ONE BASE AT A TIME How I Survived PTSD and Found My Field of Dreams In the summer of 1981, David Mellor was just a baseball-crazed kid, a star high school pitcher dreaming of someday taking the mound in Fenway Park for his beloved Boston Red Sox. That dream was derailed in a McDonald’s parking lot when he was hit by a racing car, thrown into the air and pinned to a wall. His knee was severely damaged; his hopes…

AMERICA'S FIRST FREEDOM RIDER Elizabeth Jennings, Chester A. Arthur, and the Early Fight for Civil Rights It wasn’t easy to get around New York City in 1854. Omnibus accidents were commonplace. The Five Points gangs regularly attacked pedestrians. Pickpockets, drunks and kidnappers were part of the daily street scene. And, rival police forces watched and argued over who should help. But none of this was on Elizabeth Jennings’s mind the day she climbed the platform onto the Chatham Street horsecar.…

INFLUENZA The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History While the United States was embroiled in the Great War overseas, a lethal enemy was at work stateside as well.  In October 1918 alone, 195,000 Americans died, making it the deadliest month in American History.  The killer was influenza.  It infected about 500 million people—one third of the world’s population.  At least 50 million people died worldwide, with about 675,000 deaths in the United States. Now, more than a…

SUDDEN COURAGE Youth in France Confront the Germans from 1940-1945 On June 14, 1940, German tanks rolled into Paris. Eight days later, France accepted a humiliating defeat and foreign occupation.  Most citizens adapted; many even allied themselves with the new fascist leadership. Yet others refused to capitulate and joined the French Resistance. But, this is not your typical war story. It’s a coming-of-age story during the war. Among this shadow army of Jews, immigrants, communists, workers, writers, police officers and…

YALE NEEDS WOMEN How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant Special Surprise:  The author will talk with two women interviewed for the book 1969 was a landmark year. More than 350,000 rock-n-roll fans flocked to Woodstock, the Boeing 747 jumbo jet made its debut, and the Apollo 11 mission put the first two men on the moon. What else?  Yale University, dedicated to graduating “one thousand male leaders every year” finally opened its…

THE CROWDED HOUR Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders and the Dawn of the American Century When America declared war on Spain in 1898, the US Army numbered 26,000 men, scattered around the country.  Hardly an army at all.  In fact, Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders was born out of desperation. At first glance, they were a motley group of volunteers—heavier on Ivy League athletes and Arizona cowboys than traditional soldiers.  But what they lacked in experience, they made up for in…

COAST TO COAST IN 48 HOURS On July 7, 1929, Charles Lindbergh’s dream of coast-to-coast travel came true. That’s when Transcontinental Air Transport (T.A.T.) began providing passenger service between New York and Los Angeles using airplanes by day and trains by night. The ambitious trip across the country on what would become known as the “The Lindberg Line” took 48 hours, cutting the 72 hour travel time by rail alone by two-thirds. A one-way ticket cost $338, more than half…

SHE CAME TO SLAY The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman Everybody knows she was one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. Everybody knows she risked her life to lead hundreds of slaves to freedom. But there’s so much more to know about the indomitable and indefatigable Harriet Tubman.  She was a fierce suffragist, advocate for the aged, and spy for the Union army.  She was also the first women to lead an armed expedition during the…

HOW TO GET RID OF A PRESIDENT History's Guide to Removing Unpopular, Unable, or Unfit Chief Executives Party intrigue, personal betrayals, conspiracies, and backroom shenanigans.  Just another day in politics.  And, when it comes to term limits, there are no limits to what people have done and will continue to do to remove unpopular, unable or unfit chief executives.  Yes, the American presidency has seen it all, from rejecting a sitting president’s renomination bid and undermining their authority in office…

THE GHOSTS OF EDEN PARK The Bootleg King, the Women who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America Move over Al Capone.  There was once a bigger bootlegger than you.  In the early days of Prohibition, George Remus quit practicing law and started trafficking whiskey.  By the summer of 1921, The teetotaler owned 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States and the title “King of the Bootleggers."  Remus became a multi-millionaire--with the emphasis on multi.…

THIS GULF OF FIRE The Destruction of Lisbon or Apocalypse in the Age of Science and Reason Please Note Time Change:  6:30 pm Start On All Saints Day 1755, tremors from an earthquake measuring 9.0 (or higher) on the Moment Magnitude Scale swept from the Atlantic seabed toward the Iberian and African coasts.  Lisbon, one of the wealthiest cities in the world and the capital of a vast global empire, was directly in their path.  Within minutes, much of the…

HONORABLE EXIT How a Few Brave Americans Risked All to Save Our Vietnamese Allies at the End of the War Please Note Special Start Time 3:00 pm The iconic photograph of the Fall of Saigon shows desperate Vietnamese scrambling to board a helicopter evacuating the last American personnel from Vietnam. It is an image of U.S. failure and shame. Or is it? This groundbreaking revisionist history reveals the less-known acts of American heroism that saved more than one-hundred-thousand South Vietnamese…

