THOMAS JEFFERSON’S EDUCATION This beautifully written history about Thomas Jefferson’s campaign to save Virginia through education reveals the origins of a great university in the dilemmas of slavery.  It also reveals a lot about Jefferson himself, who was never quite the egalitarian we wish him to be. Although he was devoted to educating his granddaughters and once proposed educating all white children in Virginia, he narrowed his goal to building an elite university. Jefferson believed that by educating the sons…

AMERICA THE INGENIOUS How a Nation of Dreamers, Immigrants, and Tinkerers Changed the World The skyscraper and subway car.  The telephone and telegraph.  The safety elevator and the safety pin. All made in America.  Not to mention the microprocessor, amusement park, MRI, supermarket, Pennsylvania rifle, or that magnificent Golden Gate Bridge.  Without doubt, America is a nation of inventors, tinkerers, researchers, and adventurers.  People like the Edisons, the Bells, and the Carnegies--plus less celebrated folks like  Youphes and Loeb Strauss,…

THE IMPEACHERS: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation It was a dangerous time in America.  When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and Vice-President Andrew Johnson became “the Accidental President,” the country was in turmoil. Congress was divided over how the Union should be reunited: when and how the secessionist South should regain full status, whether former Confederates should be punished, and when and whether black men should be given the vote. Devastated by war and…

LINCOLN ON THE VERGE: Thirteen Days to Washington February 11, 1861.  On the eve of his 52nd birthday, Abraham Lincoln boarded a train. The President-Elect of the United States was on the way to the White House for his inauguration, an inauguration Southerners vowed to prevent by any means necessary. He was uncertain what he would find when he arrived there—if he arrived there. Bankrupt and rudderless, the government was on the verge of collapse. To make matters worse, he…

A FURIOUS SKY: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricane Each year, hurricanes menace North America from June through November.  Each one is as powerful as 10,000 nuclear bombs.  Each one, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus’s New World voyages, to the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 which had the highest death toll of any natural disaster in American history, has a story.  They also have heroes, such as Benjamin Franklin who made important discoveries about these megastorms and Benito Vines,…

              THE PLEASURES OF OLD AGE: Old Women and Political Power in the Women's Sufrage Movement On her seventieth birthday in 1885, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton delivered a speech on "The Pleasures of Age". She declared that "fifty not fifteen is the heyday of woman's life."  While touring the country in the 1870s, Sojourner Truth turned her embodied performance of old age into a political claim for financial reparations owed formerly enslaved people.  By the 1890s,…

CULT OF GLORY The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers Saddle up.  We’re heading West for some Lone Star history.  It’s 1823. Texas is still part of Mexico. And, this very wild and very violent frontier surely needs tamin’. Enter the Texas Rangers.  Early on, the propertied power structures of Texas used this bold and brutal bunch as enforcers, protectors and officially sanctioned killers.  They fought the fierce Comanches, chased outlaws, and served in the U.S. Army during…

SUSAN B. ANTHONY Re-Enactor, Sheryl Faye This is going to be the best party ever. One of the most famous women in American history is celebrating her 200th birthday this year—and you’re invited. Susan B. Anthony was born February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts.  The famous social reformer and activist devoted her life to racial, gender and educational equality and played a prominent role in the women’s suffrage movement. We can only imagine the stories she’ll tell: perhaps she’ll share…