Richard Nixon, an almost Shakespearean character, loomed over 20th century American history in ways that prefigure Trump. Author Michael Dobbs joins host Richard Aldous to discuss this deeply flawed individual, and his new book King Richard: Nixon and Watergate, an American Tragedy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.persuasion.community/subscribe...
Jun 11, 2021•30 min
President Dwight D. Eisenhower was an exemplary strategic thinker. Author and policy strategist Susan Eisenhower, who happens to be one of Ike’s four grandchildren, joins host Richard Aldous to talk about her new book How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower’s Biggest Decisions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.persuasion.community/subscribe...
Jun 04, 2021•30 min
Was the Second World War really the “good war”? And are we blinded to properly assessing it by unduly focusing on the German side of the conflict? Historian Sean McMeekin joins host Richard Aldous to discuss all this, as well as his new book, Stalin’s War. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.persuasion.community/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get acce...
May 21, 2021•34 min
The rich history of Africans in Europe, from the third century onwards, is understudied and under-appreciated in modern society. Olivette Otele, Professor of History of Slavery and Memory of enslavement at the University of Bristol, joins host Richard Aldous to talk about her new book, African Europeans: An Untold History. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.persuasion.community/subscribe...
May 16, 2021•30 min
Is Britain a part of Europe or not? And why didn’t a reluctant membership in the Common Market, the European Community, and ultimately the European Union ultimately lead it to accept a full European orientation? Our guest Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at Kings College, joins host Richard Aldous to talk about his new book, Britain and Europe in a Troubled World. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.per...
May 07, 2021•39 min
As the space race heats up once again, author Stephen Walker joins our host Richard Aldous to discuss his remarkable new book Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey Into Space. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.persuasion.community/subscribe
Apr 30, 2021•39 min
From an early age, Jack, Bobby, and Ted Kennedy developed a deep understanding of the different peoples, cultures, and ideologies around the world, a keen appreciation for the challenges that such differences created for the United States, and a strong desire to reshape America’s response to them. Lawrence J. Haas joins host Richard Aldous to talk about his new book, The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade America’s Empire. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss th...
Apr 16, 2021•34 min
For generations, Americans have looked to education as the solution to economic disadvantage. Nevertheless, today the gap between rich and poor is widening. This week, Cristina Groeger joins Richard Aldous to talk about her new book, The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston, and discusses how education came to be seen as a panacea even as it paved the way for deepening inequality. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get ac...
Apr 09, 2021•37 min
In a time of division, difference, and cancel culture, what can we learn from Shakespeare (who himself has been caught in the crossfire of today’s culture wars)? On today’s episode, author Paula Marantz Cohen joins host Richard Aldous to discuss all this, as well as her new book Of Human Kindness: What Shakespeare Teaches Us About Empathy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.persuasion.community/subscribe...
Apr 02, 2021•30 min
Roya Hakakian joins host Richard Aldous to talk about her new book A Beginner’s Guide to America. Moved to write the book amid the uproar over immigration kicked off during the Trump presidency, she talks about her own experiences as a new immigrant from Iran, the challenges and rewards of adapting to a new country, and the difficulties of leaving the familiarity of home behind. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ...
Mar 26, 2021•38 min
Enlightenment thinking across Europe addressed the full breadth of human experience. From the nature of beauty to practical improvements in administering prisons, the array of viewpoints and subjects stretches well beyond today’s shorthands for the era. Ritchie Robertson joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness 1680-1790. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www....
Mar 19, 2021•34 min
Fashion matters. Clothes both tell a story about power, prestige, and privilege, and can serve as important means of critiquing and subverting these very same things. Richard Thompson Ford joins host Richard Aldous to discuss all this, along with his new book, Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.persuasion.community/subscribe...
Mar 05, 2021•28 min
Why is it that some small countries do so well at tackling large, difficult problems that trip up their larger competitors? R. James Breiding joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book Too Small To Fail: Why Some Small Nations Outperform Larger Ones and How They Are Reshaping the World. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.persuasion.community/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss t...
Feb 26, 2021•36 min
"History from below” is usually an effort at social history seen through statistics and figures. Our guest this week, Emma Rothschild, takes a different approach in her new book, An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France Over Three Centuries, by recounting a vast narrative at times resembling a period novel. What does this story tell us about the events that transpired, about the nature of time and history, and about what should matter to us today in an increasingly atomized world? Th...
Feb 19, 2021•29 min
An unassuming high-school dropout, the son of Holocaust survivors, Bob Gersony became the U.S. government’s most intrepid researcher and reporter, a humanitarian icon who never lost sight of the importance of reconciling values with national interests. Bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan joins Richard Aldous to discuss human rights, activism, realism, and his new book, The Good American: The Epic Life of Bob Gersony, the U.S. Government’s Greatest Humanitarian. This is a public episode. If you’d...
