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Ill Literacy: Books with Benson cover art

All episodes

Ill Literacy: Books with Benson, 114 episodes. Page 1 of 2.

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1

Saving Can-Do: How to Revive the Spirit of America (Guest: Philip K. Howard)

2

The Persistence of the Ideological Lie (Guest: Daniel J. Mahoney)

3

Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration (Guest: Harold Holzer)

4

Ill Literacy, Episode 182: Measuring the Man (Guest: Jonathan W. White)

5

Ill Literacy, Episode 181: From Dakota to Dixie (Guest: Jonathan W. White)

6

Ill Literacy, Episode 180: An Abundance of Caution (Guest: David Zweig)

7

Ill Literacy, Episode 179: Out of the Darkness (Guest: Frank Trentmann)

8

Ascent to Power: How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt's Shadow and Remade the World (Guest: David L. Roll)

9

Kent State: An American Tragedy (Guest: Brian VanDeMark)

10

Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him (Guest: David Reynolds)

11

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

12

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

13

Bob Dylan: Prophet Without God (Guest: Jeffrey Edward Green)

14

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

15

The Extinction of Experience (Guest: Christine Rosen)

16

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

17

How Economics Explains the World (Guest: Andrew Leigh)

18

Thomas Jefferson and the Fight against Slavery (Guest: Cara Rogers Stevens)

19

Why War? (Guest: Richard Overy)

20

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

21

To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power (Guest: Sergey Radchenko)

22

Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism (Guest: Maurice Isserman)

23

To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism (Guest: Sean McMeekin)

24

The Gulf War: George H. W. Bush and American Grand Strategy in the Post-Cold War Era (Guest: Spencer D. Bakich)

25

The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry (Guest: Tevi Troy)

26

The Eastern Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918 (Guest: Nick Lloyd)

27

The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower(Guest: Michel Paradis)

28

Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (Guest: Michael Kimmage)

29

A Wonderful Career in Crime (Guest: Frank W. Garmon Jr.)

30

Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis

31

Ill Literacy, Episode 156: The Hollow Parties (Guest: Sam Rosenfeld)

32

We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus (Guest: Sean A. Mirski)

33

An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South (Guest: Robert K.D. Colby

34

Who Is Big Brother? A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell (Guest: D.J. Taylor)

35

Democracy's Resilience to Populism's Threat (Guest: Kurt Weyland)

36

Germany in the World: A Global History, 1500-2000 (Guest: David Blackbourn)

37

Hitler’s Panzer Generals (Guest: David Stahel)

38

Ill Literacy, Episode 147: Colonialism (Guest: Nigel Biggar)

39

Ill Literacy, Episode 146: Arabella (Guest: Scott Walter)

40

Ill Literacy, Episode 145: The Myth of Left and Right (Guest: Hyrum Lewis)

41

Ill Literacy, Episode 144: The Ecology of Nations (Guest: John M. Owen IV)

42

Ill Literacy, Episode 143: The Middle Kingdoms (Guest: Martyn Rady)

43

Ill Literacy, Episode 142: To The End of the Earth (Guest: John C. McManus)

44

Ill Literacy, Episode 141: Christendom (Guest: Peter Heather)

45

Ill Literacy, Episode 140: Founding Partisans (Guest: H.W. Brands)

46

Ill Literacy, Episode 140: The Collaborators (Guest: Ian Buruma)

47

Ill Literacy, Episode 139: On Great Fields (Guest: Ronald C. White)

48

The House of Dudley: A New History of Tudor England (Guest: Joanne Paul)

49

Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical (Guest: Laurie Winer)

50

The World That Wasn't: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century (Guest: Benn Steil)

51

Ill Literacy, Episode 135: The Race to Zero (Guest: Paul H. Tice)

52

Ill Literacy, Episode 134: Drums & Demons (Guest: Joel Selvin)

53

Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany (Guest: Katja Hoyer)

54

Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction (Guest: Fergus M. Bordewich)

55

My Day with Abe Lincoln (Guest: Jonathan W. White)

56

The Beloved Vision: A History of Nineteenth Century Music

57

Ill Literacy, Episode 129: The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights (Guest: David T. Beito)

58

Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves (Guest: Jonathan W. White)

59

Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade (Guest: Jonathan W. White)

60

The Last Campaign: Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America (Guest: H.W. Brands)

61

The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention That Changed History (Guest: Edward Achorn)

62

State of the Schools: Unpacking Donald P. Nielsen's Roadmap for Educational Transformation

63

Woke Proof Your Life (Guest: Teresa Mull)

64

The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink (Guest: William Inboden)

65

Napoleon at Peace: How to End a Revolution (Guest: William Doyle)

66

Oliver Stone's Film-Flam: The Demagogue of Dealey Plaza (Guest: Fred Litwin)

67

On a Knife Edge: How Germany Lost the First World War (Guest: Holger Afflerbach)

68

Kennan: A Life Between Worlds (Guest: Frank Costigliola)

69

The Jeffersonians: The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe (Guest: Kevin R.C. Gutzman)

70

Democracy Erodes From the Top (Guest: Larry M. Bartels)

71

Scalia: Rise to Greatness (Guest: James Rosen)

72

Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War (Guest: Mark Moyar)

73

Sly & the Family Stone (Guest: Joel Selvin)

74

A Short History of War (Guest: Jeremy Black)

75

Religious Liberty and the American Founding (Guest: Vincent Phillip Muñoz)

76

How the Court Became Supreme: The Origins of American Juristocracy (Guest: Paul D. Moreno)

77

Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire (Guest: Michael Broers)

78

Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America (Guest: David E. Bernstein)

79

The British Way of War (Guest: Andrew Lambert)

80

Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet (Guest: Marian L. Tupy)

81

Coming to Terms with John F. Kennedy (Guest: Stephen F. Knott)

82

Rome: Strategy of Empire (Guest: James Lacey)

83

Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Payá and His Daring Quest for a Free Cuba (Guest: David E. Hoffman)

84

The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society (Guest: William Deresiewicz)

85

From Breakthrough to Blockbuster: The Business of Biotechnology (Guest: Donald L. Drakeman)

86

Progressive Conservatism: How Republicans Will Become America's Natural Governing Party (Guest: F.H. Buckley)

87

In Defense of German Colonialism (Guest: Bruce Gilley)

88

A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland (Guest: Troy Senik)

89

The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville (Guest: Olivier Zunz)

90

Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II (Guest: Paul Kennedy)

91

Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals (Guest: Christopher M. Reali)

92

The Surfer and the Sage: A Guide to Survive and Ride Life's Waves (Guest: Shaun Tomson)

93

To Address You as My Friend: African Americans' Letters to Abraham Lincoln (Guest: Jonathan W. White)

94

America's Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization (Guest: Mark A. Noll)

95

Distrust of Institutions in Early Modern Britain and America (Guest: Brian P. Levack)

96

Tearing Us Apart (Guest: Ryan T. Anderson)

97

The State of Black America: Progress, Pitfalls, and the Promise of the Republic (Guest: William B. Allen)

98

Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington (Guest: James Kirchick)

99

The Invention of International Order: Remaking Europe after Napoleon (Guest: Glenda Sluga)

100

Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China (Guest: Michael Beckley)