catholicism and Spain

Hispanidad

Exiled Republicans

Social Catholicism and religious revival

World Expos, Brussels 1958

History of transnational anticommunism

Refugees

Publishing Open Access

Wellcome Trust

Franco's exhumation

Internationalism of Nationalists

Re-emergence of the transnational Far Right

Suggestions:

David: Ronald Fraser - The Blood of Spain

Steven:  El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela's Youth

 

https://youtu.be/IjY8G0ut93g

Photography by Thai NguyenDr. Richard Bell is a scholar, writer, and teacher at the University of Maryland, where he is an associate professor. His research focuses on the history and culture of the United States between 1750 and 1877. His new book, Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home, was published by Simon & Schuster on October 15, 2019. Stolen is the true story of five boys who were kidnapped in the North and smuggled into slavery in the Deep South—and their daring attempt to escape and bring their captors to justice. In Philadelphia in 1825, these five young, free black boys fell into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the United States. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they were instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drove them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys formed a tight brotherhood as they struggled to free themselves and find their way home. Their ordeal—an odyssey that took them from the Philadelphia waterfront to the marshes of Mississippi and then onward still—shines a glaring spotlight on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black-market network of human traffickers and slave traders who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans from their families in order to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War.

You can read more on his website or reach out to him here.

Read Richard's books: 

Some Highlights: 

Rick's background, from Britain but captivated by America

Previous books and how a mysterious suicide led to research to "Stolen"

Switching from Academic audience to popular audience

1825 - Philadelphia

Freedom and kidnappings in Philadelphia

Domestic internal slave trade - 1 million people between 1770-1860

"Boy Lost"

Where do you go once you escape?

The Reverse Underground Railroad

Cornelius Sinclair, his parents, and the loss of a child

Professional Kidnappers and Legal slave traders

Capillaries of a domestic Middle Passage

Coffles - caravans across the United States of enslaved people

The strengths of the microhistorical approach

Thomas Foster - Rethinking Rufus: Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men (Gender and Slavery Ser.)

Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World

Twelve Years a Slave 

Walter Johnson - River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom

Ed Baptist - The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

Suggestions:

Rick: Check out the following micro-history:

Adam Rothman - Beyond Freedom’s Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery

Paul Johnson - The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America

Donna Merrick - Death of a Notary: Conquest and Change in Colonial New York

Steven: Visit public history sites to think critically ab...