Tour of Duty

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Lincoln's Greatest Journey: Sixteen Days that Changed a Presidency, March 24 - April 8, 1865

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All This Marvelous Potential: Robert Kennedy's 1968 Tour of Appalachia

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Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy

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American Heritage History of the Presidents

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All the Powers of Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. III, 1856-1860

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Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice

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The Last Brahmin: Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and the Making of the Cold War

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The Making of the President 1960

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The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made

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Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War

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April 1865: The Month That Saved America

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Civil War by Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy

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Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington

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Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989

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After Lincoln: How the North Won the Civil War and Lost the Peace

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John Tyler, the Accidental President

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Two Americans: Truman, Eisenhower, and a Dangerous World

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Driven West: Andrew Jackson's Trail of Tears to the Civil War

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Eisenhower in War and Peace

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Washington's Farewell: The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations

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Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America

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The Promise and the Dream

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Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America

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Meddling in the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions

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The Real Romney

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Ground War: Courts, Commissions, and the Fight over Partisan Gerrymanders

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Ambition, Pragmatism, and Party: A Political Biography of Gerald R. Ford

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On Distant Service: The Life of the First U.S. Foreign Service Officer to be Assassinated

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Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King

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Presidential Misconduct: From George Washington to Today

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Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot

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Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever

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Lincoln

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Mornings on Horseback

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Rage

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Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

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JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

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Peril

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Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House

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The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill

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Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford

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Watergate

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The White House Plumbers: The Seven Weeks That Led to Watergate and Doomed Nixon's Presidency

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The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky

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Dressed for a Dance in the Snow: Women's Voices from the Gulag

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Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

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Fear: Trump in the White House

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A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

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Benjamin Franklin

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A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea

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We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland

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Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

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American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

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Enough

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The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

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Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

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Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

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A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety

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Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda

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Romney: A Reckoning

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BUTCH & SUNDANCE Ep. 4 | “Bolivia”: Butch and Sundance travel to South America to outrun the Pinkertons and they take Sundance’s girlfriend, Etta Place, with them.

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The Road to Vietnam with Dr Pablo de Orellana: Why did the United States become involved in Viet…

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BUTCH & SUNDANCE Ep. 3 | “The Wild Bunch”: Butch Cassidy becomes the leader of a gang known as the Wild Bunch, and Sundance becomes a key member of the outfit

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2 - The Tonkin Incident(s): Twice in six weeks, in the late summer of 1964, U.S. destroyers reported they were under unprovoked attack, by North Vietnamese PT boats, while on patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin. The first incident produced a massive airstrike...

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Lecture 21 - Andrew Johnson and the Radicals: A Contest over the Meaning of Reconstruction: In this lecture, Professor Blight begins his engagement with Reconstruction. Reconstruction, Blight suggests, might best be understood as an extended referendum on the meaning of the Civil War. Even before the war's end, various constituencies in the North attempted to control the shape of the post-war Reconstruction of the South. In late 1863, President Abraham Lincoln offered his lenient "Ten Percent Plan." Six months later, Congressional Republicans concerned by Lincoln's charity rallied behind the more radical provisions of the Wade-Davis Bill. Despite their struggle for control over Reconstruction, Congressional Radicals and President Lincoln managed to work together on two vital pieces of Reconstruction legislation in the first months of 1865--the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery in the United States, and the Freedmen's Bureau bill. Transcript Lecture Page

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Kevin McCarthy’s Job Is Going to Be Miserable: In recent weeks, America got a preview of how the new Republican House majority would wield its power. In attempting to perform a basic function of government — electing a speaker — a coalition of 20 House members caused Kevin McCarthy to lose 14 rounds of votes, decreasing his power with each compromise and successive vote. This is not normal. Party unity ebbs and flows, but the G.O.P. in recent decades has come apart at the seams. Nicole Hemmer is the director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University, an associate professor of history and the author of two books about the conservative movement and media ecosystem, “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics” and “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s.” And she says we can’t understand the current G.O.P. without understanding when, where a

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Behind the panic in white, Christian America

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#1409 American Sphinx with Joseph Ellis: Joseph Ellis joins us this week in the first of a series of conversations discussing his work as a historian chronicling the Founding Fathers. We begin by discussing his book, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, published in 1996 and...

