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Selene Castrovilla – Revolutionary Rogues: John André and Benedict Arnold Dec 18, 2017

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December 18, 2017 - This week -- just in time to get stuffed into your young reader's stocking -- we travel back to a familiar location, at a pivotal moment in the American Revolution. The year is 1780, when one of the greatest heroes of the Continental Army -- General Benedict Arnold -- decides to betray the patriot cause by surrendering West Point to the British with the help of British spymaster Major John André. We talked about these infamous men when we interviewed Robert Norden, tavern keeper at the Old '76 House in Tappan, New York, where patriots kept the captured Andre locked up after his capture and before his execution. You can enjoy that episode in the archives at HistoryAuthor.com or your favorite on-demand audio outlet. Our guide on this journey is award-winning young adult novelist and nonfiction author Selene Castrovilla who brings us: Revolutionary Rogues: Revolutionary Rogues: John André and Benedict Arnold. It's the real history behind heavily dramatized stories such as AMC's Turn: Washington's Spies and the smash Broadway musical Hamilton. Selene's third YA novel Melt, Book One of the Rough Romance Trilogy, racked up six honors including the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Spark Award. Revolutionary Friends, her third nonfiction picture book, earned four awards including Booklist Top Ten Biography for Youth. Visit our guest at SeleneCastrovilla.com, like her at Facebook.com/Selene.Castrovilla, follow @SCastrovilla on Twitter and SeleneCastrovilla on Instagram. You can also check out the artist behind the images half of Revolutionary Rogues at JohnOBrienIllustrator.com. Lovers of the Marquis de Lafayette can also honor his legacy of Franco-American friendship by joining The American Friends of Lafayette, which Selene spoke about so passionately in this episode.

Stephen Davis – All the Fighting They Want Dec 11, 2017

Show notes

December 11, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back to the American Civil War in All the Fighting They Want: The Atlanta Campaign from Peach Tree Creek to the City's Surrender, July 18-September 2, 1864. Our guide on this journey is Stephen Davis, a longtime Atlantan and Civil War enthusiast since the fourth grade. All the Fighting They Want serves as a companion to his previous paperback, A Long and Bloody Task: The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton through Kennesaw to the Chattahoochee, May 5-July 18, 1864. The books are part of the Emerging Civil War Series, published by Savas Beatie LLC. Learn more about their titles at SavasBeatie.com or on Twitter @SavasBeatieLLC. Stephen Davis has served as Book Review Editor for Blue & Gray magazine for more than twenty years, and you've seen his many articles in scholarly and popular journals. His previous books are 2001's Atlanta Will Fall: Sherman, Joe Johnston and the Yankee Heavy Battalions, and 2012's What the Yankees Did to Us: Sherman’s Bombardment and Wrecking of Atlanta.

Doug Stanton – The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War Dec 04, 2017

Show notes

December 4, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back 50 years to one of the Vietnam War's massive set pieces: The Tet Offensive. This series of simultaneous attacks by the communist North on 36 cities, aimed to weaken support both within the Vietnamese republic in the South and across the Pacific in the United States. Our guest, Doug Stanton, embeds his readers with 46 fresh, young American soldiers in Echo Company: An Army reconnaissance platoon of the 101st Airborne Division. Some of those men had only been in country for a few weeks when they found themselves facing waves of battle-hardened Viet Cong guerrillas, often in hand-to-hand combat, at the point of a bayonet. Doug Stanton captures their story through the eyes of 20-year-old Stanley Parker in The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War. Mr. Stanton is a journalist, lecturer, screenwriter, and the author of New York Times bestsellers In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors. He also brought us Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan, which is the basis for a Jerry Bruckheimer film coming in 2018. Doug Stanton's work has appeared in a wide number of top publications, and he's been a contributing editor at Outside. He's also a founder of the National Writers Series. For more, visit DougStanton.com or follow him on Twitter @DougStantonBook. Also mentioned in this episode is author/illustrator Marcelino Truong's graphic memoir on growing up in the ultimately doomed Republic of Vietnam: Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63.

Robert W. Merry – President McKinley: Architect of the American Century Nov 27, 2017

Show notes

The New York Sun - McKinley High: Cancel Culture Targets Assassinated President in Hawaii - Dean Karayanis November 27, 2017 - This week, our time machine visits the Gilded Age to witness William McKinley's rise to the White House. Little remembered or misremembered today, at the time of his assassination in 1901, the Civil War veteran was the most popular president since Abraham Lincoln, and nothing like the caricature portrayed by mid-20th Century authors. Robert W. Merry sets the record straight in President McKinley: Architect of the American Century. You've seen Mr. Merry was editor of The National Interest from 2011 to 2013, and previously served as a Washington correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and executive editor of the Congressional Quarterly. He's now editor at The American Conservative. You've seen his work everywhere from the New York Times to National Review, and seen his appearances on shows like Meet the Press. His previous book resurrected another overlooked president: A Country of Vast Designs, on James K Polk, and Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians. Also mentioned this week: Our interview with Candice Shy Hooper, author of Lincoln's Generals' Wives: Four Women Who Influenced the Civil War--for Better and for Worse.

Rebecca Fraser – The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America Nov 20, 2017

Show notes

Featured in the New York Sun - How Capitalism Paved the Way for the First Thanksgiving - Dean Karayanis November 20, 2017 - This week -- just in time for Thanksgiving in America -- we set sail with the intrepid Pilgrims on The Mayflower. Once aboard, we'll meet the Winslow family, and gain a perspective that links the broader experience -- from Native American contacts to intrigues back home in Europe. Tracing the voyage with us is reviewer and broadcaster Rebecca Fraser author of The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America. The daughter of noted British historian Lady Antonia Fraser and former president of the Brontë Society in the U.K. Her previous books include The Story of Britain. You can find her on Twitter at R Fraser Author.

