Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchRobert P. Kolker and Nathan Abrams, "Kubrick: An Odyssey" (Pegasus Books, 2024)
Episode 183
The definitive biography of the creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and A Clockwork Orange, presenting the most in-depth portrait yet of t…
2 years, 4 months ago
Todd Mildfelt and David D. Schafer, "Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind: James Montgomery and His War on Slavery" (U Oklahoma Press, 2023)
Episode 246
A controversial character largely known (as depicted in the movie Glory) as a Union colonel who led Black soldiers in the Civil War, James Montgomery…
2 years, 4 months ago
Elizabeth Varon, "Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)
Episode 15
An authoritative biography of the controversial Confederate general, who later embraced Reconstruction and became an outcast in the South.
It was the …
2 years, 4 months ago
Michael O'Malley, "The Beat Cop: Chicago's Chief O'Neill and the Creation of Irish Music" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Episode 220
Francis O’Neill (1848–1936) was a Chicago police officer and a folk music collector. Michael O’Malley connects these two seemingly unrelated activiti…
2 years, 4 months ago
John J. Michalczyk et al.. "Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ and the Holocaust: A Prelude to Genocide" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Episode 205
For decades scholars have pored over Hitler's autobiographical journey/political treatise, debating if Mein Kampf has genocidal overtones and arguabl…
2 years, 5 months ago
Gregor Gall, "Mick Lynch: The Making of a Working-Class Hero " (Manchester UP, 2024)
Episode 244
In the summer of 2022, the little-known leader of a small union became a ‘working-class hero’. Facing down media pundits who thought they could walk …
2 years, 5 months ago
Paul D. Barclay, "Kondo the Barbarian: A Japanese Adventurer and Indigenous Taiwan's Bloodiest Uprising" (Eastbridge Books, 2023)
Episode 145
Kondo the Barbarian: A Japanese Adventurer and Indigenous Taiwan's Bloodiest Uprising (Eastbridge Books, 2023) is a gripping and revealing account of…
2 years, 5 months ago
Catherine Powell-Warren, "Gender and Self-Fashioning at the Intersection of Art and Science: Agnes Block, Botany, and Networks in the Dutch 17th Century" (Amsterdam UP, 2023)
Episode 61
Jana Byars speaks with Catherine Powell-Warren about Gender and Self-Fashioning at the Intersection of Art and Science: Agnes Block, Botany, and Netw…
2 years, 5 months ago
Simon Shuster, "The Showman: The Inside Story of the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky" (William Morrow, 2024)
Episode 27
Since Simon Shuster's November 2023 Time cover story ("Nobody believes in our victory like I do - Nobody"), anyone with an interest in the war in Ukr…
2 years, 5 months ago
Jessica Goethals, "Margherita Costa, Diva of the Baroque Court" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
Episode 25
The Roman singer, courtesan, and writer Margherita Costa won prominence and fame across the courts of Italy and France during the mid-seventeenth cen…
2 years, 5 months ago