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

September 3, 2024 66 mins
This is the second in a 2-part series with David Roll, a Washington-based attorney, who has written books on Harry Hopkins, George Marshall, and Louis Johnson. Now comes his fourth book, "Ascent to Power," which focuses on Franklin Roosevelt's final days through the sudden transition to the presidency of Harry Truman. Spanning the years 1944-1948, David Roll's newest book looks at the struggles of a relatively unknown Missouri sena...
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David Roll, a Washington-based attorney, has written books on Harry Hopkins, George Marshall, and Louis Johnson. Now comes his fourth book, "Ascent to Power," which focuses on Franklin Roosevelt's final days through the sudden transition to the presidency of Harry Truman. Spanning the years 1944-1948, David Roll's newest book looks at the struggles of a relatively unknown Missouri senator, Harry Truman, who had served the U.S. as v...
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Presidential historian Tevi Troy has called his latest book "The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry." Mr. Troy has spent most of his professional life in and around Washington-based government and politics. He is currently a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center. In the introduction to the book, he writes: "For current and future CEOs, this book can be a guide for how to...
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August 13, 2024 76 mins
Maureen Callahan's book "Ask Not: The Kennedy's and the Women They Destroyed" has been near the top of the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list since its publication in early July. In a review of the Callahan book by Nina Burleigh in the Washington Post, Burleigh writes: "She identifies the wellspring of misogyny in Irish Catholic patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. in Boston during the Gilded Age, and traces it anecdote by anecdo...
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Richard Brookhiser has written and edited for National Review magazine for over 50 years. He has also written books about George Washington, James Madison, John Marshall, Alexander Hamilton, and "gentleman revolutionary" Gouverneur Morris. Now comes his latest, "Glorious Lessons: John Trumbull, Painter of the American Revolution." Trumbull, who lived between 1756 and 1843, was most famous for his 4 very large paintings about the Re...
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Leon Dash spent over 30 years with the Washington Post from 1966 to 1998. In 1995 series on poverty and survival in urban America. Leon Dash spent 4 years following the life of Rosa Lee Cunningham and her 8 children and 5 grandchildren. He appeared on C-SPAN's Booknotes program in November 1996 to discuss his published book, which focused on the underclass in the United States. In the last 26 years, Leon Dash has been a professor o...
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This Booknotes+ podcast is a repeat of a Q&A program from November 4, 2015. The featured guest, Ronald Feinman, is the author of the book "Assassinations, Threats, and the American Presidency," in which he examines attempts on the lives of presidents and presidential candidates throughout history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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July 16, 2024 72 mins
Rupert William Simon Allason was a Conservative member of the British House of Commons from 1987 and 1997. However, he's best known around the world as Nigel West, military historian and journalist specializing in security and intelligence matters. During the recent commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, Nigel West's name surfaced in relation to his 1985 book on Agent Garbo, the personal story of who, some ...
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On Saturday, June 8th, 2024, the headline in the Wall Street Journal Saturday review section read: "The Hidden Life of Google's Secret Weapon." The author was Brody Mullins, a veteran investigative reporter for the Journal. The series ran over 3 days. The focus was on a man named Joshua Wright, a lawyer and former law professor at George Mason University Law School. Under the Journal headline, the paper declares that: "Joshua Wrigh...
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Robert Schmuhl is the Walter Annenberg-Edmund Joyce Chair Emeritus in American Studies and Journalism at the University of Notre Dame. He has often written about the American presidency. His newest book is "Mr. Churchill in the White House: The Untold Story of a Prime Minister and Two Presidents." Prof. Schmuhl says both Roosevelt and Eisenhower eventually adjusted to the unconventional habits and hours of their White House guest, ...
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June 25, 2024 72 mins
On January 16, 2024, after nearly 30 years, David Tatel retired as a judge on the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. On the cover of his new memoir is a photo of Judge Tatel in his black robe with his dog Vixen standing on his left side. The book is titled "Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice." He says he wrote the book together with his wife Edie. "Day in and day out we sat at our long desk overlooking an...
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Six-time book author Stacy Schiff made a guest appearance in early April at Purdue University. She was a guest of the C-SPAN Center for Scholarship & Engagement. A large number of questions were asked by the students studying communications and political science. Stacy Schiff's latest book "The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams" was published in 2022. Her 2005 book on Benjamin Franklin has been used as a primary source for an Apple TV se...
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"June 6, 1944, is the most famous single day in all human history." Those are the words of Garrett Graff in his author's note in his book "When the Sea Came Alive." This month is the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landing in World War II. As Graff introduces the reader to his oral history of D-Day, he writes: "The official launch of Operation Overlord, the long-anticipated invasion of Western Europe, marks a feat of unprecedented...
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In the first week of publication of Erik Larson's latest book, "The Demon of Unrest," sales put it at the very top of the bestseller list. It's about the start of the Civil War, with a focus on the five months between Abraham Lincoln's election and the day of the first shot fired on Fort Sumter, which is off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. That was April 12, 1861. In his introduction, Erik Larson writes: "I invite you now ...
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Glenn C. Loury is a professor of economics. He teaches at Brown University and is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He calls his new book "Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative." His publisher, W.W. Norton, describes Prof. Loury on the flap of the cover: "[He] grew up on the south side of Chicago, earned a PhD in MIT’s economics program, and became the first Black tenured professor of economics at Harvard a...
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Alan Taylor is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation professor of history at the University of Virginia. He is only one of 5 history writers who have won the Pulitzer Prize twice. His 11 books focus mostly on the early years of the creation of the United States. His latest book is titled "American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873." During these 23 years, North America's 3 largest countries – Canada, Mexico, and the U...
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For over 10 years, Washington Post investigative reporter Craig Whitlock has tracked the story of Malaysian shakedown man Leonard Francis, aka "Fat Leonard," and his collusion with hundreds of U.S. Navy officers, several of whom have spent time in prison. Now comes the book titled "Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked, and Seduced the U.S. Navy." Craig Whitlock writes: "On the surface, with his flawless American accent, Fat Leon...
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May 7, 2024 65 mins
Duke Ellington was the grandson of slaves. Louis Armstrong was born in a News Orleans slum so tough that it was called "The Battlefield." William James "Count" Basie grew up in a world unfamiliar to his white fans, the son of a coachman and a laundress. Author Larry Tye says the Duke, the Count, and Satchmo transformed America. The book is called "The Jazzmen" and Mr. Tye writes: "How better to bring alive the history of African Am...
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The book "Fire and Rain" is a narrative, according to author Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, about the way national security decisions, formed at the highest level of government, affect the lives of individuals at home and abroad. Her primary focus is on the way the Nixon administration fought and ended the Vietnam War. Early in the book, Hofstra University professor Eisenberg quotes President Nixon's predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, during h...
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Early in his newest of over 30 books, Joseph Epstein, our guest this week, writes: "I feel extremely lucky in all these realms in which I had no real choice: parents, epoch, country, and throw in religion, city, and social class." The 87-year-old Epstein, a longtime essayist for the Wall Street Journal, has written his autobiography called "Never Say You've Had a Lucky Life: Especially If You've Had a Lucky Life." He has spent 20 y...
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