Historically Thinking

"There was a time when the Declaration of Independence was news. Most books written about the Declaration have pursued questions about its precedence and authorship as well as its legacy. In 1776, when the Declaration was news, it was part of an ever-changing and circulating amalgam of accurate and inaccurate information, gossip, military intelligence, speculation, and opinion. At approximately one thousand three hundred and twenty words from ‘When in the Course of Human Events’ through ‘Our Sacred Honor,’ the Declaration took fewer than ten minutes to read and filled only one or two columns of a typical newspaper. This was a text that could be communicated swiftly, but it was also a text for which the context in which it was communicated mattered. The questions of who experienced the news of independence and when and how they did so reveal a critical, overlooked history of the American Revolution.”Those are the words of my guest Emily Sneff in her new book When the Declaration of Independence Was News. It is a book that reframes the Declaration and enables us to see it in a new way: at a moment when the success of the Revolution was far from inevitable, and when the mere existence of the Declaration forced people to choose sides—or to reconsider everything they had previously believed about authority, loyalty, and politics.Emily Sneff is an independent historian specializing in the history and memory of the American Revolution. Her research has focused particularly on the Declaration of Independence and its transmission, reception, and preservation. When the Declaration of Independence Was News is her first book.

The Declaration of Independence has had two simultaneous lives. One is the life of its ideas, the life that scholars pay the most attention to: a life of fits and starts, surprisingly forgotten in the first years after the Revolution, then returning with a vengeance amid sectional conflict in the 1830s, during the Progressive Era, and again during the Civil Rights Movement.Its second life is as a material document. It is an engrossed parchment rushed away from advancing British troops twice in its life, carried by carriage and train across the United States, tucked away in archives and cellars, displayed in patent offices and libraries, and eventually enshrined in a helium-filled case under carefully controlled conditions.As Michael Auslin argues in National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America, these two lives cannot be separated. Americans did not merely preserve the Declaration because of what it said. They preserved it because the physical document itself became a national relic—an object that connected generations of Americans to the Revolution and to one another.Michael Auslin is the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is the author of numerous books on American and international history and writes The Pawtomack Packet, a Substack devoted to the history of Washington, D.C.

American independence was not simply the writing of the Declaration of Independence, nor even the vote that approved it. It was the culmination of decades of argument, persuasion, and political innovation. The American founding emerged through a succession of speeches, petitions, resolutions, constitutions, and other documents in which Americans struggled to define liberty, self-government, and the proper limits of power. And the conversation did not end there; it continued, and continues.David Stewart explores that conversation in his new book, The Democracy We Must Keep: Seven Founders, Nine Documents, and the Ideas That Shaped Them. Through a close examination of nine pivotal texts—from Patrick Henry’s call for liberty to Washington’s Farewell Address—Stewart traces the development of the ideas that made the United States possible. In doing so, he reminds us that the American experiment has always depended not only on institutions, but on the ideas, principles, and debates that gave them life.David O. Stewart is a recovering attorney and the author of numerous works of history and fiction. His books include Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America and George Washington: The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father. He previously appeared on Historically Thinking in Episode 199 to discuss George Washington and the practice of politics in the early republic.

On July 4, 1777, in Boston, the Reverend William Gordon gave one of the first July 4th orations in American history—certainly the first to become a pamphlet. For over a century these orations were a feature of the national festival, “an essential annual occasion for debating the present and future of American politics.” In the first century of American independence over one hundred thousand such speeches were delivered, about 2,500 of which survive in pamphlets. They were essential, until suddenly they were not.How these orations surveyed the past and looked forward to the future is the focus of my guest Nathan Perl-Rosenthal’s new book The Long Revolution: Creating a United States after 1776. These speeches are a mine from which he extracts visions, anxieties, and imaginings, ranging from William Gordon’s speech all the way to the fizzled attempts of President Gerald Ford to continue the tradition in 1976.Nathan Perl-Rosenthal is Professor of History, French and Italian, and Law at the University of Southern California. He is also the author of The Age of Revolutions–And the Generations Who Made It. His research focuses on political culture, revolution, and the creation of modern states and identities.

The often extremely quotable Hannah Arendt once wrote that “the French Revolution, which ended in disaster, has made world history, while the American Revolution, so triumphantly successful, has remained an event of little more than local importance.”My guest Richard Bell emphatically disagrees. In The American Revolution and the Fate of the World (Penguin, 2025), Bell argues that the Revolution was global from the very beginning. It drew participants from multiple continents, reshaped patterns of migration and trade, altered imperial policy from Canada to India, and inspired movements for liberty around the world. What Americans often remember as a national story was, in reality, a global convulsion.Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home, was the focus of a conversation on this podcast that was published on December 30th, 2019.

“This is a book about a cruel and ruthless war—a war without mercy—in which those caught up in it believed they had nothing to lose by fighting without regard for the rules of so-called ‘civilized warfare.’ It was the War for American Independence. At its grimmest level, this was a confrontation in which military restraint was more the exception than the rule, a struggle in which combatants believed their very existence was in question.”Those are the words of my guest Mark Lender and his co-author, the late James Kirby Martin, from their book War Without Mercy: Liberty or Death in the American Revolution. While a growing number of historians have shown that the Revolutionary War was often far more brutal than Americans like to remember, few have attempted to explain why it became so brutal. Lender and Martin argue that the answer lies in understanding the Revolution as an existential war: a conflict in which participants believed defeat threatened not merely political loss, but the destruction of their families, communities, and way of life.Mark Lender is Professor Emeritus of History at Kean University and most recently served as advisor to the 250th Anniversary Exhibit at the National Museum of the United States Army. He and James Kirby Martin also co-authored A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763-1789.

At his first inauguration, George Washington made a very carefully calibrated political statement: he wore a brown suit. It was tailored from a weave of superfine wool made in Hartford, Connecticut, and was so far from being the crude homespun which was for some an emblem of a proud American—or, for British cartoonists, of crude Brother Jonathan—that some newspapers criticized Washington for wearing a suit of imported fabric. The cloth seemed too good to have been made in America.Washington wore two suits that day. In the evening, at the inaugural ball, he wore a suit of imported purple silk. The choice of these two suits, argues my guest Chloe Chapin in her new book Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men, shows a dividing line between two eras: an eighteenth century of Washington’s youth and early middle age in which men wore a wide variety of textiles in a cornucopia of colors and textures; and a democratic age in which drab and severe signaled liberty and equality among men. Chloe Chapin holds a PhD in American Studies and has worked for more than two decades as a costume designer for Broadway productions, opera companies, and Shakespeare festivals. Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men is her first book.

My guest Peter C. Mancall’s new book is Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000–1680. It is, now, the first volume in the Oxford History of the United States, an ongoing multi-volume narrative series—a series whose story is worth an episode in and of itself.In Contested Continent, Mancall describes the foundation of that place which would eventually become the United States. It is a long era of human history which foreshadowed that which was to come, one in which peoples from four continents came together in a collision of violence and mutuality in North America. “Much of what happened,” he writes, “came to define the American experience, including the rise of a booming transatlantic economy based on the extraction of abundant American natural resources, the central role European migrants and their descendants played in the enslavement of Africans, the displacement of Indigenous peoples, and the spread of self-governing polities where many people enjoyed religious liberty. None of those developments was inevitable. Nor did sweeping changes occur quickly.” Or we might say that like the glaciers of an advancing ice age, the events of this era often seem slow and ponderous, but ultimately they change everything that gets in their way.Peter C. Mancall is Distinguished Professor, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, and Director of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute at the University of Southern California. He is the author of numerous books, including Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson and Hakluyt’s Promise: An Elizabethan’s Obsession for an English America.