WASHINGTON’S END The Final Years and Forgotten Struggle This story begins where most leave off.  After eight years as president, George Washington exits the office and enters what would become the most bewildering stage of his life.  Surrendering power proved to be more difficult than he imagined and brought his life to an end he never expected. Nor will you. With every page turn of this astonishingly true story, you’ll discover something you never knew about Washington’s forgotten last years:…

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 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…

THE SWORD AND THE SHIELD The Revolutionary Lives of Malcom X and Martin Luther King, Jr. "The Sword and the Shield" is a landmark. It is what happens when one of America's greatest historians of African America shines the same light on two of African America's greatest historical figures. Peniel Joseph deploys his supreme talents as a biographer and movement historian to interweave the world-shattering lives of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X."―Abram X. Kendi, author of "How to…

SEDUCING AND KILLING NAZIS Hannie, Truus and Freddie: Dutch Resistance Heroines of WWII This is the astonishing true story of three teenage Dutch girls, Hannie Schaft and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen. When Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in World War II, they fought back. They found safe houses for Jewish children and gathered vital intelligence for the Resistance. They also seduced high-ranking Nazi officers, lured them into the woods and killed them. They did what they did "because it…

CAPE COD AND THE TEA CRISIS OF 1773 Everyone knows about America's famous "tea party." On December 16, 1773, American Patriots dressed as natives tossed 343 chests of  East India Company tea into Boston Harbor.  However, few know that five days earlier a fourth ship bound for Boston wrecked on Cape Cod--and some of its cargo remained here.  In fact it was the only EIC tea that actually became available to the colonists.  Historian Mary Beth Norton is the first…

THEY KNEW THEY WERE PILGRIMS: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty Sinners or saints? In 1620, separatists from the Church of England set sail across the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. They saw themselves as spiritual pilgrims, seeking the freedom to worship God in accordance with their understanding of the Bible. Others have an alternative, more dispiriting view of the Pilgrims.  In it, they were religious zealots who persecuted dissenters, stole land and  waged war with the Native peoples. …

THE DYNASTY They had never won a championship. They were nearly bankrupt. And, they were the laughingstock of the NFL. But that all changed in 1994 when Robert Kraft acquired the franchise and brought head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady on board. Since then, the New England Patriots have made ten trips to the Super Bowl and won six. Their twenty-year reign atop the NFL stands as the longest in league history. How did they do it?  Acclaimed…

FORMATION: A Woman's Memoir of Stepping out of Line Named by "Esquire" as one of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year Ryan Dotie never imagined herself on the front lines of a war halfway around the world. But a conversation with an Army recruiter in her high-school cafeteria changed the course of her life.  After being hired as a linguist in Military Intelligence, she needed to find a space for herself in the testosterone-filled world of the Army barracks. She…

ATOMIC SPY: The Dark Lives of Klaus Fuchs German by birth. British by naturalization. Communist by conviction. Klaus Fuchs was a brilliant scientist, a fearless Nazi resister and an infamous spy. In 1950, he was convicted of espionage for handing over the designs of the plutonium bomb to the Russians, putting an end to America's nuclear hegemony and single-handedly heating up the Cold War. Fuchs was one of the most dangerous agents in American and British history. But, was he…

WHEN WOMEN WON THE RIGHT TO VOTE: History, Myth, and Memory How well do you know the 19th Amendment? When women achieved passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, they did not win the right to vote—despite repeated claims that they did. Just what, then, did the women’s suffrage amendment do? Join Dr. Lisa Tetrault for a discussion of this often misinterpreted and misunderstood history and discover how 1920 is part of a much larger and longer story about the…

EINSTEIN'S WAR: How Relativity Trimphed Amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War "Stanley is a storyteller par excellence."--The Washington Post The Great War, the industrialized slaughter that bled Europe from 1914 to 1918, shaped Albert Einstein’s life and work.  Although he never held a rifle, he formulated the mind-bending theory of general relativity while blockaded—and literally starving--in Berlin. While some of his colleagues were fighting against rabid nationalism or inventing chemical warfare, Einstein was struggling to craft relativity and persuade…

DEMAGOGUE The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy He’s been called the most dangerous demagogue in American history. Perhaps no other man has caused so much damage in such a short time. When Joe McCarthy finally made it to the Senate, he flailed around in search of an agenda. Finally, after three years, he hit upon one: anti-communism. By recklessly charging everyone from George Marshall to much of the State Department with treason, he whipped the nation into…

