Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchLaShawn Harris, "Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City" (Beacon, 2025)
Episode 519
On October 29, 1984, 66-year-old beloved Black disabled grandmother Eleanor Bumpurs was murdered in her own home. A public housing tenant 4 months be…
1 year, 2 months ago
Brendan Simms, "Hitler: A Global Biography" (Basic Books, 2019)
Episode 107
Every generation returns to the titanic heroes and villains of the 20th century. And every generation produces a new set of biographies--often immens…
1 year, 2 months ago
Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr., "Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune" (Ballantine, 2013)
Episode 84
Bill Dedman, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and New York Times #1 bestselling author of Empty Mansions, shares the extraordinary stor…
1 year, 2 months ago
Gill Plain, "Agatha Christie: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Episode 1792
Agatha Christie is a global bestseller. Her work has been translated into over 100 languages and adapted for stage and screen. Christie's writing lif…
1 year, 2 months ago
Alexander Kimel and Martin Kimel, "The Pessimists Son: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope" (Cherry Orchard Books, 2025)
Episode 1791
The Pessimists Son: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope (Cherry Orchard Books, 2025) is a personal depiction of life in Poland set against the Nazi and Soviet…
1 year, 2 months ago
Stacia Kalinoski, Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy (U of Minnesota Press, 2025)
Episode 1790
The book, Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy (U of Minnesota Press, 2025), is a memoir and an educational resource, which tells the sto…
1 year, 2 months ago
Mark Braude, "The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba from Empire to Exile" (Penguin Press, 2018)
Episode 68
I must’ve been a kid when I first heard the palindrome “Able I was ere I saw Elba”. Napoleon didn’t mean a lot to me at the time. “Elba” meant even l…
1 year, 2 months ago
Thomas Kemple, “Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber’s Calling” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
Episode 288
Thomas Kemple‘s new book is an extraordinarily thoughtful invitation to approach Max Weber (1864-1920) as a performer, and to experience Weber’s work…
1 year, 2 months ago
Harriet Jacobs, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" (Norton, 2025)
Episode 515
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is the stirring autobiography of Harriet Jacobs, a mother and fugitive, detailing her harrowing escape from ens…
1 year, 2 months ago
Inna Faliks, "Weight in the Fingertips: A Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage" (Backbeat Books, 2023)
Episode 1787
Adventurous and passionate” (The New Yorker) Ukrainian-born pianist Inna Faliks has established herself as one of the most communicative, and poetic …
1 year, 3 months ago