Booknotes+

Booknotes+

Taking the concept from Brian Lamb's long running Booknotes TV program, the podcast offers listeners more books and authors. Booknotes+ features a mix of new interviews with authors and historians, along with some old favorites from the archives. The platform may be different, but the goal is the same – give listeners the opportunity to learn something new.

Episodes

April 29, 2025 71 mins
After a career in investment management and some time as a credit risk specialist at the US Treasury Department, Jill Eicher has written her first book titled, "Melon vs. Churchill: The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War." It's all about the collection of war debts from World War I, which was fought between 1914 and 1918. Andrew Mellon, a wealthy industrialist, served as Secretary of the Treasury for Presidents Harding, Coolid...
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Dr. Hassan Tetteh, in his latest book, opens the introduction with a question: "How do we prepare for the future with AI?" His primary focus is on healthcare and AI, but it's subtitled "Harnessing Military Medicine to Revolutionize Healthcare for Everyone Everywhere." Dr. Tetteh is currently based at Howard University and Inova Hospital in Fairfax, Virginia, after serving 25 years in military medicine. His specialty is as a thoraci...
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British writer Phil Tinline has written a book titled "Ghosts of Iron Mountain." The publisher Scribner calls it "an investigative masterpiece for readers curious about the surprising connection between John F. Kennedy, Oliver Stone, Timothy McVeigh, QAnon, Alex Jones, and Donald Trump." In his introduction, author Tinline says the book is the true story of a hoax. A hoax that shocked the nation in the late 1960s and that once crea...
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April 8, 2025 60 mins
Richard Overy is a British historian who has spent most of his professional life writing books about war, primarily World War II. Professor Overy's current work is called "Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan." Liner notes on the cover of the book say: "With the development of the B-29 Super Fortress in the summer of 1944, strategic bombing, a central component of the Allied war effort against Germany, arrived...
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As a follow on to Stuart Banner's history of the Supreme Court, this week's Booknotes+ podcast features a 2002 interview with Dennis Hutchinson, a University of Chicago law professor emeritus. The subject matter: the forgotten memoir of John Knox, a law clerk to former justice James McReynolds, a native of Kentucky. Knox's year was the term beginning October 1936. In history, it is very rare that a law clerk at the Supreme Court ha...
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UCLA law professor Stuart Banner's book, "The Most Powerful Court in the World," is a history of the United States Supreme Court from the founding era to the present. In his introduction, Stuart Banner writes that: "Today, critics on the left accuse the justices of deciding cases on political rather than legal grounds. This book shows that the Court's critics have always leveled this criticism at decisions they did not like. These ...
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March 19, 2025 75 mins
C-SPAN Founder Brian Lamb is in conversation with Sam Feist, the network's CEO, and Susan Swain, C-SPAN's former co-CEO, about his quest to bring live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of Congress into every American home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Steven Gillon was a scholar in residence at the History Channel for more than 20 years. He has written 12 books on subjects including a history of the United States, the Kerner Commission, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Life of John F. Kennedy Jr. His latest book is titled "Presidents at War: How World War II Shaped a Generation of Presidents from Eisenhower and JFK through Reagan and Bush." Steven Gillon closes his book saying: "Ironi...
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March 11, 2025 74 mins
As a follow up to our recent podcast regarding the life and times of Anne Frank, we asked author Alexandra Ritchie to tell us more about the horrors of World War II and Poland. Ritchie, a citizen of Canada, now lives in the city which is the title of her book, Warsaw. Her focus is on 1944 and what was called the Warsaw Uprising. In her introduction, she writes, "Himmler and Hitler had decided that the entire population remaining in...
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In the years right before World War II started in 1939, Winston Churchill had been out of government. However, even though he was far from power, his country home, Chartwell, became Churchill's headquarters of his campaign against Nazi Germany. Catherine Carter is a curator and historian who has managed the house and collections at Chartwell. Her new book is called "Churchill's Citadel: Chartwell and the Gatherings Before the Storm...
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80 years ago, in early 1945, 15-year-old Anne Frank died from a typhus epidemic in the Nazi German-based concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. As the 7500 square foot replica of the Otto Frank family secret annex in Amsterdam opens in New York City, writer Ruth Franklin is publishing her new biography called "The Many Lives of Anne Frank." According to Franklin, the title of the book refers to the multiplicity of ways in which Anne Fra...
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February 18, 2025 73 mins
A little over 100 years ago was the beginning of what's often been called the Great War. World War I had military casualties of over nine million and millions more of civilians. Professor Sean McMeekin of Bard College, located in New York State, has written 9 books since 2003 on subjects that include German history, Russian history, the Ottoman Empire, communism, World War II, and one titled "July 1914." This last book is the focus...
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David Levering Lewis is an American historian and retired professor from New York University. He's the author of 12 books and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for his two volumes on the life of W.E.B. DuBoisC. At 88 years old, Prof. Lewis has written a memoir that, as he says, focuses on "a past I barely knew." He a native of St. Louis, MO, with degrees from Fisk, Columbia, and the London School of Economics. The title of Prof. Le...
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John Dickinson is one of the most significant founders of the United States who is not well known by the American public. Author Jane Calvert is trying to change that with her new biography "Penman of the Founding." John Dickinson is known for his 9 essays under the title Fabius, published anonymously in newspapers during the time that the states were deciding on whether to approve the new Constitution. John Dickinson of Maryland, ...
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January 28, 2025 72 mins
For In his latest book titled "Waste Land," author Robert Kaplan focuses on the importance of technology in determining the world's future. Kaplan, author of 24 books, holds the chair in geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Institute. In Chapter 3 of his 177-page book, he claims: "…civilization is now in flux. The ongoing decay of the West is manifested not only in racial tensions coupled with new barriers to free speech, but in the d...
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For 216 weeks, a record, John Berendt's book "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" sat on the New York Times best sellers list. It was published in 1994. It sold more than 1.5 million copies. Mr. Berendt, a Syracuse native, is today 85 and lives in New York City. A musical based on the book opened in Chicago in 2024 and will open on Broadway in 2025. During this episode of the podcast, an interview with John Berendt from 1997, ...
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Since his first interview on C-SPAN on Booknotes in 1993, Harold Holzer has appeared on the network close to 200 times. Up to that year he had written or edited 6 books on Abraham Lincoln. Since then, Harold Holzer has added another 50 books to his name. C-SPAN viewers and listeners have had the opportunity to hear Mr. Holzer talk about Lincoln's life, from his birth in Kentucky in 1807, until his assassination in Washington, DC, i...
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Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell has spent 40 years in the United States Senate, 17 of those as leader of his Republican colleagues. That's the longest any senator has been at the top of the leadership rung in either political party. Sen. John Thune (R-SD) was elected a few weeks ago to head up the Republican majority in the Senate in 2025. Journalist Michael Tackett's book, a profile of Senator McConnell, is called "The Price of P...
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Brion McClanahan has a PhD in history from the University of South Carolina. Several years ago, he wrote a book titled "9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America: And Four Who Tried to Save Her." His view on the presidency is not the traditional one you get from most historians. On the back of his book, published by Regnery History, the liner notes claim: "The worst presidents are the ones who want to 'reform' the country through the pow...
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December 24, 2024 60 mins
In his latest book, "LBJ & McNamara," Peter Osnos's dedication reads this way: "To those on the Vietnam Wall on the Mall and their countless Vietnamese counterparts. It did not have to happen." In his role as publisher at PublicAffairs Books, Osnos spent numerous hours working with former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara for his 1995 book, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." Osnos writes: "This book describes what...
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