In the 1930s, five young men at Cambridge University became members of the Communist Party. This is not too surprising, in retrospect; many others were doing so as well. But these five men were recruited by the intelligence services of the Soviet Union, and for seventeen years they betrayed the secrets of Britain and the United States.They are now often referred to as the Cambridge Five. They were Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross. While their story has been told and retold and retold in Britain, always as a parable of class and the establishment, my guest Antonia Senior observes that very few have looked at the story of the Cambridge Five from the other side of the relationship. “What did Stalin want from them?,” she asks. “How did they fit into Stalin’s vision, and how did they further his cause?”Antonia Senior is a novelist, reviewer for The Times, and co-host of the podcast History Book Buffs alongside friend of this podcast Roger Moorhouse. Her latest book, Stalin’s Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire, was recently named a finalist for the 2026 Orwell Prize. In this conversation we discuss Cambridge in the 1930s, revolutionary violence, Soviet intelligence recruitment, Stalin’s imperial ambitions, Poland, espionage, ideology, and the enduring temptation to excuse tyranny in the name of an ever-distant utopia.

“It was a cold January afternoon when I first came to the ghetto. I got there much later than I’d hoped. I’d spent much of the day elsewhere and had just lost track of time. It was already beginning to get dark. The campo seemed deserted. Shutters were closed, and apart from the tinkling of water in the wells, there was hardly a sound. There were no streetlights, barely even the glimmer of a lamp. But in the branches of the trees, thousands of tiny lights were shining.”That is the opening paragraph of my guest Alexander Lee’s new book, The First Ghetto: Venice and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism, in which he traces both the history of the Venetian ghetto and, through it, the history of modern antisemitism. In our conversation we discuss the origins of the word “ghetto,” the peculiar politics of the Venetian Republic, Jewish moneylending and commerce, the arrival of Iberian Jews fleeing persecution, the vibrancy of ghetto culture during its “golden age,” and how following the collapse of the Republic how segregation and antisemitism mutated into the twentieth century.Alexander Lee is a historian of Renaissance Italy and the author of numerous books, including Machiavelli: His Life and Times. He is also a columnist for History Today.

The story of classical Greece is often told, rightly or wrongly, as the story of the alliance, competition, and eventual war between Athens and Sparta. Even in antiquity, each city fascinated the other. Athenians imagined Spartans as disciplined, laconic conquerors; Spartans regarded Athens with a mixture of admiration, suspicion, and alarm. Yet despite their differences, both cities shared fundamental Greek assumptions about honor, competition, citizenship, and excellence.In his new book Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece , my guest Adrian Goldsworthy tells the story of classical Greece through the relationship between these two cities: from their legendary origins, through the Persian Wars, and into the tensions that would ultimately lead to the catastrophe of the Peloponnesian War. Along the way we discuss democracy, slavery, naval warfare, the strange logic of Greek politics, and why the Greeks never succeeded in becoming “Greece.”Adrian Goldsworthy is a historian of the classical world and the author of numerous books on Greece and Rome, including biographies of Julius Caesar, Augustus, and Philip and Alexander. He was last on Historically Thinking to discuss Augustus. This is his sixth appearance on the podcast.For more notes and resources, go to the Historically Thinking Substack

On May 29, 1453, the city of Constantine—Constantinople—ceased to exist. For over a millennium it had stood as a center of Roman political power, Greek learning, and the Christian faith. Now its walls were breached, its emperor lay dead among the defenders, and its inhabitants were carried off into slavery.Yet, as my guest Anthony Kaldellis argues, the city’s final resistance tells a different story from the one we often inherit. Its defenders did not regard their fate as inevitable. “Its fierce resistance at the end,” he writes, “stands as a final protest against narratives that would render it irrelevant… The Romans asserted a right to survive, and, by not surrendering, they refused to consent to their obsolescence.”  In this conversation, we examine the fall of Constantinople not as a foregone conclusion, but as a close-run struggle shaped by contingency, miscalculation, and missed opportunities.Anthony Kaldellis is Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Classics and the College at the University of Chicago. A leading scholar of the later Roman Empire, his work focuses on Byzantine political culture, identity, and historiography. His most recent book, 1453: The Conquest and Tragedy of Constantinople, offers a new account of the city’s final siege grounded in a close reading of contemporary sources.

For four years—from July 16, 1945, the date of the first atomic test, to August 29, 1949, when the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear device—the history of nuclear weapons might appear to be an exclusively American story. But even that is misleading.From the earliest theorization of the chain reaction, nuclear development was international: a web of scientific collaboration, technological transfer, espionage, and strategic imitation. As my guest David Holloway argues, nuclear weapons have always had an international history—one that can only be understood by examining not just individual states, but their relationships, perceptions, and interactions.To approach nuclear weapons in this way, he suggests, “requires an effort to understand the different parties involved, their strategies, their policies, their behavior, and, above all, their relationships and interactions.” In this conversation, we explore that history—from Los Alamos to Moscow, from Atoms for Peace to nuclear brinkmanship, and from non-proliferation to the limits of the nuclear order itself.  David Holloway is Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, Professor of Political Science, and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (Emeritus) at Stanford University. His work focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, Soviet science and technology, and the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His latest book, Nuclear Weapons: An International History, represents a culmination of decades of scholarship.Chapters0:02:31 — What Is International History?0:07:11 — The International Roots of Nuclear Science0:12:23 — Technology Transfer and the Klaus Fuchs Connection0:16:51 — The Soviet Bomb: Hesitation and Espionage0:19:06 — Atoms for Peace0:21:13 — The Thermonuclear Turning Point0:24:02 — Nuclear Weapons and Marxist Theory0:30:08 — Brinkmanship: Dulles, Khrushchev, and the Logic of the Brink0:33:50 — Non-Proliferation and the NPT0:43:57 — India, Pakistan, and the Blind Eye

At the very beginning of his forthcoming book Europe: A New History, my guest Roderick Beaton asks a simple but disarming set of questions: Why a “new” history of Europe? Why might we need one? And what makes this history new?His answer is not merely about newly discovered facts, or even reinterpretations of old ones. It is about events. “To study history,” he writes, “is to look for patterns to make sense of the things that happen…When things change, when new and unexpected events suddenly reshape the world that we thought we knew around us, the effect is like the turning of a kaleidoscope—the whole pattern changes.” The present does not leave the past untouched. It rearranges it.So we need a new history of Europe not because the past has changed, but because our vantage point has. “The story told in this book,” Beaton writes, “has been shaped by the changed and changing perspective of the mid-2020s; it could not have been told this way before.” In this conversation, we explore what it means to write history under those conditions—and what Europe looks like when its past is seen anew.Roderick Beaton is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature at King’s College London. A distinguished historian of Greece and Europe, he was knighted by King Charles III in 2024 for his services to history. He previously appeared on Historically Thinking to discuss his book The Greeks: A Global History.

“In the generation just before the Civil War, something like one-quarter of America’s enslaved people lived on large plantations with fifty or more forced laborers—in essence, work camps, where contact with whites might be limited and mostly utilitarian. Another quarter lived on plantations where twenty to fifty persons were held in slavery. The typical owner of, say, thirty captive Black workers knew his enslaved people individually, even if their true feelings often remained hidden from him.That leaves half the South’s enslaved population living on properties where fewer than twenty Black people were held in bondage. Households that included, say, five or ten enslaved folk were very numerous. Callousness and exploitation were baked into the system, but slavery on this scale also required physical closeness between white and Black. This sort of environment was home to nearly two million African Americans by 1860, and it represented the predominant pattern in Virginia, which held within its borders the largest enslaved population of any colony or state throughout the period from 1619 until 1865.These smaller farms and homes formed a system where, for the most part, the exploiters and the exploited knew one another personally, sometimes even intimately.”These are the words of my guest Melvin Patrick Ely in his new book A Terrible Intimacy: Interracial Life in the Slave Holding South. An eminent historian of slavery and the American South, Ely’s last book was Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Freedom from the 1790s to the Civil War, for which he received the 2005 Bancroft prize. In A Terrible Intimacy he returns to the archives he knows better than anyone, the court records of Prince Edward County, Virginia, teasing from them what they reveal about what is perhaps the most complicated subject in American history.

