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
May 30, 2023 • 62 mins
"How did the U.S. lose the war in Afghanistan? Who bears responsibility? What has been the human cost?" These are the questions asked on Frontline's website advertising the 3-part documentary series "America and the Taliban." These hour-long documentaries, which are available for streaming online, were produced and directed by Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria. Because of his on-screen appearances, Mr. Smith is better known by the p...
Mark as Played
May 23, 2023 • 66 mins
When a historian writes a book, there are at least two ways to read it, two different parts. One is the narrative, the story, usually told in chronological order. The second part includes epigraphs, footnotes, source notes, photography, and the acknowledgements. Richard Norton Smith spent over 6 years writing and researching his new book, "An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford." Susan Swain ...
Mark as Played
May 16, 2023 • 62 mins
Seattle-based author Timothy Egan has written 10 books. His newest is called "A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them." The description of Mr. Egan's book on the dust jacket reads: "The Roaring Twenties – the Jazz Age – has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan….They hated Black...
Mark as Played
May 9, 2023 • 46 mins
For the millions of visitors who come to Washington, DC, one of the most popular destinations is Lafayette Park, across from the White House. There's no longer vehicle traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the President's house, but you can often find a crowd on the street, most having fun or taking pictures. Since 1981 there has also been a peace vigil on the spot, 24-hours a day, 7 days a week. You can't miss it. To find ou...
Mark as Played
May 2, 2023 • 63 mins
The Wobblies is a nickname for an early 20th century union called the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW. Book author Ahmed White writes: "Like the Christian martyrs to whom they have been likened, the Wobblies were left to find confirmation and redemption mainly in their own destruction." Yale Law School graduate Ahmed White has a book titled "Under the Iron Heel," a takeoff from a novel written by author Jack London. Prof. W...
Mark as Played
Dr. Edna Greene Medford is a well-known historian and expert on Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. She spent 8 years as chair of the history department at Howard University in Washington, DC. She recently appeared before an audience at Purdue University in connection with the C-SPAN Center for Scholarship and Engagement to talk about African American History, U.S. Presidents, the Civil War and Reconstruction. Over the past 20 year...
Mark as Played
April 18, 2023 • 63 mins
Two public corporations, CBS and Viacom, used to be controlled by the same man, Sumner Redstone. This is the subject of a book called "Unscripted." Our guest is reporter James B. Stewart of the New York Times. He along with his co-author Rachel Abrams write in the preface of the book that: "The drama that unfolded may have occurred at Viacom and CBS, but the recent drumbeat of greed, backstabbing, plotting, and betrayal at the uppe...
Mark as Played
April 11, 2023 • 70 mins
Derek Leebaert says, in the introduction to his newest book, that "Only four people served at the top echelon of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency, from the frightening early months of Spring 1933 until he died in April of 1945 and, in their different ways, they were as wounded as he." The book is titled "Unlikely Heroes" and Mr. Leebaert puts the spotlight on people who served FDR for his entire presidency: Harry Hopkins, Harold Ick...
Mark as Played
April 4, 2023 • 67 mins
Edward Achorn has been a life-long reader of Abraham Lincoln. In 2020 he published his first book on the 16th president called "Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln." In his second book on Lincoln, just published, Mr. Achorn dropped back to the beginning of Lincoln's national political career. That year was 1860. The subject matter: inside the Republican convention held in Chicago. This time the...
Mark as Played
March 28, 2023 • 110 mins
Since January 6, 2021, more than 1,000 defendants have been arrested in nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Those arrested have been charged with a long list of felonies and misdemeanors, including assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees of the U.S. Capitol. Over 518 individuals have already pled guilty to a number of offenses. Over 60 people have been found guilty at contested trials. A just complet...
Mark as Played
March 21, 2023 • 63 mins
100 years ago, these names were in American newspapers on many days: Harry Daugherty, Jess Smith, Roxie Stinson, Burton Wheeler, and Gaston Means. Today those names can be found in a new book, "Crooked: The Roaring '20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal." Nathan Masters is the author and it's his first book. For the past 7 years, Masters has hosted a television ...
