Ill Literacy: Books with Benson

Latest Episodes:

Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison's America (Guest: Tyson Reeder) Jan 29, 2025

Show notes

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Tyson Reeder, assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University, to discuss his new book, Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison's America. They chat about the espionage, shadow diplomacy, foreign scheming, and domestic backstabbing in the formative years of the American republic, and how an infant nation adjusting to rancorous partisan politics, aggravated by the untested and imperfect new tools of governance and the growing power of media, was exploited by foreign powers to advance their own agendas.

Get the book here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/serpent-in-eden-9780197628591?cc=us&lang=en&

Show Notes:

Law & Liberty: Sam Negus – “The Old World and the Young Republic”
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the-old-world-and-the-young-republic/

The Wall Street Journal: Mark G. Spencer – “‘Serpent in Eden’: Foreign Spies and False Allies”
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/serpent-in-eden-review-spies-lies-and-false-allies-5a34e6e8

Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union (Guest: Richard Carwardine) Jan 22, 2025

Show notes

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Richard Carwardine, Emeritus Rhodes Professor of American History and Distinguished Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University, to discuss his new book, Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union. They chat about how the tensions surrounding the moral quandary of slavery cracked the United States in half, and even formed rifts within the North itself, how Lincoln proclaimed more days of national fasting and thanksgiving than any other president before or since, and how these pauses for spiritual reflection provided the inspirational rhetoric and ideological fuel that sustained the war.

Get the book here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/24975/righteous-strife-by-richard-carwardine/

Bob Dylan: Prophet Without God (Guest: Jeffrey Edward Green) Dec 17, 2024

Show notes

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Jeffrey Edward Green, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of Pennsylvania, to discuss his new book, Bob Dylan: Prophet Without God. They chat about how Green sees Dylan as a modern-day prophet, but a prophet of diremption rather than a prophet of salvation. They also discuss how Dylan has made novel contributions to the meaning of self-reliance, the quest for rapprochement between the religious and non-religious, and the problem of how ordinary people might operate in a fallen political world.

Get the book here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/bob-dylan-9780197651742?cc=us&lang=en&

American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation―and Could Again (Guest: Yuval Levin) Dec 10, 2024

Show notes

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Yuval Levin, the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy, to discuss his new book, American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation―and Could Again. They chat about the Constitution’s true genius and reveals how it charts a path to repairing America’s fault lines. They also discuss the Constitution’s exceptional power to facilitate constructive disagreement, negotiate resolutions to disputes, and forge unity in a fractured society.

Get the book here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/yuval-levin/american-covenant/9780465040742/?lens=basic-books

Show Notes:

The Atlantic: Yuval Levin – “What’s Wrong With Congress (And How to Fix It)”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/congress-reform-filibuster-constitution/678604/

Commentary: Tal Fortgang – “We Are the Reformers We’ve Been Waiting For”
https://www.commentary.org/articles/tal-fortgang/american-covenant-constitution/

The Dispatch: Ben Rolsma – “The Constitution That Binds Us”
https://thedispatch.com/article/the-constitution-that-binds-us/

Law & Liberty: Charles C.W. Cooke – “A Roadmap—If We Want It”
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/a-roadmap-if-we-want-it/

Law & Liberty: John G. Grove – “The Latent Wisdom in Our Constitution”
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the-latent-wisdom-in-our-constitution/

Law & Liberty: Mark Landy – “How the Constitution Unifies the Country”
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/how-the-constitution-unifies-the-country/

Law & Liberty: Scott Yenor – “Can Our Constitutional Order be Revived?”
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/can-our-constitutional-order-be-revived/

National Review: Matthew J. Franck – “The Constitution We Still Need”
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2024/08/the-constitution-we-still-need/

Washington Examiner: Michael M. Rosen – “Yuval Levin’s constitutional glue”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/premium/3064559/constitutional-lore/

Washington Free Beacon: - Robert P. George – “A Constitution, If You Can Keep It”
https://freebeacon.com/culture/a-constitution-if-you-can-keep-it-2/

The Washington Post: Ramesh Ponnuru – “The Constitution was supposed to be a uniter, not a divider”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/18/yuval-levin-american-covenant-review-essay/

The Extinction of Experience (Guest: Christine Rosen) Dec 03, 2024

Show notes

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Christine Rosen, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and media commentary columnist at Commentary, to discuss her new book, The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World. They chat about how digital technologies offer novelty and convenience, but also transform our sense of self and warp the boundaries between virtual and real, and what the costs of these technologies are. They also discuss whether face-to-face communication, sense of place, authentic emotion, and even boredom are at risk of becoming extinct.