“Over the course of the sixteenth century,” writes my guest Catherine Fletcher, “the handgun made a transition from a novel and decisive military technology to become an everyday object, in use across society and carrying a new set of cultural associations that would persist through the coming centuries.”This was the firearm revolution.In this conversation, Fletcher explores how an evolving technology became a transformative one—not simply changing warfare, but altering the structure of society itself. Guns moved from battlefields into cities, homes, and daily life. In doing so, they reshaped how states exercised power, how individuals understood violence, and how social order was enforced.Catherine Fletcher is a historian of the Renaissance and early modern Europe, and is Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University.

The history of modern Syria is usually reduced to a story of autocracy, repression, and occasional revolt. And it is a short story, stretching back only to the fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire, or perhaps to the secret terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement that divided the Near East between Britain and France. But my guest Daniel Neep has a different perspective. He believes that such narratives overlook “the pre-​colonial foundations for modern Syria that were undertaken by reformers, infrastructure builders and identity entrepreneurs in the late Ottoman Empire.” They also neglect “the role that Syrians themselves played in determining the precise course of these borders” as well as the ways in which Syrians “ have fiercely clung to their right to live with respect and dignity.” These are some of the arguments which he develops in his new book Syria: A Modern History.Daniel Neep is Senior Editor at Arab Center Washington DC and a non-resident fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. He has taught Middle East politics at George Washington University, Georgetown University, and the University of Exeter, and was previously Syria research director with the Council for British Research in the Levant. He has lived in Syria for five years, including for the first year of the uprising, as well as in Amman, and Beirut, and now lives in Washington, DC.

About a century before the birth of Jesus, during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, a remarkable man began a nearly unprecedented intellectual endeavor. Sima Qian, like his father before him, was an official in the imperial court. Working on a plan left behind by his father, Sima Qian began writing a history of China for the two thousand years before his own time. The scope of his labors, and the historiographical discipline and philosophy of history that he brought to them, make him a sort of combination of Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, and Plutarch. Yet in many ways, his personal life was just as extraordinary. With me to discuss this monumental figure in the writing of history, either in China or anywhere else, is Andrew Meyer, Professor of History at Brooklyn College, and an expert in early Chinese intellectual history. He was recently on the podcast discussing his book To Rule All under Heaven: A History of Classical China: From Confucius to the First Emperor. 

In this short episode, Al introduces a new feature of the Historically Thinking podcast: the Historically Thinking Field Guides. Drawing on nearly 450 past episodes, these guides gather conversations around major historical themes—beginning with a first guide devoted to the Second World War—so listeners can explore topics through curated sets of episodes, questions, and commentary. Al also explains how the podcast is evolving on Substack, where listeners can receive expanded show notes, weekly “Friday Reflection” discussions with questions and reading lists, and future essays and collections of historical links. It’s a brief update on where the podcast is going in 2026—and an invitation to explore the growing archive of Historically Thinking.For more, go to www.historicallythinking.org

During the American Civil War an estimated 194,000 Union soldiers and 214,000 Confederate soldiers became prisoners of war. No prior or subsequent American conflict has seen such numbers. During the Second World War, approximately 124,000 Americans were held captive, but the chance of being captured in that conflict was roughly one in one hundred; during the Civil War it was closer to one in five. Captivity was not a marginal experience. It was central to the war.Indeed, the gigantic scale of prisoner-of-war camps was one of the conflict’s most consequential innovations. Every modern war since has produced successors to Andersonville, Point Lookout, Rock Island, and Florence. Yet prisoner-of-war camps remain oddly peripheral in our narratives of the Civil War, overlooked both as institutional innovations and as formative experiences for soldiers and their families. My guest, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, argues in A Fate Worse Than Hell: American Prisoners of the Civil War that captivity reshaped military policy, political rhetoric, racial attitudes, and postwar memory. Prison camps were not aberrations; they were integral to the modernizing logic of total war.For more on the guest, show notes, sources, and related episodes, go to the Historically Thinking Substack at www.historicallythinking.orgChaptersIntroduction - 0:00Historical Treatment of POWs - 2:35Parole System and Napoleonic Wars - 4:47Scale and Logistics of Civil War Prisons - 7:42Lincoln's Dilemma: Sovereignty vs Prisoner Exchange - 10:56Andersonville: Conditions and the Deadline - 31:48Point Lookout and Union Prisons - 47:25Prison Society and Community - 57:45Black Prisoners of War - 65:33Elmira Prison and John W. Jones - 82:11

Lutherans are a strange denomination in American religious history and culture. For Catholics they are certainly Protestants. For Protestants they are crypto-Catholics. While they have been around since the Swedes established their short-lived colony on the Delaware River, they have typically received as much attention in the American imagination as the short-lived Swedish colony on the Delaware River. But my guest Timothy D. Grundmeier has a different point of view. He argues in his new book Lutheranism and American Culture: The Making of a Distinctive Faith that Lutheranism was a central component of nineteenth-century American religion and of the era of the Civil War. This is because Lutherans were numerous, the nation’s fourth largest denomination by 1900; they were uniquely positioned in the American religious landscape; and they almost invariably expressed the opinion of the “moderate majority” in Union states outside the Northeast. And, as with every other aspect of American society, Lutheranism was reshaped by the struggle of the Civil War, and Reconstruction.Timothy D. Grundmeier is professor of history at Martin Luther College in New Ulm, Minnesota. Lutheranism and American Culture is his first book.Chapters00:00:00 - Introduction 00:02:60 - What is Lutheranism? 00:06:21 - The Civil War Era Defined 00:09:01 - Three Varieties of American Lutheranism 00:19:44 - The Old Lutherans and Missouri Synod 00:27:38 - How the Civil War Fractured Lutheranism 00:39:36 - The Slavery Debate: Walter and the Norwegians 00:47:20 - Lutheran Quietism After the Civil War 00:52:38 - The Great Lutheran Realignment 01:02:35 - Ideas, Institutions, and Cultural Context

The two hundred and eighty years between the death of the philosopher Confucius and the reign of the first Emperor of China saw one of the most profound revolutions in human history. Not only did it end with the creation of an imperial rule that persisted through successive dynasties for 2,132 years, but it also saw the creation of “new traditions of thought and practice…great monuments of art, literature, and philosophy…that still inform social life in our own lifetime.” The era of the “warring states”, as scholars call it, was critical not just for China or East Asia, “but to that of humanity writ large.”Yet this era remains almost unknown in the English-speaking world. “If one enters any bookstore…in search of a book about classical Athens, the conquestions of Alexander, or the early Roman Republic,” writes my guest Andrew Meyer, “one will have many options. But if one looks for such a book about the corresponding period in early Chinese history, there are none. I wrote this book to fill that gap.”Andrew Seth Meyer is Professor of History at Brooklyn College. A specialist in the intellectual history of early China, he is the author of The Dao of the Military: Liu An's Art of War and co-author of The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China. His latest book is To Rule All under Heaven: A History of Classical China, from Confucius to the First Emperor, which is the subject of our conversation today.Chapters0:35 - Book Overview & Historical Context 4:47 - Dating the Warring States Period 8:42 - What Are the Warring States? 11:08 - Social Structure & Aristocracy 18:39 - Rivers & Regional Differences 24:45 - Military Power & Wealth 31:37 - Four Great Questions: State Models 40:51 - Centralization vs Regional Autonomy 51:26 - Education & Intellectuals

This is the first ever Historically Thinking Roundtable. Given that it's 2026, it’s appropriate that this roundtable focus on the 250th anniversary of the United States, and how historians can be involved in its commemoration. Difficulties in doing this can arise from at least two reasons. One is that historians, like most academics, represent a relatively small slice of the political pie. And indeed, in these very partisan times, academics are some of the least trusted people in society–right around members of congress, according to a recent poll. Naturally academics and professionals in cultural institutions tend to get defensive about that, and beginning in a posture of attack and defense usually means that whatever happens afterward will not be good. But there’s another problem, one related to historical thinking. Historians are taught to tell the whole story, however complicated and messy. They often find anything less than that to be distortion. And while arguably civic thought requires an element of gratitude, that’s not how historians think of their own craft. These difficulties can be acutely felt by professionals in With me to discuss these difficulties, and how to resolve them are:Bill Peterson, Director of the State Historical Society of North DakotaTrait Thompson, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, host of the podcast, co-host of A Very OK PodcastBen Jones, South Dakota State Historian, and Director of the South Dakota Historical Society, Ryan Cole, historian, Speechwriter at U.S. Senate, author most recently of The Last Adieu: Lafayette's Triumphant Return, the Echoes of Revolution, and the Gratitude of the RepublicAnd Jill Weiss Simins, historian and Director of Special Projects, Indiana State ArchivesChapters0:00 - Introduction 3:20 - Community Conversations in Red States 13:04 - Telling Complex History 20:28 - When Is Complexity Bad? 25:12 - Bridging Alienation and Division 31:10 - Primary Sources and Making Arguments 37:35 - Historical Distortion and Noble Lies 47:15 - America 250 Local Projects

