Emmy Award-winning political commentator and author.
Presidential historian and New York Times bestselling author; PBS NewsHour contributor.
Presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author who wrote Alexander Hamilton, inspiration for the Broadway musical.
Former president of Harvard University and author.
Professor and international bestselling author.
Professor of American History at Harvard University and staff writer at The New Yorker.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and National Humanities Medal recipient
Professor, financier and former CEO of The Aspen Institute.
Author of Silver, Sword and Stone.
Ambassador Rice discusses her time serving on the frontlines of American diplomacy and national security. She also talks about her surprising family history and other pivotal moments in her career, including her time as National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Journalist John Dickerson delves into the history of presidential campaigns in the United States, focusing on some of the best stories of memorable moments from past election runs.
Jia Lynn Yang, a deputy national editor at The New York Times, discusses how lawmakers, activists, and presidents worked to undo the damage of the 1920s and establish a new fairer equality in the American immigration system. Framing the narrative with her family’s own immigration story, she uncovers just how much American immigration transformed during the twentieth century.
A Harvard University professor, Philip Deloria discusses the social, cultural and political histories of the relations among American Indian peoples and the United States, and how these relationships impacted indigenous peoples throughout history.
Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a staff writer at the New Yorker, examine the life and lasting legacy of James A. Baker, one of the most influential political power brokers in American history.
Two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist H.W. Brands discusses the early days of the American struggle to end slavery using the stories of two men who were at its forefront: Abraham Lincoln and John Brown.
Joanne Freeman is a U.S. historian and Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. She is also known as an expert on dueling in America, and her latest book is The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War.
The storied filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder discusses his incredible career in history and media, and the importance of continuing to develop how we learn and understand American history.
Entrepreneur and author Bhu Srinivasan explores the surprising intersections of democracy and capitalism throughout history, from the days of the Mayflower and Virginia Company through Silicon Valley start-ups.
Author and scholar Lillian Faderman talks about the fight for LGBTQ civil rights in the 1950s, through the fight for marriage equality and beyond.
Scholar Brenda Child talks about how American Indians were impacted by the arrival of Colonial settlers, President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act and aggressive assimilation efforts in boarding schools and beyond.
Author Walter Isaacson discusses the life and work of Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Jennifer Doudna.
Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, recalls observations he gleaned from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about her judicial and personal life.
News anchor Bret Baier discusses the three essential days in Iran in 1943 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin met to discuss strategy for defeating Hitler.
Author Susan Eisenhower talks about the life and legacy of her grandfather, World War II Supreme Allied Commander and President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Historian and biographer David Reynolds talks about the life and political career of Abraham Lincoln.
Historian Joseph Ellis explores how the nation's founders, including George Washington and John Adams, established a new republic.
Author and historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar relays the story of a 22-year-old who escaped enslavement from the household of George Washington in 1796.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Fredrik Logevall explores the life of President John F. Kennedy, from his birth to his rise to power during a time of national turmoil and transformation.
Journalist, author and filmmaker Jonathan Alter traces President Jimmy Carter's life from his childhood during the Depression to the White House to his Nobel Peace Prize-winning humanitarian work.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Ada Ferrer unravels the complex intertwining of the U.S. and Cuba’s foreign policy and domestic affairs, from proxy conflicts during the Cold War, to how Cuban-American relations are used as a cipher for a president’s foreign policy.
Historian Ian W. Toll discusses the grand strategic decisions and naval operations behind the crushing assault the U.S. waged on the Japanese navy in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, as World War II in the Pacific entered its endgame in June 1944.
In a wide-ranging conversation, bestselling author Simon Winchester examines how humanity’s conquest to acquire territory and wield its power—including European imperialism and the dispossession of Native American populations—has so definitively shaped history.
Award-winning historian and former war refugee Lien-Hang T. Nguyen draws on her personal and professional journey in a discussion on the contested history of the war in Vietnam, visiting new historical terrain that continues to elicit national debate, deep soul-searching, and purported lessons for America's role overseas.
Pulitzer Prize finalist H.W. Brands examines the deep-seated divisions that made up the American Revolution before the war—between Loyalists and Patriots, families, friends, and neighbors.
Historian Manisha Sinha discusses the historical significance of America’s evolution during the period of Reconstruction following the Civil War, which saw a transformation of the American nation from a slaveholding republic into an interracial democracy, all alongside the rise of industrial capitalism and the violent and ambitious conquest of the West.
In an expansive conversation, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist George F. Will shares his perspective on the political, social, and cultural trends that have shaped the national experience since 2008.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff uncovers the truths behind the mythology of the infamous Salem Witch Trials, connecting the influences this dark chapter in Colonial America had on the future republic.
In the United States, World War II is often regarded as a time of unrivaled national unity and optimism, however in reality this traumatic period tested the American resolve in the most significant way since the Civil War. How did the nation rise to the occasion? Author and historian Tracy Campbell examines the critical year of 1942.
Author Lynne Cheney examines the friendships and rivalries within the “Virginia Dynasty” of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, including the contradiction between the ideals of American liberty and prosperity they espoused and their status as slaveholders.
Beverly Gage is professor of 20th-century American history at Yale University and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.
Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.
Craig L. Symonds is professor of history emeritus at the United States Naval Academy and the author of Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay.
In the late 1600s, separated by the North Sea, English polymath Robert Hooke and Dutch cloth-merchant Antonie van Leeuwenhoek looked through their handmade microscopes. What they saw introduced a radical concept that swept through biology and medicine: complex living organisms are made up of tiny, self-contained, self-regulating units. Hooke christened them “cells.”
Many Americans’ knowledge of slavery is largely limited to the antebellum South, but prior to 1827, New York City actually had the largest enslaved population of any city outside of the South. In lower Manhattan, the African Burial Ground alone holds the remains of as many as 20,000 enslaved Blacks.
In popular memory, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the quintessential political “natural.” Yet for all his gifts, as a young man Roosevelt nonetheless lacked depth, empathy, and an ability to think strategically. Those qualities, so essential to his eventual success as president, were skills he acquired during his seven-year journey through illness and recovery.
In 1960, one out of every 25 people in the United States was of Latino heritage. In 2023, it is one out of five. In 2050, it will be one in three. Latinos are our largest, oldest, most undercounted, fastest growing, and least understood community. Prizewinning author Marie Arana explains who they are and what they have meant to America.
Candice Millard, in conversation with David M. Rubenstein, offers an extraordinary account of President Garfield’s momentous, if brief, presidential career, and the legacy left not only by his work but by his death.
John F. Kennedy was one of the most iconic political figures of the 20th century, a man known universally by his initials. From his college days to the end in Dallas, he was fascinated by the nature of political courage and its relationship to democratic governance. How should we understand JFK and his role in US and world politics?
Journalist Jeffrey Frank.