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Who Was Joan of Arc?: Joan of Arc is a name that’s instantly recognisable to most. A controversial figure in her own day, she has remained so ever since, often being adopted as a talisman of French nationalism. But how much do we really know—or understand—about the young ...

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Lecture 17 - Homefronts and Battlefronts: "Hard War" and the Social Impact of the Civil War: Professor Blight begins his lecture with a description of the sea change in Civil War scholarship heralded by the Social History revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with a focus on the experience of the common solider, women, and African Americans, a central component of this shift in scholarly emphasis was an increased interest in the effects of the war on the Union and Confederate home fronts. After suggesting some of the ways in which individual Americans experienced the war, Professor Blight moves to a discussion of the war's effect on industry and economics, North and South. The lecture concludes with a description of the increased activism of the federal government during the war, an activism that found expression in finance, agriculture, taxation, building railroads, and, most importantly, in emancipation. Transcript Lecture Page

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Trumpocracy: David Frum joins Matt, Jeff, and Kathy Gilsinan to discuss how American democracy has fared under President Trump.

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Mark Leibovich

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Lecture 25 - The "End" of Reconstruction: Disputed Election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877": This lecture focuses on the role of white southern terrorist violence in brining about the end of Reconstruction. Professor Blight begins with an account the Colfax Massacre. Colfax, Louisiana was the sight of the largest mass murder in U.S. history, when a white mob killed dozens of African Americans in the April of 1873. Two Supreme Court decisions would do in the judicial realm what the Colfax Massacre had done in the political. On the same day as the Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court offered a narrow reading of the 14th Amendment in the Slaughterhouse cases, signaling a judicial retreat from the radicalism of the early Reconstruction years. The Cruikshank case, two years later, would overturn the convictions of the only three men sentenced for their involvement in Colfax, and marked another step away from reconstruction. Professor Blight concludes with the Panic of 1873 and the seemi

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Thank You for Your Servitude with Mark Leibovich: Host Reed Galen is joined by Mark Leibovich, author and Staff writer for The Atlantic, to discuss how Trump’s Washington was a result of inaction from those who “knew better”, why the media continues to hire people to toe the Trump line, and...

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Lecture 22 - Constitutional Crisis and Impeachment of a President: Professor Blight continues his discussion of the political history of Reconstruction. The central figure in the early phase of Reconstruction was President Andrew Johnson. Under Johnson's stewardship, southern whites held constitutional conventions throughout 1865, drafting new constitutions that outlawed slavery but changed little else. When the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress reassembled late in 1865, they put a stop to Johnson's leniency and inaugurated Radical (or Congressional) Reconstruction, a process that resulted in the immediate passage of the Civil Rights bill and the Fourteenth Amendment, and the eventual passage of four Reconstruction Acts. The Congressional elections in 1866 and Johnson's disastrous "Swing Around the Circle" speaking tour strengthened Radical control over Congress. Each step of the way, Johnson did everything he could to obstruct Congressional Reconstruction, setting the stage for his i

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Max Boot: The Road Not Taken: Author Max Boot returns to the Pritzker Military Museum & Library to talk about his book "The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam"

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Gary W. Gallagher: Civil War Myths and Misinformation

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Lecture 18 - "War So Terrible": Why the Union Won and the Confederacy Lost at Home and Abroad: This lecture probes the reasons for confederate defeat and union victory. Professor Blight begins with an elucidation of the loss-of-will thesis, which suggests that it was a lack of conviction on the home front that assured confederate defeat, before offering another of other popular explanations for northern victory: industrial capacity, political leadership, military leadership, international diplomacy, a pre-existing political culture, and emancipation. Blight warns, however, that we cannot forget the battlefield, and, to this end, concludes his lecture with a discussion of the decisive Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July of 1863. Transcript Lecture Page