He was at various times in his life known as Gaius Octavius Thurinus; Gaius Julius Caesar; and Caesar Augustus. He called himself Princeps, the first man in Rome; the Roman Senate would eventually call him pater patriae, the father of his country. Heir to his great-uncle Julius Caesar, this 19 year old was dropped into the tumult of Roman political violence, and emerged from it the sole and undisputed victor after decades of civil war. He murdered hundreds, and then became the founder of a new Roman system that brought peace and prosperity to Rome’s citizens and inhabitants. He was tyrannical and giving, cruel and clever, manipulative and noble. And he has claim to be one of the most successful politicians to ever lead a nation or a kingdom, who created a system which lasted for hundreds of years after his death.With me to discuss Caesar Augustus is Adrian Goldsworthy, author of Augustus: First Emperor of Rome, now being reissued in its second edition. The annoyingly prolific author of a shelf of books, both of ancient history and historical fiction, Adrian Goldsworthy has been described as the OG scholar of the Roman Army and the Mr Darcy of Ancient History. Since his next book comes out in May, this promises to be the first of at least two conversations with him in 2026–and this is his sixth appearance on the podcast.ChaptersIntroduction: Caesar Augustus (0:00)The Standard Received View: Syme's Roman Revolution (1:33)The Importance of Names: Octavian vs Caesar (13:27)Why Not Call Him Emperor? (22:56)Why Did Julius Caesar Pick This Kid? (27:06)Augustus's Talented Circle: Agrippa, Maecenas, and Livia (36:20)Augustus's Travels and Provincial Administration (47:59)Marriage Laws and Religious Reform (57:34)The Aeneid: Propaganda or Great Literature? (64:08)The Last 16 Years and Augustus's Legacy (71:52)

For a very long time humans have been getting sick. Sometimes we have gotten sick more easily than at other times. From time to time we get sick from things a human body has never before encountered. Sickness is always present with us. And while injury we can understand–like breaking a leg, or having a rock hit your head–sickness can be as mysterious to people in 2026 who trust the science as it was to our ancestors 4,000 years ago. “Why did one patient heal,” my guest Susan Wise Bauer writes, “while another rotted? And what about the shivering, miserable sufferer who simply awoke with a sore throat and cough, after going to bed healthy and filled with plans the night before? It is the constant presence of sickness, not injury, that has shaped the way we think about ourselves and our world.”Susan Wise Bauer’s books include The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home (fourth ed., 2024) and The Story of Western Science: From the Writings of Aristotle to the Big Bang Theory. Her most recent book is The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy. 0:00 Introduction 1:45 What This Book Is and Isn't 4:35 Did Hunter-Gatherers Get Sick? 9:50 Guilt and Sickness 14:00 Doctors as Priests 21:30 The Four Humors 25:15 Humoral Theory and Colonialism 29:45 Occasionalism: God's Will and Disease 35:55 The Black Death 40:45 The History of Drugs 45:50 Vaccines: Jenner and Cowpox 50:30 The Early 20th Century: Disease Returns 54:25 The Pax Antibiotica 58:30 Wellness Culture 61:45 COVID and What Hasn't Changed 67:15 Closing

On November 1, 1755, the city of Lisbon was devastated by a terrible earthquake, and a new era of urban planning began. The reconstruction of Lisbon was, more or less, the first time that modern planners had the opportunity to transform an urban landscape and bring it into line with their vision of what the future should look like. What shifting tectonic plates did to Lisbon would, in the future, be the job of bulldozers and wrecking balls. We take that for granted now, but we shouldn’t. In his new book The Invention of the Future: A History of Cities in the Modern World, my guest Bruno Carvalho tells two histories that our intertwined. One is the story of how histories were planned, built, or rebuilt. But the other is an intellectual history of how cities of the future were imagined. It turns out that those two stories don’t intersect as often as you might assume. Bruno Carvalho is a professor at Harvard University, where he teaches courses on cities. He is also the author of Porous City: A Cultural History of Rio de Janeiro.

In this episode of Historically Thinking, we begin not with a historian’s voice, but with the voice of a seventeenth-century woman.Lady Frances Culpeper Berkeley—born in England, twice widowed, and married in 1670 to Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia—speaks from the midst of crisis. Jamestown has burned. Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion has fractured the colony’s political order. Her husband has been recalled to England to answer charges before the Crown. Lady Berkeley, left behind, attempts to make sense of loyalty, loss, honor, and exile.That voice is brought to life by my second guest, Amy Stallings, a historian and historical interpreter who believes the past is best understood not only through documents, but through embodied experience. Together, we explore Bacon’s Rebellion from an unfamiliar vantage point, the interior world of Lady Frances Berkeley, and the intellectual stakes of historical reenactment itself: what it reveals, what it risks, and what it makes newly visible.00:00 - Introduction00:28 - Lady Frances Culpeper Berkeley Introduces Herself00:58 - Writing to Her Husband in England02:55 - Sir William Berkeley's Accomplishments in Virginia04:23 - The Royal Commissioners and Personal Betrayal05:47 - Berkeley's Loyalty During the English Civil War07:17 - Berkeley's Resistance to Parliament08:15 - Berkeley's Return to Power and Jamestown's Glory09:39 - Nathaniel Bacon's Rebellion Begins11:08 - Bacon Surrounds the State House12:57 - Introducing Amy Stallings13:41 - Theater and History Intertwined14:27 - The Dissertation on Ballroom Politics21:40 - Dance as Political Resistance24:25 - English Country Dancing Before the Waltz28:53 - First Character: Susan Binks, Tobacco Bride28:53 - Learning History Through First-Person Interpretation39:14 - Developing Lady Berkeley's Character46:52 - Lady Berkeley's Isolation and Loss46:52 - Lady Berkeley's Inheritance and Legal Battles55:00 - The Challenges of Colonial Communication57:00 - Sewing Period Costumes61:51 - Conclusion

According to Chinese Communist official Xi Zhongxun, his first revolutionary act was an attempt to poison one of his school’s administrators when he was 14. He was faithful to the revolution, and the Chinese Communist Party, until his death at age 88 in 2002. In between those ages was a remarkable life. He fought Nationalists and Japanese. He was a right-hand man to both Zhou Enlai in the 1950s, and Hu Yaobang in the 1980s. As the Party administrator responsible for dealing with religious groups, he negotiated with the Dalai Lama–and would show off the wristwatch that the Dalai Lama gave him. But Xi also spent sixteen years in house arrest, internal exile, under suspicion, or at least out of power, from 1962 to 1978. “In the early 1990s, Xi even boasted to a Western historian that although Deng Xiaoping had suffered at the hands of the party on three occasions, he had been persecuted five times.” All this would make Xi Zhongxun fascinating simply as a psychological study of a Communist functionary who, despite everything, remained devoted to the system that oppressed him. But Xi Zhongxun was also the father of Xi Jinping, now effectively the dictator of China. If we are to understand the younger Xi, argues my guest Joseph Torigian, then we must understand his father.Joseph Torigian is an associate professor in the School of International Service at American University in Washington, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a center associate of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. He was previously on the podcast to discuss his book Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao, a conversation that was published on May 23, 2022. His latest book is The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping was released with Stanford University Press in June 2025. It was a Financial Times Book of the Summer and an Economist Best Book of the Year So Far.00:00 — Introduction02:19 — Overview of Xi Zhongxun's Life07:15 — Early Life and Revolutionary Beginnings11:44 — Growing Up as a Peasant in Shaanxi15:02 — Path to the Communist Base Areas19:21 — The United Front Work24:10 — Work with Ethnic Minorities26:00 — The 1935 Arrest by Fellow Communists27:56 — Patronage and Party Relationships30:51 — The Northwest Bureau and China's Territorial Expansion33:43 — Personal Life and Family36:37 — The 1962 Purge41:50 — Sixteen Years of Persecution44:37 — Why Bring Him Back?46:53 — Deng Xiaoping's Distrust50:55 — Grudges and Party History52:33 — Xi Jinping and His Father's Legacy59:17 — Conclusion

