Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchTomaz Jardim, "Ilse Koch on Trial: Making the 'Bitch of Buchenwald'" (Harvard UP, 2023)
Episode 436
On September 1, 1967, one of the Third Reich's most infamous figures hanged herself in her cell after nearly twenty-four years in prison. Known as th…
2 years, 9 months ago
Kristal Brent Zook, "The Girl in the Yellow Poncho: A Memoir" (Duke UP, 2023)
Episode 400
At five years old, Kristal Brent Zook sat on the steps of a Venice Beach, California, motel trying to make sense of her white father’s abandonment, w…
2 years, 9 months ago
Zachary Jacobson, "On Nixon's Madness: An Emotional History" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
Episode 29
When Richard Nixon battled for the presidency in 1968, he did so with the knowledge that, should he win, he would face the looming question of how to…
2 years, 9 months ago
John Szwed, "Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith" (FSG, 2023)
Episode 124
Who was Harry Smith? Was he an anthropologist, a filmmaker, a painter? Was he a charlatan? A genius? Was he a moocher, a schmuck, a bum? As John Szwe…
2 years, 9 months ago
Peter K. Andersson, "Fool: In Search of Henry VIII's Closest Man" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Episode 70
The first biography of Henry VIII’s court fool William Somer, a legendary entertainer and one of the most intriguing figures of the Tudor age
In some …
2 years, 9 months ago
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, "Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality" (Knopf Doubleday, 2023)
Episode 298
With the US Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, “it makes sense to revisit the life and work of another Black woman who profoundly s…
2 years, 10 months ago
On “Henry Kissinger and His World” with author Barry Gewen
Episode 2
In my talk with Barry Gewen on his 2020 book, The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World (W. W. Norton, 2020), we explore the dispar…
2 years, 10 months ago
David Waldstreicher, "The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet's Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence" (FSG, 2023)
Episode 670
Thy Power, O Liberty, make strong the weak,
And (wond’rous instinct) Ethiopians speak.
At the age of 19, Phillis Wheatley published the first book in E…
2 years, 10 months ago
Julian Jackson, "France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain" (Harvard UP, 2023)
Episode 117
There was a time when French people put up picture of Marshal Philippe Petain on their walls. He is a figure of immeasurable stature to the country o…
2 years, 10 months ago
Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst, "I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America" (UNC Press, 2023)
Episode 312
Carl Ernst’s and Mbaye Lo’s new book I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America (UNC Press, 2023) is a fascinating…
2 years, 10 months ago