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Lecture 15 - Lincoln, Leadership, and Race: Emancipation as Policy: Professor Blight follows Robert E. Lee's army north into Maryland during the summer of 1862, an invasion that culminated in the Battle of Antietam, fought in September of 1862. In the wake of Antietam, Abraham Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, a document that changed the meaning of the war forever. Professor Blight suggests some of the ways in which Americans have attempted to come to grips with the enigmatic Lincoln, and argues that, in the end, it may be Lincoln's capacity for change that was his most important characteristic. The lecture concludes with the story of John Washington, a Virginia slave whose concerted action suggests the central role American slaves played in securing their own freedom. Transcript Lecture Page

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How to Stop A Civil War: Jeffrey Goldberg, Danielle Allen, and Adam Serwer discuss how America is coming apart—and how they think it can be reunited.

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Lecture 24 - Retreat from Reconstruction: The Grant Era and Paths to "Southern Redemption": This lecture opens with a discussion of the myriad moments at which historians have declared an "end" to Reconstruction, before shifting to the myth and reality of "Carpetbag rule" in the Reconstruction South. Popularized by Lost Cause apologists and biased historians, this myth suggests that the southern governments of the Reconstruction era were dominated by unscrupulous and criminal Yankees who relied on the ignorant black vote to rob and despoil the innocent South. The reality, of course, diverges widely from this image. Among other accomplishments, the Radical state governments that came into existence after 1868 made important gains in African-American rights and public education. Professor Blight closes the lecture with the passage of the 15th Amendment, the waning radicalism of the Republican party after 1870, and the rise of white political terrorism across the South. Transcript Lecture

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3 - The Carrot and the Stick: By the spring of 1965, pressure is building on President Johnson to make his case for the war to the American electorate. He resists, preferring to manage the conflict without public scrutiny, but finally agrees to go public,...

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Jefferson Cowie, "Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power" (Basic Books, 2022): An interview with Jefferson Cowie

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BUTCH & SUNDANCE Ep. 2 | “Rustlers and Robbers”: Bob Parker begins a rustling operation that contributes to the Johnson County War in Wyoming. He adopts the name Butch Cassidy and goes to trial for the alleged theft of a horse. Meanwhile, Sundance lives the life of a drifting cowboy until he robs his first train.

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S5 Ep.6: Big, if True: Why the U.S. relied on faulty intelligence from a man code-named Curveball.

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Donald Trump's Taxes with David Cay Johnston and Renato Mariotti: In this episode, Jill and Victor talk with David Cay Johnston and Renato Mariotti, who will help us understand Trump’s tax returns as reported by the New York Times. We’ll also talk to them about how the tax system benefits the rich, the possible political and legal implications -- both criminal and civil -- of Trump’s tax returns, and hopefully help you understand why Trump’s taxes should matter to you, the ultimate arbiter in this election.

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MGT Wants to be Trump’s VP + A Conversation with Occupy Democrats Grant Stern

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Ronald Reagan: The Peacemaker

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Lecture 19 - To Appomattox and Beyond: The End of the War and a Search for Meanings: Professor Blight uses Herman Melville's poem "On the Slain Collegians" to introduce the horrifying slaughter of 1864. The architect of the strategy that would eventually lead to Union victory, but at a staggering human cost, was Ulysses S. Grant, brought East to assume control of all Union armies in 1864. Professor Blight narrates the campaigns of 1864, including the Battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg. While Robert E. Lee battled Grant to a stalemate in Virginia, however, William Tecumseh Sherman's Union forces took Atlanta before beginning their March to the Sea, destroying Confederate morale and fighting power from the inside. Professor Blight closes his lecture with a description of the first Memorial Day, celebrated by African Americans in Charleston, SC 1865. Transcript Lecture Page

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The Cult of Donald J. Trump + A Conversation With Anthony Scaramucci: On this week's episode of Mea Culpa, former Trump fixer and New York Times bestselling author Michael Cohen speaks with former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci for an honest and raw conversation about the cult...