The red flowered plant that shows up everywhere at this time of year–I saw a forest of them in Wegman’s this morning– is called in Mexico the cuetlaxochitl, or the noche buena; but Americans know it by as the namesake of man who introduced it to the United States: poinsettia. Yet Joel Roberts Poinsett was a more interesting organism than that plant given his name. He was a South Carolinian who spent years away from the state, and was a committed nationalist and anti-nullifier; a world traveller when few Americans were; a slaveowner who other slaveowners regarded as potentially anti-slavery; an international investor who also labored for South Carolina local improvements; a diplomat who spent years if not decades trying to find a way to be a soldier. And that’s leaving a few facets of his identity out. As my guest Lindsay Schackenbach Regele sums him up, “He was not the same, anywhere.”Lindsay Schakenbach Regele is with me to discuss Joel Poinsett, his era, and what he reveals about it. She was previously on the podcast in a conversation that dropped on April 3, 2019, which focused on her book Manufacturing Advantage: War, the State, and the Origins of American Industry, 1776–1848 (Hopkins, 2019). Her latest book is Flowers, Guns, and Money: Joel Roberts Poinsett and the Paradoxes of American Patriotism, and it is the focus of our conversation today.For more information and links, to to our Substack at www.historicallythinking.org00:00 – Introduction 00:22 – Joel Roberts Poinsett: A Complex Figure 02:47 – Early Life: A Loyalist Family's Journey05:19 – Education in New England and England 06:50 – European Travels and Grand Tour 08:56 – Mission to Latin America 11:11 – Journey Down the Volga River 13:38 – Botanical Interests and Scientific Pursuits 18:34 – Secret Agent in South America 21:41 – Supporting Independence Movements 23:38 – Return to South Carolina 25:24 – South Carolina Politics and Public Works 26:32 – First Mission to Mexico 30:02 – Masonic Lodges and Political Influence 32:43 – Mining Investments and Financial Dealings 35:57 – The Nullification Crisis 42:35 – Understanding Nullifiers vs. Anti-Nullifiers 46:15 – Secretary of War 47:44 – The Trail of Tears and Indian Removal 50:38 – The Seminole War and Bloodhounds 51:44 – Later Life: Cuba and Final Years 54:06 – Evaluating Poinsett's Legacy 57:36 – Meeting Tocqueville59:48 – Next Project: Francisco Miranda 1:02:28 – Closing

The Greek philosopher Plato is famous for writing his teachings in the form of dialogues. But there are additionally a series of seven letters attributed to Plato. Over the centuries much ink has been spilt in arguments over their authenticity. My guest today argues that these letters are actually epistolary philosophical novel which are if nothing else a “ripping great yarn”.“In the pages of Plato’s letters,” writes Ariel Helfer, “we find Plato the teacher, the counselor, the ally, the statesman; intrigue and faction in the court of a tyrant; grand political hopes dashed as famous utopian dreams become living nightmares—it is a stunningly dramatic and dynamic portrait of Plato and his philosophy.” An alll this is set in the exotic setting of Hellenized Sicily during the 5th century BC, which has a cultural and political complexity that makes the head spin uncontrollably. Ariel Helfer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wayne State University, and the most recently editor and translator of Plato’s letters in an edition titled Plato’s Letters: The Political Challenges of the Philosophic LIfe . He was last on Historically Thinking to discuss Plato’s dialogue Alcibiades, and the broader subject of political ambition, in a conversation that was published on September 30, 2020.For show notes, resources, and our archive, go the Historically Thinking Substack ChaptersIntroduction and Background — 00:22The Authenticity Debate of Plato's Letters — 03:25Arguments for Authenticity and Unity — 11:27Textual History and Preservation — 18:36Historical Context: Plato in Syracuse — 26:19Themes in the Letters — 33:55Letter One: A Dramatic Opening — 40:51Letter Six: Philosophy, Law, and Playfulness — 47:35Philosophy vs. History: Different Perspectives — 56:24The Herculaneum Scrolls and Future Discoveries — 1:03:20

On October 16, 1843, William Rowan Hamilton was taking a walk with his wife Helen. He was on his way to preside over a meeting of the Royal Irish Academy. As Hamilton came to Broome Bridge, over the Royal Canal, the solution to a vexing problem finally emerged in front of him. He was so excited, and perhaps so afraid that he might forget, that he pulled out his penknife and carved the equation he had so suddenly conceived on the stonework of the bridge. That might not seem like such a revolutionary moment. But as my guest Robyn Arianrohd explains, Hamilton’s equation was the result of long centuries of mathematical effort. And its consequences would be immense. Because Hamilton’s thought made possible the concepts known as vectors and tensors. And vectors and tensors underlie much of modern science and technology, because they are used whenever a scientist or an engineer wants to use locations in space–everything from designing a bridge, to predicting the path of a gravitational wave; and there’s quite a lot of territory in between those two applications. That moment by the Broome Bridge ushered in a new era. Robyn Arianrohd is a mathematician, and a historian of science. Her previous books include Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science, which she and I discussed in a conversation that was published on April 30, 2019. Her latest book is Vector: A Surprising Story of Space, Time, and Mathematical Transformation. For show notes, resources, and our archive, go the Historically Thinking Substack ChaptersThomas Harriet and the Birth of Modern AlgebraNavigation, Collisions, and Early Vector ConceptsNewton's Definition of Force and DirectionAugustus De Morgan and the Formalization of AlgebraHamilton's Breakthrough: Quaternions and Four DimensionsThe Non-Commutative RevolutionJames Clerk Maxwell and Electromagnetic TheoryMaxwell's Equations and the Nature of LightThe Vector Wars: Quaternions vs. VectorsTensors: Beyond Vectors to General RelativityThe Playful Seriousness of Mathematical DiscoveryConclusion: The Journey into History of Mathematics

“Oral history is a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving, and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events.” That is the definition provided by no less an authority than the Oral History Association. And yet this brief, simple, and seemingly authoritative definition is accompanied by some ambiguity. On the one hand the Oral History Association proclaims that oral history is the oldest type of historical inquiry, stemming back to the origins of humanity itself. But on the other hand, oral history is one of the newest types of historical discipline, owing its birth to the invention of recording technology, and its rapid technological , from the introduction of magnetic tape recorders as consumer devices in 1947, to in 2025 the widespread field use of the superb digital recording studio and processor you typically refer to as your “phone”.With us to explain the basics of the discipline of Oral History is Douglas A. Boyd. He is an oral historian, archivist, folklorist, musician, author and currently Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky. He is co-editor of Oral History and Digital Humanities: Voice, Access, Engagement (2014), producer of the documentary Kentucky Bourbon Tales: Distilling the Family Spirit, and author of Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community. But most recently he is the author of Oral History: A Very Short Introduction, which is the subject of our conversation today.For more show notes, and our full archive, go to the Historically Thinking SubstackChapters00:00:00 Introduction: Defining Oral History00:01:53 The Ambiguity and Multidisciplinary Nature of Oral History00:07:34 The Modern History of Oral History and Recording Technology00:21:07 Early Recording Technology and the Evolution of Interviews00:34:27 Oral History vs. Oral Tradition00:36:51 What Makes an Oral History Interview Different00:41:17 The First Question: Tell Me About Yourself00:47:19 Avoiding Leading Questions00:50:37 The Power of Silence and Active Listening00:54:07 The Art of Being Prepared Without Being a Know-It-All01:03:26 The Digital Archive and Preservation Challenges01:07:47 Enhancing Access and Discovery in the Digital Age01:14:16 Ethical Access and Privacy Concerns01:15:33 Practical Advice for Thanksgiving Interviews01:19:49 Getting Started: Simple Questions and Curiosity01:23:09 The Value of Multiple Sessions and Follow-Up Interviews01:25:56 Closing Remarks