Jennifer Kincheloe – The Woman in the Camphor Trunk Nov 13, 2017

Show notes

November 13, 2017 - This week, we'll see a familiar face in the passenger seat of our time machine under a big cartwheel hat, as we travel back to 1908 Los Angeles. Our guest is Jennifer Kincheloe, here to chat about her second novel, The Woman in the Camphor Trunk -- An Anna Blanc Mystery. Since we last spoke, Jen has earned the Colorado Gold Award for Mystery, and spots as a finalist for the MacAvirty Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award, the Left Coast Crime "Lefty" Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel, and the Colorado Author's League Award for Genre Fiction. You can catch our interview on her acclaimed debut novel, The Secret Life of Anna Blanc, in the archives at HistoryAuthor.com or wherever you're listening, and find our guest online at JenniferKincheloe.com, on Twitter @JenKincheloe, or Facebook.com/TheSecretLifeOfAnnaBlanc -- where she shares all the great Gilded Age images you could ever want and then some.

Margaret E. Wagner – America and the Great War: A Library of Congress Illustrated History Nov 06, 2017

Show notes

November 6, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back to a time when the United States fought its first major overseas conflict, joining a fight idealized as making the world safe for democracy. Our guide on this journey is Margaret E. Wagner, a senior writer/editor in the Library of Congress Publishing Office. She brings us America and the Great War: A Library of Congress Illustrated History. This book is almost an art history museum sitting on your coffee table, offering up over 250 images, along with 4-color illustrations -- many never seen before. Margaret Wagner has applied the talents she put into her previous books, The Library of Congress Illustrated Timeline of the Civil War; The American Civil War: 365 Days, and, World War II: 365 Days. She's also co-author of The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference and The Library of Congress World War II Companion.

Rich & Sandra Neil Wallace – Bound by Ice: A True North Pole Survival Story Oct 30, 2017

Show notes

October 30, 2017 - This week, our time machine bolts on its studded snow tires for a freezing journey to the North Pole -- a trip we'll make long before GPS, cell phones, or Gortex gloves -- with Gilded Age explorers aboard the schooner USS Jeannette. Returning to the show are husband-and-wife writing team Rich Wallace and Sandra Neil Wallace. They last joined us to discuss their book Blood Brother: Jonathan Daniels and His Sacrifice for Civil Rights. You can hear that chat in our archives at HistoryAuthor.com, or wherever you're listening. Their book today is a world away from the sweltering Alabama heat of the 1960s. It's Bound by Ice: A True North Pole Survival Story, and it's aimed at readers nine to eighteen years of age, although I enjoyed it even at a good distance beyond my high school graduation. You've seen Sandra's work as a news anchor and ESPN sportscaster, and Rich has written over three dozen novels for children and teens, including such as Babe Conquers the World co-written with Sandra. The Young Adult Library Services Association named his novel Wrestling Sturbridge, one of the 100 Best of the Best for the Twenty-First Century. You can visit our guests at SandraNeilWallace.com, and RichWallaceBooks.com, and follow them on Twitter @SandraNWallace and @RWallaceBooks.

Fiona Davis – The Address: A Novel Oct 23, 2017

Show notes

October 23, 2017 - This week, our time machine shuttles back and forth between the 1880s and the 1980s, with a story anchored at the ends of family trees and DNA strands. Our guide on this journey is Fiona Davis, author of The Address: A Novel. It builds a bridge between two women, united across a century by the legendary Dakota apartment building. Famous today as the home to celebrities and artists -- and infamous as the spot John Lennon met his doom -- it was originally a Guided Age an enigma, plopped in the middle of Upper Manhattan's muddy fields, still dotted with ramshackle farmhouses. By the 1980s, the Dakota had fallen into sooty disrepair, and found its grand apartments suffering architectural indignities like lime green shag carpets, bamboo walls, and mirrored closets. The Address follows on the heels of Fiona Davis's acclaimed first book, The Dollhouse, about the famed Barbizon Hotel for Women. Born in Canada and raised in places as far-flung as Utah, Texas, and New Jersey, our guest worked for years as an actress on Broadway, and attended both the College of William & Mary and the Columbia University School of Journalism. Find her online at FionaDavis.net, Facebook.com/FionaDavisAuthor, or @FionaJDavis on Twitter.

Malcolm Bell – The Attica Turkey Shoot Oct 16, 2017

Show notes

October 16, 2017 - This week, our time machine travels back to a date of infamy: September 9, 1971, when inmates seized control of Attica Correctional Facility in Western New York State. A four-day standoff resulted, ending when police and corrections officers stormed Attica, leaving 29 inmates and 10 guards dead and dying. In the immediate aftermath, newspapers and television reported the state-sanctioned version of events: The prisoners had murdered the hostages. The medical examiner debunked that narrative the next morning, stating that police bullets had killed those held captive. From that point on, New York officials from Governor Nelson Rockefeller on down kicked into high gear to suppress the full truth -- a truth that remained buried and scoffed at for half a century. Malcolm Bell -- hired by New York State in 1973 to prosecute any cases that might arise out of its investigation -- reveals what really happened when the state retook the prison. His book is The Attica Turkey Shoot: Carnage, Cover-Up, and the Pursuit of Justice. While serving as a New York State prosecutor, Bell blew the whistle on the Empire State’s refusal to hold law enforcement officers accountable for the extensive torture and murder that they committed during the riots. You can find our guest at Facebook.com/MalcolmBellAuthor

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