All episodes
Saving Can-Do: How to Revive the Spirit of America (Guest: Philip K. Howard)
The Persistence of the Ideological Lie (Guest: Daniel J. Mahoney)
Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration (Guest: Harold Holzer)
Ill Literacy, Episode 182: Measuring the Man (Guest: Jonathan W. White)
Ill Literacy, Episode 181: From Dakota to Dixie (Guest: Jonathan W. White)
Ill Literacy, Episode 180: An Abundance of Caution (Guest: David Zweig)
Ill Literacy, Episode 179: Out of the Darkness (Guest: Frank Trentmann)
Ascent to Power: How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt's Shadow and Remade the World (Guest: David L. Roll)
Kent State: An American Tragedy (Guest: Brian VanDeMark)
Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him (Guest: David Reynolds)
Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison's America (Guest: Tyson Reeder)
Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union (Guest: Richard Carwardine)
Bob Dylan: Prophet Without God (Guest: Jeffrey Edward Green)
American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation―and Could Again (Guest: Yuval Levin)
The Extinction of Experience (Guest: Christine Rosen)
A Great and Good Man: Rare, First-Hand Accounts and Observations of Abraham Lincoln (Guest: Jonathan W. White)
How Economics Explains the World (Guest: Andrew Leigh)
Thomas Jefferson and the Fight against Slavery (Guest: Cara Rogers Stevens)
Why War? (Guest: Richard Overy)
A Voice in Their Own Destiny: Reagan, Thatcher, and Public Diplomacy in the Nuclear 1980s (Guest: Anthony Eames)
To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power (Guest: Sergey Radchenko)
Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism (Guest: Maurice Isserman)
To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism (Guest: Sean McMeekin)
The Gulf War: George H. W. Bush and American Grand Strategy in the Post-Cold War Era (Guest: Spencer D. Bakich)
The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry (Guest: Tevi Troy)
The Eastern Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918 (Guest: Nick Lloyd)
The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower(Guest: Michel Paradis)
Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (Guest: Michael Kimmage)
A Wonderful Career in Crime (Guest: Frank W. Garmon Jr.)
Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis
Ill Literacy, Episode 156: The Hollow Parties (Guest: Sam Rosenfeld)
We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus (Guest: Sean A. Mirski)
An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South (Guest: Robert K.D. Colby
Who Is Big Brother? A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell (Guest: D.J. Taylor)
Democracy's Resilience to Populism's Threat (Guest: Kurt Weyland)
Germany in the World: A Global History, 1500-2000 (Guest: David Blackbourn)
Hitler’s Panzer Generals (Guest: David Stahel)
Ill Literacy, Episode 147: Colonialism (Guest: Nigel Biggar)
Ill Literacy, Episode 146: Arabella (Guest: Scott Walter)
Ill Literacy, Episode 145: The Myth of Left and Right (Guest: Hyrum Lewis)
Ill Literacy, Episode 144: The Ecology of Nations (Guest: John M. Owen IV)
Ill Literacy, Episode 143: The Middle Kingdoms (Guest: Martyn Rady)
Ill Literacy, Episode 142: To The End of the Earth (Guest: John C. McManus)
Ill Literacy, Episode 141: Christendom (Guest: Peter Heather)
Ill Literacy, Episode 140: Founding Partisans (Guest: H.W. Brands)
Ill Literacy, Episode 140: The Collaborators (Guest: Ian Buruma)
Ill Literacy, Episode 139: On Great Fields (Guest: Ronald C. White)
The House of Dudley: A New History of Tudor England (Guest: Joanne Paul)
Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical (Guest: Laurie Winer)
The World That Wasn't: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century (Guest: Benn Steil)
Ill Literacy, Episode 135: The Race to Zero (Guest: Paul H. Tice)
Ill Literacy, Episode 134: Drums & Demons (Guest: Joel Selvin)
Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany (Guest: Katja Hoyer)
Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction (Guest: Fergus M. Bordewich)
My Day with Abe Lincoln (Guest: Jonathan W. White)
The Beloved Vision: A History of Nineteenth Century Music
Ill Literacy, Episode 129: The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights (Guest: David T. Beito)
Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves (Guest: Jonathan W. White)
Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade (Guest: Jonathan W. White)
The Last Campaign: Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America (Guest: H.W. Brands)
The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention That Changed History (Guest: Edward Achorn)
State of the Schools: Unpacking Donald P. Nielsen's Roadmap for Educational Transformation
Woke Proof Your Life (Guest: Teresa Mull)
The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink (Guest: William Inboden)
Napoleon at Peace: How to End a Revolution (Guest: William Doyle)
Oliver Stone's Film-Flam: The Demagogue of Dealey Plaza (Guest: Fred Litwin)
On a Knife Edge: How Germany Lost the First World War (Guest: Holger Afflerbach)
Kennan: A Life Between Worlds (Guest: Frank Costigliola)
The Jeffersonians: The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe (Guest: Kevin R.C. Gutzman)
Democracy Erodes From the Top (Guest: Larry M. Bartels)
Scalia: Rise to Greatness (Guest: James Rosen)
Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War (Guest: Mark Moyar)
Sly & the Family Stone (Guest: Joel Selvin)
A Short History of War (Guest: Jeremy Black)
Religious Liberty and the American Founding (Guest: Vincent Phillip Muñoz)
How the Court Became Supreme: The Origins of American Juristocracy (Guest: Paul D. Moreno)
Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire (Guest: Michael Broers)
Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America (Guest: David E. Bernstein)
The British Way of War (Guest: Andrew Lambert)
Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet (Guest: Marian L. Tupy)
Coming to Terms with John F. Kennedy (Guest: Stephen F. Knott)
Rome: Strategy of Empire (Guest: James Lacey)
Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Payá and His Daring Quest for a Free Cuba (Guest: David E. Hoffman)
The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society (Guest: William Deresiewicz)
From Breakthrough to Blockbuster: The Business of Biotechnology (Guest: Donald L. Drakeman)
Progressive Conservatism: How Republicans Will Become America's Natural Governing Party (Guest: F.H. Buckley)
In Defense of German Colonialism (Guest: Bruce Gilley)
A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland (Guest: Troy Senik)
The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville (Guest: Olivier Zunz)
Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II (Guest: Paul Kennedy)
Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals (Guest: Christopher M. Reali)
The Surfer and the Sage: A Guide to Survive and Ride Life's Waves (Guest: Shaun Tomson)
To Address You as My Friend: African Americans' Letters to Abraham Lincoln (Guest: Jonathan W. White)
America's Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization (Guest: Mark A. Noll)
Distrust of Institutions in Early Modern Britain and America (Guest: Brian P. Levack)
Tearing Us Apart (Guest: Ryan T. Anderson)
The State of Black America: Progress, Pitfalls, and the Promise of the Republic (Guest: William B. Allen)
Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington (Guest: James Kirchick)
The Invention of International Order: Remaking Europe after Napoleon (Guest: Glenda Sluga)
Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China (Guest: Michael Beckley)