“Two years and a half years ago, when coming down the Nile in a dahabiah, I stopped at . . . Tel el-Amarna. In the course of my exploration, I noticed . . . the foundations of a large building, which had just been laid bare by the natives. . . . A few months afterwards the natives, still going on with their work of disinterment, discovered among the foundations a number of clay tablets covered with characters the like of which had not previously been seen in the land of Egypt.”Those were the words of Archibald Henry Sayce, linguist, valetudinarian, and eventually first Professor of  Assyriology at the University of Oxford. What he had noticed was the uncovering of the Amarna Letters, a set of clay tablets written in cuneiform, about which Sayce–and many others–would be intensively concerned. Finding these letters was like uncovering a file cabinet in the Pharoah of Egypt’s foreign ministry, suddenly providing a set of written sources that illuminated unknown areas of the past.With me to talk about the Amarna letter is Eric H. Cline. He is professor of classics and anthropology at George Washington University, and author most recently of Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed. This is his third appearance on the podcast.For this episode's show notes, and other resources, go to the Historically Thinking SubstackChapter OutlineIntroduction & Discovery of the Amarna Letters (00:00)Illicit Excavations & Context (04:45)The Translation Race (14:52)The World of the Letters: Great Kings & Diplomacy (29:00)Local Rulers & Conflicts (43:08)Social Network Analysis (51:57)Modern Relevance & Conclusion (57:41)

For at least two centuries, ideas of international relations and grand strategy have been premised on the notion of “great powers.” These were mighty states uniquely able to exert their influence through overwhelming military force. In the words of friend of the podcast Leopold von Ranke, a great power was one who could “maintain itself against all others, even when they are united”—but my guest, Phillips Payson O’Brien, argues that this definition is ahistorical nonsense.Indeed “great power” he says, has always been a tautology. Nor has it been helpful or accurate to focus who has the biggest armies. And dreaming of decisive battle has blinded us to what truly determines victory: the capacity to mobilize and sustain industrial power, logistics, technology, and global reach.In his new book War and Power: Who Wins Wars and Why, O’Brien dismantles some popular myths of military and diplomatic history and replaces them with a far more dynamic picture—one that redefines how states fight, how they win, and how we should understand power itself in the twenty-first century.For this episode's show notes, and other resources, go to the Historically Thinking SubstackChapters & Timestamps00:28 – Introduction: Challenging the Great Power Myth03:25 – The Persistence of Short War Myths08:22 – The Political Nature of Warfare14:06 – Power Rightly Understood: Economic and Technological Strength20:59 – Society, Structure, and the British-American Power Transition27:36 – Constructing and Regenerating Military Forces46:16 – The Importance of Strong Alliances39:23 – Understanding War: Beyond Battles and Single Weapons45:16 – Human Elements: Leadership, Training, and Morale49:54 – Technological Adaptation: From WWI Aircraft to Modern Drones57:30 – Applied History and the Problem of Transparency57:52 – Outro / Credits

The young King was determined to strike. His throne and power had been taken from him; now he would seize them both back. Now his chosen men entered the castle where he was a virtual prisoner, under the watchful eyes of his mother and her lover. Joining them, he led their rush to the Queen Mother’s apartments. There they seized those who had prevented Edward III from truly ruling as King of England. Those dramatic events–which occurred in Nottingham Castle, of all places–are just one of many that occur in Michael Livingston’s new book, Bloody Crowns: A New History of the Hundred Year’s War. From the origins of the great conflict between France and England, to the last bitter acts, Livingston weaves the story of how not just those two powers but all Europe was riven by a war that last not just for a hundred years, but for two full centuries of war from 1292 to 1492.Michael Livingston is Citadel Distinguished Professor at The Citadel and the author of many books on medieval military history. The former secretary-general for the US Commission on Military History, he lives in Charleston, South Carolina.For more information, see the show notes for this episode on Historically Thinking Substack page.Defining the 200 Years War: 1292 to 1492Cantering Through 200 YearsScotland: The Enemy in the RearDoctrine and the Birth of Standing ArmiesThe Forgotten Naval WarAnarchy, Free Companies, and Peasant RevoltsThe Longbow: Myth vs. RealityThe Papacy and Religious SchismThe Myth of the Decisive BattleGenerational Conflict and Modern ParallelsConclusion

During the Second World War Germany’s submarines sank over three thousand Allied ships, that figure amounting to nearly three-quarters of Allied shipping losses in all theaters of the war. What would become a war within a war began in the very first days after September 1, 1939. This war–particularly the contest which has become known as the Battle of the Atlantic–has been the focus of numerous studies and arguments. But until now, little has been said about the undersea war from the perspective of the German submariners.Roger Moorhouse has now remedied that with his new book Wolfpack: Inside Hitler’s U-boat War. It is not simply a story of the undersea war, but a history of those who fought it; who endured the miserable conditions within a German U-Boat, had only a 25% chance of survival, and when they did survive often were psychologically scarred for the remainder of their lives.Roger Moorhouse is a historian of the Second World War. The author of numerous books, his most recent was The Forgers: The Forgotten Story of the Holocaust’s Most Audacious Rescue Operation, which we discussed in a conversation of November 6, 2023. For more information, including to resources mentioned in the conversation, go to our Substack page, at www.historicallythinking.org

At the outbreak of the American Revolution, the British Empire stretched across nearly every corner of the globe. From India to the Caribbean, from Africa to Gibraltar to the Canadian provinces, Britain’s reach was vast. In 1776, the thirteen colonies that chose to rebel represented only half of the empire’s provinces. The other half—places like Quebec, Nova Scotia, Jamaica, and Bermuda—remained loyal to the Crown. But why? Why did some colonists believe their grievances justified independence, while others–who were often similarly aggrieved–chose not to revolt?To answer this, Trevor Burnard and Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy invite us to see the Revolution not just as a national story of the United States, but as part of a larger imperial crisis that spanned the globe. Britain’s challenge was to govern an array of distant, diverse territories during a period of reform and unrest. Turning our attention to colonies that stayed within the empire, we gain a more complex perspective. The Revolution was not only about republicanism, liberty, and democracy; it was also about empire, and the different ways colonial societies and elites responded to imperial governance.For show notes and other material, go to https://www.historicallythinking.org/p/republic-and-empire?r=257pn6; and subscribe to the Historically Thinking Substack at www.historicallythinking.org

In online debates, it’s almost inevitable that sooner or later someone invokes Hitler or the Nazis. That tendency, known as Godwin’s Law, has proven itself on social media thousands of times a day. But the persistence of this comparison points to something deeper than just the cheapening of argument. It reflects how much Hitler and the struggle against Nazism have become the ultimate reference point in our culture’s moral imagination.In this conversation, historian Alec Ryrie explains why we live in what he calls “the Age of Hitler.” For nearly eighty years, he argues, our moral consensus has been defined not by traditional religious frameworks but by the lessons drawn from World War II and the Holocaust. In our stories and our politics, from Star Wars to Harry Potter, the fight against Hitler continues to serve as the archetype of good versus evil. Yet Ryrie warns that this consensus is beginning to erode: both Left and Right are showing signs of moving on. What happens when Hitler no longer defines our common moral language? And what might replace it?For more resources, go to this episode's Substack page: https://www.historicallythinking.org/p/the-age-of-hitler-and-how-we-will?r=257pn6

