Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchRichard Schoch, "How Sondheim Can Change Your Life" (Atria Books, 2024)
Episode 254
For fans of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim is one of the true titans – the genius who brought us Sweeney Todd and West Side Story, Into the Woods,…
1 year, 7 months ago
Ronald Drabkin, "Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor" (William Morrow, 2024)
Episode 210
Frederick Rutland—”Rutland of Jutland”—was a war hero, renowned World War I aviator…and a Japanese spy. In the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, Rutl…
1 year, 8 months ago
Rajbir Singh Judge, "Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Episode 247
How do traditions and peoples grapple with loss, particularly when it is of such magnitude that it defies the possibility of recovery or restoration?…
1 year, 8 months ago
Sharon Kinoshita, "Marco Polo and His World" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
Episode 78
Sharon Kinoshita talks with Jana Byars about her new book, Marco Polo and His World (Reaktion Press, 2024). A lavishly illustrated tour of the famed …
1 year, 8 months ago
Bob Frishman, "Edward Duffield: Philadelphia Clockmaker, Citizen, Gentleman, 1730-1803" (APS Press, 2024)
Episode 263
Edward Duffield (1730–1803) was a colonial Philadelphia clockmaker, whose elegant brass, mahogany, and walnut timekeepers stand proudly in major Amer…
1 year, 8 months ago
S. L. Wisenberg, "The Adventures of Cancer Bitch" (Tortoise Books, 2024)
Episode 432
It’s 2006, and S. L. Wisenberg is teaching writing at one of Chicago’s great universities and living a busy life when she’s gobsmacked by a sudden ca…
1 year, 8 months ago
John Freed, “Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth” (Yale UP, 2016)
Episode 64
For all of his importance as a medieval ruler, there are surprisingly few biographies in English of the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa (c. 1122-…
1 year, 8 months ago
Anne Higonnet, "Liberty Equality Fashion: The Women Who Styled the French Revolution" (Norton, 2024)
Episode 102
Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France; Térézia Tallien, the most beautiful woman in Europe; and Juliette Récamier, muse of intellectuals, had…
1 year, 8 months ago
Amy Reading, "The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker" (Mariner Books, 2024)
Episode 144
In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker's midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was…
1 year, 8 months ago
Thomas Weber, “Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi” (Basic Books, 2017)
Episode 30
Few would dispute that Hitler’s ideas led to war and genocide. Less clear however, is how and when those ideas developed. In his latest book, Becomin…
1 year, 8 months ago