BELVA LOCKWOOD FOR PRESIDENT Anne Barrett as the First Woman Presidential Candidate A woman president? Why not? After all, it's 1884! Meet the indomitable Belva Ann Lockwood: American attorney, politician, educator and author, and the first woman to run a full national presidential campaign. She once said, "I cannot vote but I can be voted for." Listen to her lively campaign speech, detailing her early struggles to break free of social conventions, her fight to be admitted to the Supreme…

FURIOUS HOURS Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee There are two stories here. The first goes back to the 1970s, down into the Deep South. Reverend Willie Maxwell, a rural preacher, was accused of murdering five of his family members to collect the money from the insurance policies he took out on them. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last…

WASTELAND: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror The War to End all Wars remade the world’s map and created new global powers. It also brought destruction and carnage no one had ever seen before.  The apocalyptic-like world of 1918 was nothing like the world of 1914. Four years of machine guns, poison gas and mortar shells wrought a new reign of suffering and terror. Millions were injured. Millions more were killed. By war’s end, its horrors had…

THE CABINET: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution George Washington took his oath of office as the first President of the United States in 1789.  Two and a half years later, he called his first cabinet meeting. Seriously?  That’s right.  The US Constitution hadn’t created or provided for such a body. In fact, the delegates to the Constitution Convention had explicitly rejected the idea. Faced with diplomatic crises, domestic insurrections, constitutional challenges and a Congress lacking help,…

A HISTORY OF THEATER ON CAPE COD Theater on the Cape began in 1916 when a group of artists and writers in Provincetown mounted a production of a one-act play, Bound East for Cardiff, by a little-known playwright, Eugene O’Neill. They staged the play in a rickety old theater on a wharf in what was then little more than a sleepy fishing village. From that artists’ colony—and others like it across the Cape and Islands—it grew into the constantly expanding…

IN THE WAKE OF THE MAYFLOWER The First Encounter In the Wake of the Mayflower is the story of life after the Mayflower's arrival--from The First  Encounter  through the 50 years of peace that ended with King Philip's  War. It highlights the mutually-dependent relationship between the Pilgrims and the indigenous Wampanoags, documented in  Karen Rinaldo's depiction of "The First Thanksgiving /1621." This painting has been met with critical acclaim by historians, the National Park Service and Wampanoag leaders for its positive eye on…

THE BOSTON MASSACRE: A FAMILY HISTORY Fact. On a late winter evening in 1770, British soldiers shot and killed five local, unarmed citizens. However, from the very beginning, one fascinating truth has been obscured from this often-told story: the conflicts between the British troops and the increasingly rebellious colonists leading up to the historic event were not just political. They were also personal. Very personal. In an antagonistic 1768 decision by army officers, the first British troops sent to subdue…

THE FIRST FIRST LADIES The Informal Political Power of Early American Women During the 17th and early 18th centuries, social class was ever-so important. And, despite the entrenched tradition of patriarchy, high-ranking women could wield more power than lower-status men. Meet the first First Ladies. The wives of the governors of America's original thirteen colonies were married to politics—literally and figuratively. Because of this, they were  particularly well placed to leverage their talents, status and influence to achieve personal and…

Please Note Time Change, Now Scheduled for Noon NO USELESS MOUTH: Waging War and Fighting Hunger in the American Revolution In the era of the American Revolution, guns weren’t the only weapons of war.  Hunger was also at the center of every power struggle. In peaceful times, gifts of food, ceremonial feasts and a shared experience of hunger were part of the diplomacy between the British, Patriots and Native Americans. However, when diplomacy failed, food became a powerful tool of…

From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes
This is the stuff of fairy tales: poor Russian immigrant falls madly in love with the heir to a great American Fortune.  She is Rose Pastor. He is James Graham Phelps Stokes, the crown prince of the Phelps Stokes dynasty. Member of the legendary 400 families of New York high society. Friends with the Morgans and the Vanderbilts.  And he’s totally smitten, too.

The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Pilots of World War II
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Cornelia Fort was already in the air. She had escaped Nashville’s debutante scene at the age of 22 and headed to Hawaii for a fresh start as a flight instructor. When the bombs began to fall, Fort and her student were in the middle of a lesson. They barely made it back to ground that ill-fated morning.

Benjamin Franklin was an abolitionist freethinker from the urban north. George Washington was a slaveholding general from the agrarian south. These vastly different men had a three-decade bond that helped forge the United States.

Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America
In 1869, when the final spike was driven into the Transcontinental Railroad, few were prepared for its seismic aftershocks. America's railways, once a hodgepodge of short, squabbling lines, soon exploded into a titanic industry helmed by speculators, crooks, and visionaries.

The Radical Republican History of the Civil War
In 1862, the ardent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison summarized the events tearing the United States apart: “There is a war because there was a Republican Party. There was a Republican Party because there was an Abolition Party. There was an Abolition Party because there was Slavery.” Garrison’s simple statement expresses the essential truths at the heart of LeeAnna Keith’s When It Was Grand.