American History Tellers

Flipper had recently published an autobiography about his time at West Point called The Colored Cadet, and he believed that royalties from the sales of this book had been deposited in a bank account in San Antonio, and that there would be more than enough to cover the shortfall.

During the first weeks of the German invasion, composer Dmitry Shostakovich began writing a symphony he titled Leningrad. As a resident of the city, he continued composing his music even as bombs fell around him.

And although the symphony was completed outside Leningrad, the work came to symbolize the resistance of the Soviet people, so authorities decided to perform it inside the besieged city itself.

In his symphony, inspired by the city, composer Dmitry Shostakovich promised that after all Leningrad suffering, victory would one day come, and he was right.

Here with me today to discuss Harriet Quimby, the Wright brothers, and other aviation pioneers is historian Lawrence Goldstone, award-winning author of 28 books, including Birdmen, the Wright brothers, Glenn Curtis, and The Battle to Control the Skies.

That was my conversation with historian Lawrence Goldstone. His book, Birdman, The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtis, and the Battle to Control the Skies is available now.

On the next episode, I speak with historian Lawrence Goldstone, an award-winning author of 28 books including Birdmen, the Wright brothers, Glenn Curtis, and the Battle to Control the Skies.

We'll discuss Orville and Wilbur Wright's fixation with patenting their technology and their relationship to other aviators.

In his retirement, he became interested in aviation. And in 1894, Chanute published an influential book called Progress in Flying Machines, which Wilbur had read to Orville during his recovery from typhoid.

This would be the first public account of the Wright brothers' glider flights and their theories on flying.

If you really wish to learn, you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual trial.

If you'd like to learn more about The Wright Brothers, we recommend The Wright Brothers by David McCullough and Bird Men by Lawrence Goldstone.

Order your copy of the new American History Tellers book, The Hidden History of the White House, for behind-the-scenes stories of some of the most dramatic events in American history--set right inside the house where it happened.

If you'd like to learn more about this story, we recommend Dark Tide, The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo.

She's a co-editor with Connie Young-Yu of Voices from the Railroad, stories by descendants of Chinese railroad workers.

Is your 2019 book Voices from the Railroad perhaps an attempt to correct the record?

So much of this is through oral history.

She's also co-editor with Connie Young Yu of Voices from the Railroad, stories by descendants of Chinese railroad workers.

He's the author of A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America.

To discuss Opie Canconeau's life and legacy, I'm joined by Dr. James Horn, president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation and author of several books, including A Brave and Cunning Prince, The Great Chief Opie Canconeau, and The War for America.

He's the subject of your 2021 book, A Brave and Cunning Prince.

I've put forward in a couple of my books is to emphasize the importance of firearms.

In 1964, the sociologist Amitai Estioni published a book titled Moondoggle that laid out the financial case against the program.

This incident and others like it really happened. It's described in Apollo in the Age of Aquarius, a new book by historian Neil Maher.

For more information on the subjects and themes discussed in the episode, see the book "Raven's Rock" by Garrett Graff. It goes into great detail about the secret plans our government made to ride out a nuclear holocaust.

And yet, as journalist Garen Graff describes in his new book, Raven Rock, the government built nearly 100 bunkers in an arc surrounding Washington, D.C. in the 1950s.

As Graff explained, under no circumstance would the presidency itself remain vacant.

Eric Schlosser's "Command and Control" examines the ways the nuclear arsenal was required to function at 100% --and what happened the few times it didn't.

Journalist Eric Schlosser explores this concept in his fascinating, terrifying book, Command and Control.

At one point, Schlosser reports that the military cataloged more than 1,000 significant incidents and accidents involving nuclear weapons between 1950 and 1968.

Schlosser dryly puts it, the partial detonation of a nuclear weapon, or two, or three, without any warning at the airbase considered essential for the defense of the United States could have been misinterpreted at SAC headquarters.

As Von Eschen explains in her book on the topic, the State Department had to protect the integrationist agenda of the tours, their core diplomatic messages from conservative audiences at home.