Mark as Played
March 14, 2023 • 67 mins
Who killed Jane Stanford? She died in 1905. She was the wife of Leland Stanford, a former railroad magnet, governor of California and U.S. senator. Their son Leland Stanford Jr. died at age 15 in 1884 of typhoid. In his honor, Stanford University was born in 1891. But why all these years later is there a book about who killed the doyenne of Stanford's family? Our guest, Emeritus Stanford University professor Richard White, has been...
Mark as Played
March 7, 2023 • 64 mins
Kidada Williams is an associate professor of history at Wayne State University in Detroit. In her research work, she has focused on African Americans' accounts of lynching and the impact of terrorist night riders on the lives of enslaved people. Williams, who received her PhD from the University of Michigan in 2005, has just published her latest book, "I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War against Reconstr...
Mark as Played
The United States of America was originally built on two important documents. The first, the Declaration of Independence, was signed by 56 men in the middle of 1776. The second, the Constitution, was signed by 39 men in September 1787. Six of those men put their John Hancock on both documents. To find out more, we talked with authors Denise Kiernan and Joseph D'Agnese who have written short background stories about the signers in t...
Mark as Played
February 21, 2023 • 56 mins
In its 41 years of existence, the Southeastern Guide Dogs organization in Palmetto, Florida, has created over 3,000 human-guide dog pairs. In 2006 they launched their program to help military veterans. One of the first things you learn if you take a tour of their facilities is: "We rely 100% on private donations. No government money is involved." Titus Herman, CEO of Southeastern Guide Dogs, has led the organization since 2008. We ...
Mark as Played
February 14, 2023 • 69 mins
Historian Robert Kagan has been writing about foreign affairs for most of his 64 years. The first book in his planned trilogy on American foreign policy was published in 2006 and focused on U.S. history before the founding up to the Spanish-American War. Mr. Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has just completed the second book in the trilogy titled "The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, ...
Mark as Played
February 7, 2023 • 63 mins
In our most recent podcast, Roger Parloff gave us an inside look at the Proud Boys trial which has been underway in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia since January 12th. In this follow-up to Mr. Parloff, we asked Dr. Megan Squire, a computer scientist, how she applies data science techniques to track and expose what she calls "networks of hate and extremism" online. She has studied the Proud Boys since 2017. Dr. S...
Mark as Played
January 31, 2023 • 73 mins
In the two years since January 6, 2021, close to 1000 people have been charged with federal crimes relating to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The legal process used by the federal justice system to deal with these cases is complicated and often out of sight to the American people. Attorney and journalist Roger Parloff, senior editor at Lawfare, has been live tweeting the trials of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys over the past seve...
Mark as Played
January 24, 2023 • 66 mins
The language of 2023: "threat to democracy," "Antifa," "Stop the Steal," "fascism," "Proud Boys," "Brexit," "artificial intelligence," "BleachBit." Who understands all this? Where does the language come from? We asked British author Dorian Lynskey, our guest this week, to help us. His latest book is titled "The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984." In the introduction, Lynskey writes that "The phrases and conce...
Mark as Played
January 17, 2023 • 64 mins
In Yale history professor Beverly Gage's 837-page cradle-to-grave biography of J. Edgar Hoover, she writes, "I do not count myself among Hoover's admirers." However, in the introduction, she says her book "G-Man" is less about judging him than about understanding him. Hoover ran the FBI for 48 years until he died at age 77 in 1972. Prof. Gage, who did her undergraduate work at Yale and received her Ph.D. from Columbia, writes that ...
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.
In order to tell the story of a crime, you have to turn back time. Every season, Investigative journalist Delia D'Ambra digs deep into a mind-bending mystery with the hopes of reigniting interest in a decades old homicide case.
It’s a lighthearted nightmare in here, weirdos! Morbid is a true crime, creepy history and all things spooky podcast hosted by an autopsy technician and a hairstylist. Join us for a heavy dose of research with a dash of comedy thrown in for flavor.
Unforgettable true crime mysteries, exclusive newsmaker interviews, hard-hitting investigative reports and in-depth coverage of high profile stories.