Get the book here: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393241716

Show Notes:

National Review: Ian Tuttle – “Losing Ourselves in a Disembodied World”

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2024/12/losing-ourselves-in-a-disembodied-world/

The Wall Street Journal: Meghan Cox Gurdon – “‘The Extinction of Experience’ Review: Devices and Distraction”

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/the-extinction-of-experience-review-devices-and-distraction-398139bc

Washington Examiner: Mark Judge – “Being human in a digitally disembodied world”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/community-family/3125777/being-human-in-a-digitally-disembodied-world/

A Great and Good Man: Rare, First-Hand Accounts and Observations of Abraham Lincoln (Guest: Jonathan W. White) Nov 25, 2024

Show notes

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Jonathan W. White, professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University, to discuss his new book, co-authored with William J. Griffing, A Great and Good Man: Rare, First-Hand Accounts and Observations of Abraham Lincoln. They chat about the excerpts of the more than 200 previously unpublished accounts written by men and women who lived during the Civil War featured in the book, what the writers thought about Lincoln, and how these letters and diaries shed new life on Lincoln’s life, his contemporary reputation during the war and before his assassination, and how his death instantaneously turned Lincoln into a revered martyr.

Get the book here: https://www.reedypress.com/shop/a-great-and-good-man-rare-first-hand-accounts-of-abraham-lincoln/

How Economics Explains the World (Guest: Andrew Leigh) Nov 18, 2024

Show notes

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Andrew Leigh, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment, and Federal Member for Fenner in the Australian Parliament, to discuss his book How Economics Explains the World: A Short History of Humanity. They chat about how ingenuity, greed, and desire for betterment have determined our past, present, and future. They also discuss why Europe colonized Africa instead of the other way around, what happened when countries erected trade and immigration barriers in the 1930s, and how property rights drove China’s growth surge in the 1980s

Get the book here: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-economics-explains-the-world-andrew-leigh?variant=42112692453410

Thomas Jefferson and the Fight against Slavery (Guest: Cara Rogers Stevens) Nov 13, 2024

Show notes

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Cara Rogers Stevens, associate professor of history at Ashland University, to discuss her book Thomas Jefferson and the Fight against Slavery. They chat about the evolution of Jefferson’s views on race and slavery, his legislative attempts to put the practice on a pathway to extinction in Virginia beginning in the colonial period, the antislavery intentions of his lone book, Notes on the State of Virginia,and how he tried to persuade younger slaveholders to embrace emancipation.

Get the book here: https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700635979/

Show Notes:

The Imaginative Conservative: Bradley J. Birzer – “Redeeming (Mostly) Thomas Jefferson”

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2024/07/thomas-jefferson-cara-rogers-stevens-fight-slavery-bradley-birzer.html

Why War? (Guest: Richard Overy) Oct 29, 2024

Show notes

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by renowned historian Richard Overy to discuss his new book, Why War? They chat about why has war been such a consistent presence throughout the human past, and indeed in the human present, and what are the major drivers and motivations for war, how each has contributed to organized conflict, and whether humanity will ever evolve away from organized conflict. They also discuss the impulses embedded in human biology and psychology, the incentives to conflict developed through cultural evolution, and how competition for resources, or conflicts stirred by the passions of belief, the effects of ecological stresses, the drive for power in leaders and nations, and the search for security all contribute to this phenomenon that is unique human.

Get the book here: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324021742

Show Notes:

The Telegraph: James Holland – “Why humanity’s appetite for war will never be sated”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/why-war-richard-overy-review/

Times Literary Supplement: Edward N. Luttwak – “Battle grounds”

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/politics-society/politics/why-war-richard-overy-book-review-edward-luttwak

The Wall Street Journal: Dominic Green – “‘Why War?’ Review: Nature, Nurture and Violence”

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/why-war-review-nature-nurture-and-violence-e0babb7f

A Voice in Their Own Destiny: Reagan, Thatcher, and Public Diplomacy in the Nuclear 1980s (Guest: Anthony Eames) Oct 21, 2024

Show notes

Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Anthony Eames, director of scholarly initiatives at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, non-resident fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and professorial lecturer at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, to discuss his new book, A Voice in Their Own Destiny: Reagan, Thatcher, and Public Diplomacy in the Nuclear 1980s. They chat about how the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher used innovations in public diplomacy to build back support for their foreign policy agendas at a moment of widespread popular dissent. They also discuss how ow competition between the governments of Reagan and Thatcher, the Anglo-American antinuclear movement, and the Soviet peace offensive sparked a revolution in public diplomacy.

Get the book here: https://www.umasspress.com/9781625347107/a-voice-in-their-own-destiny/

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