In this episode of Historically Thinking, host Al Zambone speaks with historian Peter Fritzsche about his book "1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe." The conversation explores how 1942 marked the transformation of regional conflicts into a truly global war, examining the unprecedented scale and movement of the conflict, the suffering and displacement of millions, and the ideological forces at play in every one of the warring powers. Key topics include the Holocaust, anti-colonial movements, industrial mobilization, and how the memory of World War II has been shaped by the specter of World War III.00:00 — Introduction: 1942 as a Pivotal Year05:16 — Movement and Kinetic Energy in 194207:54 — The Scale of World War II: Numbers Beyond Comprehension08:55 — Pearl Harbor and the Five Decisive Days12:28 — Hitler's Declaration of War on the United States15:09 — American Industrial Mobilization17:42 — Japanese Military Strategy and Pearl Harbor19:29 — Japanese American Internment22:34 — The Global Theater of War and Radio26:31 — The Fall of Singapore and Anti-Colonial Movements31:51 — Cross-Cutting Forces: India's Complex Independence Struggle33:55 — Trotzdem: Hitler's Ideology of Total War35:48 — 1942: The Year of the Holocaust39:52 — Ideological Coherence in World War II Armies43:17 — The Importance of Mail in Maintaining Morale46:11 — Richmond, California: The Second Gold Rush48:08 — The Philippines: Between Two Empires50:32 — Ukraine: Caught Between Empires53:56 — How World War III Obscured World War II

Mount Fuji is at once instantly familiar and seemingly immutable, yet it always remains strange and changeable. Its postcard-perfect peak is known around the world as a wonder of nature and a symbol of Japan. But behind that outline lies a far more complicated history.Over the centuries, Fuji’s eruptions devastated farmland and terrified villagers. Revered as a sacred presence, its divine inhabitants changed with shifts in belief and power. Once locally known, Fuji later became claimed as a national emblem, its slopes inspiring poetry, painting, and pilgrimage—and serving as the stage for political and economic disputes.In Fuji: A Mountain in the Making (Princeton, 2025), Andrew Bernstein traces this layered story from the mountain’s surprisingly recent geological beginnings to its recognition as a World Heritage Site. The result is a portrait of a place both familiar and unsettled: a mountain still in the making, continually remade by the humans who live with it, use it, revere it, and visit it.For show notes and more, go to the Historically Thinking Substack page for this episode.

We reach for the Cold War as if it were a really good pocket tool: compact, familiar, ready to deal with any problem in today’s world. U.S.–China rivalry? “Cold War 2.0.” Russia and the West? “Cold War redux.” The appeal is obvious: the Cold War offers a story we already know how to tell—great-power tension, nuclear standoff, ideological blocs, and finally, a tidy ending.But as Francis J. Gavin argues, analogies always smuggle in assumptions. To label something a “new Cold War” is to commit to a whole strategic script: decades of rivalry, fixed blocs, and an expectation of how the story ends. But what if the conditions that defined the 20th-century Cold War—its nuclear stability, its institutions, even its duration—don’t apply now? And what if these words “Cold War”that you use do not mean what I mean by the words “Cold War”?Francis J. Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and Director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is the author of Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age and Thinking Historically: A Guide for Policymakers.For notes, links, and a vast archive, go to www.historicallythinking.org

IntroductionEach year millions of tourists visit the Czech capital, awed by its blend of architectural styles and dramatic landscape. St. Vitus’s Gothic cathedral towers above the Charles Bridge and the Vltava River, while winding alleys lead to elegant squares lined with Renaissance palaces, Baroque statues, and modern glass structures. Yet this beauty obscures centuries of conflict — ethnic, religious, political, and more typically mundane conflicts— beginning when Prague was just a fort on a hill above a river. Presumably it wasn’t built there for the view.In her new book, Prague: The Heart of Europe, Cynthia Paces traces the city’s history from the late ninth century, when Slavic dukes built the first fortifications and church, through eleven centuries of triumph and tragedy. Prague has been both an imperial center of a great empire and a city on the periphery of empires—several of them. It became a European capital of art, politics, and pilgrimage, endured religious wars and defenestrations, and was nearly destroyed in the Thirty Years’ War. At the beginning of the twentieth century it was celebrated as a beacon of democracy, only for its citizens to endure violent antisemitism, Nazi occupation, and communist repression — before once again becoming a beacon of democracy.Through her story of Prague we come to understand the truth of Franz Kafka’s observation: “Prague does not let go; this little mother has claws.” Our conversation moves across centuries of wars, saints, emperors, rebellions, and revolutions to show why Prague still grips the imagination.About the GuestCynthia Paces is Professor of History at The College of New Jersey. She is the author of Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred Space in the Twentieth Century and co-editor of 1989: The End of the Twentieth Century.For Further InvestigationCynthia Paces, Prague: The Heart of Europe (Oxford University Press, 2025)—Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred Space in the Twentieth Century (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009)Chad Bryant, Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism (Harvard University Press, 2007)Derek Sayer, Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History (Princeton University Press, 2013)Related Episodes“Edges are Interesting: A History of Eastern Europe”“City of Light, City of Darkness”“Madrid”Listen & DiscussHow does Prague’s geography help explain its importance across European history?What does the Prague Spring reveal about the continuing interplay in Prague’s history of freedom, repression, and resilience? Share the podcast with someone who has visited Prague, or who has always meant to.

It might seem obvious that the study of history ought to  improve the crafting of public policy. Surely if we understand the past, we should be able to make better decisions in the present—especially in the high-stakes worlds of statecraft and strategy. But that assumption raises deeper questions: How should history be used? What history should be used? How do we gain the kind of historical knowledge that truly shapes decisions? And why is it that historians and policymakers so rarely speak the same language?In his new book Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy, my guest Francis J. Gavin argues that a genuinely historical sensibility can illuminate the complex, often confusing realities of the present. Good historical work, he writes, does not offer easy analogies or tidy morals. Instead, it captures the challenges and uncertainties faced by decision-makers, complicates our assumptions, forces us to see the familiar in new ways, and invites us to understand others on their own terms without abandoning moral judgment. Thinking historically, Gavin shows, is a discipline of discernment, curiosity, and humility—qualities as necessary in statecraft as they are in life.Francis J. Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS. He is also the author of Gold, Dollars, and Power; Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy; and The Taming of Scarcity and the Problems of Plenty.Go to www.historicallythinking.org for more

In 1960 Yigael Yadin, formerly chief of the Israeli general staff and by that year a prize winning archaeologist, visited the home of Israel’s president David Ben-Gurion, and said to him “Mr. President, I have the honor to tell you that we have discovered 15 dispatches written or dictated by the last president of ancient Israel over 1800 years ago.” Yadin was announcing the discovery of a collection of scrolls written by Simon Bar-Kosiba, better known as Bar-Kohkba, who had led the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome, from 132 to 135 AD. Bar-Kochba was an inspiration to Israelis in the founding generation of the Republic of Israel who otherwise detested each other politically, finding in him a common source of inspiration for their own struggle. His is one of the many legacies of the series of revolts by the Jews against their Roman rulers, but not close to being the most consequential. For among the many unintended consequences of the wars of Rome against the Jews was not only the creation of the Talmud and modern Judaism, but the simultaneous growth of Christianity. With me to talk about these momentous events is Barry Strauss. He is the Corliss Page Dean Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University as well as the Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies Emeritus at Cornell University, where he was formerly Chair of the Department of History as well as Professor of History and Classics. A prolific author, his most recent book is Jews vs Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the Worlds Mightiest Empire. This is his fourth appearance on Historically Thinking. For Further InvestigationBarry Strauss' most recent appearance on the podcast was to discuss "The War That Made the Roman Empire". He also contributed

