This week we interview Danny Fingeroth, a veteran biographer and cultural historian/commentator who specializes in history at the intersection of Jewish and American cultures. His latest book, Jack Ruby: The Many Faces of Oswald’s Assassin, was published in November 2023 by Chicago Review Press. Fingeroth made his mark as a cultural observer with books like Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society and Disguised as Clark Kent: … Read More »

This week we interview Jack Kelly, an award-winning author and historian. Kelly’s latest book,  God Save Benedict Arnold: The True Story of America’s Most Hated Man, was published in December 2023 by St. Martin’s Press. Kelly’s previous fiction and nonfiction books were well received, including his Band of Giants: The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America’s Independence, which received the DAR History Medal. Kelly is a New York Foundation for the Arts nonfiction literature… Read More »

This week we interview Joy-Ann Reid, host of MSNBC’s The Reid Out and a New York Times bestselling author. Reid’s latest book, Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America, was published by Mariner Books in February of this year. Her previous books include the bestseller The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story. Reid served as the former managing editor of The … Read More »

This week we interview award-winning author Natalie Dykstra. Her latest biography, Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, will be published by Mariner on March 26, 2024. Dykstra’s work on Stewart Gardner has won a Public Scholars Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities and an inaugural Robert and Ina Caro Research/Travel Fellowship sponsored by the Biographers International Organization. Dykstra, an emerita professor of English at Hope College in Michigan, lives with her… Read More »

This week we interview Nicholas L. Syrett, the author of four books and most recently, The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America’s Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime, published by The New Press in October 2023. As an associate dean and professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas, Syrett also is the co-editor of the Journal of the History of Sexuality. Nicholas… Read More »

This week we interview J. C. Hallman, author of Say Anarcha: A Young Woman, a Devious Surgeon, and the Harrowing Birth of Modern Women’s Health, published by Henry Holt and Company in June 2023. Hallman’s previous work on Anarcha has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the Forum (of the African American Policy Forum), the Baffler, Montgomery Advertiser, and Urology. Hallman also has published five previous works of nonfiction and a book of… Read More »

This week we interview author and theater arts professor Rachel Shteir, whose latest book, Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disruptor, was published by Yale University Press in September 2023. Friedan was the trendsetting feminist writer and activist. Shteir has written three precious books, Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show; Gypsy: the Art of the Tease; and The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting, along with many essays and articles, and she… Read More »

This week we interview author Doug Melville, whose first biography, Invisible Generals: Rediscovering Family Legacy and a Quest to Honor America’s First Black Generals, was published by Atria/Black Privilege Press in November 2023. Invisible Generals explores the lives of Generals Benjamin O. Davis, Senior and Junior, a father and son who helped integrate the American military and created the Tuskegee Airmen. Melville is a global head of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the international… Read More »

This week we interview Rachel Jamison Webster, professor of creative writing at Northwestern University and the author of four books of poetry and cross-genre writing. Her latest book, Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family, was published by Henry Holt and Company in March 2023.  Webster has taught writing workshops through the National Urban League, Chicago Public Schools, Gallery 37, and the Pacific Northwest College of Art, working to bring diversity… Read More »

This week we interview David Waldstreicher, a history professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center and author of his latest book, The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: a Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence, published by Farrar Strauss and Grioux in March 2023. Waldstreicher’s other books includer Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification, and Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution. He also has written for The New … Read More »