The Way of Improvement Leads Home: American History, Religion, Politics, and Academic life.

In this episode we talk with Wesleyan University historian Joseph Slaughter, author of Faith in Markets: Christian Capitalism in Early America. He offers a new account of the interplay between religion and capitalism in early American history by focusing on 19th-century Protestant entrepreneurs and how they infused faith into their business and, in turn, how those businesses shaped our capitalist economy today.

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She was a privileged baby boomer who grew up on a horse farm in segregated Virginia. By her 21st birthday she had worked for peace in Communist Europe, traveled the country in the cause of racial justice, marched for voting rights in Selma, and led anti-Vietnam protests at Bryn Mawr College. Our guest in this episode is distinguished American historian and former Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust. She talks about her memoir, Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury.

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In his new book Bridge & Tunnel Boys, historian Jim Cullen discusses how Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen represented what he calls "the metropolitan sound of the American century." In this episode of the podcast, we talk with Cullen about how Joel and Springsteen were shaped by their lives on the periphery of New York City. Our conversation ranges across several subjects, including politics, cosmopolitanism, history, the culture of the 1980s, and even Taylor Swift!

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How did Ronald Reagan use the media to shape his evangelical vision for America, a vision rooted in political freedom, economic freedom, and religious freedom that is still with us today and continues to define the discourse of both of our political parties? In this episode we talk to Diane Winston, the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the University of Southern California, about her new book Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan's Evangelical Vision.

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Should professional historians write for the general public? If so, who is the "public" they are trying to reach? And when historians do write for the public how do they manage to make their work readable and accessible without sacrificing scholarly integrity? What role does politics, and even activism, play in popular history writing? These are questions that the historical profession, and in some respects, the nation, are currently wrestling with. Our guest today, historian Nick Witham, author of Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America, reminds us that these questions are not new. Some of the country's most prominent writer-historians, including Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Howard Zinn, and Gerda Lerner, grappled with how to reach the public with good historical scholarship.

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There was a profound difference between Christian Socialism and the so-called "Social Gospel." Janine Giordano Drake explains these differences in her new book The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Fractured the Labor Movement. Drake argues that Protestant reformers associated with Mainline Protestantism and the Federal Council of Churches undermined workers' efforts to bring about social democracy in the United States.

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Most Americans probably think of conservative evangelicals as climate change deniers who believe global warming is a hoax. If this is you, you would not be entirely wrong. But our guest today, Neill Pogue, author of The Nature of the Religious Right: The Struggle Between Conservative Evangelicals and the Environmental Movement, suggests that this story is much more complicated. We discuss how evangelicals moved from environmental stewards in the 1970s to opponents of global warming by the end of the 1990s. Pogue also talks about the current state of evangelical concerns about the environment.

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What is fraternity? Our guest today, political scientist Susan McWilliams Barndt, discusses her father's 1973 magnum opus The Idea of Fraternity in America. We talk about the work of Wilson Carey McWilliams, the historical context in which he wrote his magisterial work of political theory and history, and why we still need his ideas today. The Idea of Fraternity was just re-released in a 50th anniversary edition with an introduction from McWilliams Barndt.

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If you've listened to this podcast over the years you know that we champion "historical thinking" as one of our best hopes for sustaining and preserving American democratic life. In this episode we talk with Zachary Cote, the Executive Director of THINKING NATION, a non-profit organization devoted to helping K-12 social studies students mature into citizens who are empowered to analyze information effectively, think historically, and write persuasively in order to build a better democratic future. If you are a school superintendent, principal, or history teacher you are not going to miss this episode! 

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What is American evangelicalism? In her new book The Evangelical Imagination, Karen Swallow Prior, one of the most careful observers of, and participants in, evangelical life, analyses the literature, art, and popular culture that has surrounded the movement and unpacks some of its most deeply held concepts, ideas, values, and practices. Our conversation revolves around topics such as revivalism, wokeness, self-improvement, domesticity, consumerism, empire-building, and the Bible's metaphorical language.

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