Amanda Roper is a public historian who has spent her career working to preserve historic places and share traditionally underrepresented stories from America's past. She has been Director of the Lee-Fendall House Museum and Sr. Manager of Public Programs & Interpretation at Woodlawn & Pope-Leighey House, both in Alexandria, Virginia. In 2018, Amanda was recognized by the National Trust for Historic Preservation on their list of 40 Under 40: People Saving Places for her significant impact on historic preservation and her contributions to the public's understanding of why places matter. Amanda is currently researching and writing a book about the history of women in preservation. She is a 2025-2026 Research Fellow at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. And, she also has been listening to Historically Thinking for a surprisingly long time–or so she claims.For Further Investigation Amanda Roper – Official WebsiteLee-Fendall House Museum & GardenWoodlawn & Pope-Leighey HouseMcLeod Plantation Historic SiteGullah Geechee Cultural Heritage CorridorNational Trust for Historic Preservation – 40 Under 40George Washington Presidential Library at Mount VernonSociety for American Archivists – Women’s History ResourcesNational Association for InterpretationRichard Moe, "Are There Too Many House Museums?""Resource or burden? Historic house museums confront the 21st century""Historic House Museums: 'A quirky, dusty, and endangered American institution"?Amanda Roper, "There is No Such Thing as Too Many Historic House Museums"

Join Al Zambone and guest John Shelton Reed (author of The Ramos Gin Fizz, for the LSU Press series on iconic New Orleans cocktails) for a deep dive into the history, culture, and legend of the Ramos Gin Fizz—a cocktail that’s as much a symbol of New Orleans as it is a drink. From its 19th-century origins and the city’s cosmopolitan mix, to Prohibition, Huey Long, and the modern cocktail renaissance, this episode explores how a single drink can carry the weight of place and time.00:00 — Podcast intro00:23 — Welcome and guest introduction02:35 — The Ramos Gin Fizz: A New Orleans Legend (episode setup)02:35 — Origins and pronunciation of “Ramos”05:56 — Carl Ramos’s biography and 19th-century mobility05:56 — New Orleans in the late 19th century05:56 — Cosmopolitan city, Caribbean and European connections08:56 — Cultural divisions in New Orleans10:55 — German immigration and Civil War era11:06 — Rise of celebrity bartenders and cocktail culture13:18 — New Orleans’ iconic cocktails16:22 — The Ramos Gin Fizz recipe and its components17:45 — Al’s first attempt at the drink19:30 — The “shaker boys” and the three-minute shake21:00 — Flavor profile and chemistry29:29 — Fame, Prohibition, and Huey Long38:23 — Southern soft drinks and temperance44:48 — Where to find the perfect Ramos Gin Fizz today46:46 — Closing thoughts and thanksFor Further Investigation John Shelton Reed, Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s"How the South Cornered the Soda Market"The Sazerac Bar at the Roosevelt HotelRevel Cafe and Bar– where Chris McMillian spells it "Ramos Gin Phizz", which just makes everything a little more confusing than it already was

In the past we’ve had entire conversations on Historically Thinking–indeed, many conversations, a whole series of conversations–on intellectual humility and historical thinking, often asking “how have you changed your mind?” Today’s guest makes me confront the fact that there is probably no person in the historical past about whom I have had a greater change of mind than Thomas Jefferson.This somewhat uncomfortable reflection has been prompted by Cara Rogers Stevens book Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery. In it she builds a foundation of deep engagement with the entire textual history of Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. Atop that she does what it says on the box, and traces the development not only of Jefferson’s views on slavery, but on how he wished to influence the next generation of Virginians in whom he placed so much hope.Cara Rogers Stevens is an associate professor of history at Ashland University. Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery is her first book. It won the Herbert J. Storing Book Prize, was a finalist for the Center for Presidential History Book Prize, and runner-up for the Journal of American History Book of the Year Award. She is also co-host of the podcast The American Idea.

Hello: Autumn, 1949. Fortune editor Bill Furth, flinty-eyed gatekeeper, scans a manuscript from 30-year-old whiz kid Daniel Bell. Spots the word “charisma.” Snorts. Blue pencil meets page. Word dies swiftly, without much appeal. Fast forward ten years: charisma is everywhere. Eggheads bandy it, pundits quote it, preachers peddle it. Bell—vindicated. Since the 1950s, Americans have grown used to the word “charisma” being applied to everyone, often as a synonym for “charm”.. But what if charisma is more than charm or personal magnetism—what if it’s a key to understanding the moral and spiritual crises of American life itself? That’s the argument of Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump, a sweeping new book by my guest historian Molly Worthen. In it, she traces the tangled story of charisma across four centuries of American history—from the Puritans through Andrew Jackson, to Malcolm X and Donald Trump.Charismatic leaders, Worthen argues, don’t simply stir emotions or win votes. They offer something deeper: a sense of cosmic meaning, spiritual clarity, and moral urgency in moments when traditional institutions seem hollow or adrift. In times of upheaval, we look for figures who promise to reveal hidden truths and restore a broken order. Molly Worthen is a scholar of American religious and intellectual history. She is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and writes regularly on religion and politics for the New York Times and other national outlets. Spellbound is her third book; she has previously authored Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism and The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost, a biography of the diplomat, Yale professor, and  Bridgeton, NJ native Charles Hill. (That last for my five listeners in South Jersey.)

Shipwrecks as events are probably humanity’s most common form of disaster”, writes my guest James Delgado “As such, shipwrecks–aside from epidemics, warfare on land, or great natural disasters—have been the cause of the greatest number of human deaths throughout history. Thanks to ships and other watercraft, humanity did not just walk across the globe from its ancestral home in Africa. We made use of the ocean as a source of food and as a means of travel on our global journey. Humanity’s relationship with the water has also been shaped by the reality that for as much as is taken from the sea, something is lost. Those losses are ships, the goods on them, and people. Shipwrecks as events therefore ­have ­inspired ­one­ of ­the­ oldest­ genres­ of ­human ­reflection ­on­ the nature of life; [they] have been and remain a muse for religious thought, literature, music, and art.”These are some of Delgado’s introductory observations in his new book The Great Museum of the Sea: A Human History of Shipwrecks, a deep dive into the surprisingly rich history of human disaster at sea, and what those wrecks can tell us, both about the past, and about ourselves. From the cause of shipwreck to the beginnings of maritime archaeology, Delgado offers a history, a meditation, and pieces of a maritime archaeologist’s autobiography. James Delgado is Senior Vice President of SEARCH, Inc., the leading cultural resources firm in the United States. Previously he has been Director of Maritime Heritage for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; President and CEO of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA); and host of the National Geographic international television series "The Sea Hunters". He was last on the podcast in Episode 292 to discuss his book The Curse of the Somers, in the course of which conversation he became the only guest in the over four hundred episodes of this podcast to break into song. He has a very pleasant baritone.For Further Investigation "The Blake Ridge Wreck: A Deepwater Antebellum Fishing Craft"Cynthia Kierner on disasters, including shipwrecks, in antebellum America

There is a U-boat in the middle of Chicago. It’s attached to the Museum of Science and Industry in Hyde Park. Generations of Chicagolanders, and their cousins from far away, have walked through U-505, but they don’t always ask how in the world it got to Chicago.A crucial moment in the journey of U-505 to its permanent berth was on June 4, 1944. On that day for the first time in the history of the US Navy  since, perhaps, October 7, 1864, the command “Away all boarders!” was given on the USS Pillsbury, part of the task force that had been searching for U-505 off the northwestern coast of Africa. Their challenge was to capture an underwater boat from the surface, and then keep it from sinking.How they got to that point, and what happened afterwards, is the subject of Alexander Rose’s new book Phantom Fleet: The Hunt for U-505 and World War II’s Most Daring Heist. In the course of describing one of the most audacious naval actions of the Second World War, Rose also reveals the secret war against German U-Boats.Alexander Rose is the bestselling author of Washington’s Spies, as well as American Rifle, Men of War, The Lion and the Fox, and Empires of the Sky. Born in the United States, he grew up in Australia, was semi-educated in England, worked in Canada, and now lives in New York. He also claims to be a committed listener to Historically Thinking. For Further Investigation “U-505. The Captured U‑Boat”: A museum-led walkthrough of the sub at the Museum of Science and IndustryOfficial exhibit page: Learn how U‑505, the only German U-boat in the U.S., made its way to a bunker in Hyde Park and what visitors can experience on the on-board tour  U.S. Naval History (History.Navy.Mil): Overview of the capture operation and the submarine’s eventual transfer to the Museum of Science and Industry