Feb 12, 2021•33 min
The multiculturalism and pluralism of the Habsburg Empire gave way to the nationalist agitation of the flamboyant poet-soldier Gabriele D’Annunzio in a small Adriatic port city in 1919. And yet the Fiume crisis played out differently than other post-World War I episodes around Europe. This week, Dominique Kirchner Reill joins host Richard Aldous to discuss fascism, resilience, the indeterminacy of history, and her new book, The Fiume Crisis: Life in the Wake of the Habsburg Empire. This is a pub...
Feb 05, 2021•32 min
Congress is in a bad way. Why is this the case, when all the instruments for its revival are literally within its grasp? What can we do to encourage change? And will the Biden era move the needle? The American Enterprise Institute’s Kevin Kosar joins host Richard Aldous to discuss all this, as well as a new volume he has edited, Congress Overwhelmed: The Decline of Congressional Capacity and Prospects for Reform. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or g...
Jan 29, 2021•35 min
With the transfer of power to President Joe Biden complete, American Purpose Editorial Board member Larry Diamond joins host Richard Aldous to take the temperature of American democracy. While there was plenty to lose sleep over, is there cause for optimism about American democracy? What kind of reforms are still necessary? And how is the next generation of young Americans thinking about the challenges? Tune in for the discussion, and read Larry Diamond’s Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian...
Jan 22, 2021•34 min
How does writing history influence the future? How did Enlightenment thinkers help prepare the ground for Empire? And how can we rescue the Enlightenment project to build a better future? This week, Priya Satia of Stanford University joins our host Richard Aldous to discuss all this, as well as her new book Time’s Monster: How History Makes History. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.persuasion.community/subsc...
Jan 15, 2021•35 min
Is liberal democracy the foundation of a lasting world order, or should we be constructing a world order to help fragile democracies thrive? And after a rough few years for liberal democracy around the globe, what are the chances that such an order can be built? G. John Ikenberry joins host Richard Aldous to discuss all this, as well as his new book, A World Safe for Democracy on the first episode of 2021. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get acce...
Jan 08, 2021•34 min
Project Apollo captured the world’s imagination, and as a feat of “soft power” public diplomacy, it has few peers in the history of mankind, and has not been matched since. With hopes expressed that President Biden’s election can start to bring the world together after several years of polarization, Smithsonian curator Teasel Muir-Harmony joins Richard Aldous to discuss her new book, Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo ( https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/teasel-muir-harmony...
Dec 18, 2020•31 min
Is the America we have today, the America that elected Donald Trump and is still struggling to move on from his term in office, the country our Founding Fathers envisioned? And just what is it that this illustrious group really thought they were building? Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas E. Ricks joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country. This is a public episode. If you'd li...
Dec 11, 2020•28 min
To paraphrase Henry Kissinger, "Who the heck is James Baker?” For a quarter-century, from the end of Watergate to the aftermath of the Cold War, no Republican won the presidency without his help or ran the White House without his advice. Susan Glasser and Peter Baker join our host Richard Aldous to discuss their new book, The Man Who Ran Washington, a biography of George H. W. Bush's legendary White House chief of staff and Secretary of State, and a rumination about a Washington that perhaps no ...
Dec 04, 2020•36 min
What’s so special about the special relationship? Was it built on anything more than Winston Churchill’s charisma and cunning? What can we learn about the history of the European project by studying its contours? And is it doomed after Brexit? Ian Buruma, author, historian, and a professor at Bard College, joins our host Richard Aldous to discuss all this, as well as his new book, The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, from Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit. This is a public episod...
Nov 20, 2020•32 min
Conservatism. It arose out of the ashes of the French Revolution. Margaret Thatcher famously denied she was an adherent. And today, it is taking yet another new shape as the world changes at a breathtaking pace. Edmund Fawcett, a correspondent for The Economist for more than three decades, joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition, a companion volume to his earlier volume on liberalism. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with ...
Nov 13, 2020•33 min
Codes of honor. Ethics. Values. The rough-and-tumble of American electoral politics. And the fateful choice of Sarah Palin as VP pick. Mark Salter, the late Senator John McCain’s speechwriter, aide, and close confidant, joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, The Luckiest Man: Life With John McCain ( https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Luckiest-Man/Mark-Salter/9781982120931 ). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus ...
Nov 06, 2020•36 min
Francis Fukuyama, chairman of the board of American Purpose and the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has published a new UK edition of his famous book, The End of History and the Last Man, accompanied with a new foreword. He joined host Richard Aldous to discuss how his seminal work has aged, the challenges liberalism is facing today from both the left and the right, and why now is the perfect time to start a new magazin...
Oct 30, 2020•29 min
In her book The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution ( https://www.amazon.com/Cabinet-Washington-Creation-American-Institution/dp/0674986482/ ), published this year by Harvard University Press, historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky explains why George Washington came to convene his cabinet, how he used it, and how later presidents adapted the institution. Chervinsky formerly worked as a historian at the White House Historical Association, and has been a scholar-in-res...
Oct 23, 2020•28 min
Charles A. Kupchan is a professor in the School of Foreign Service and the Government Department at Georgetown University. He joins Bookstack host Richard Aldous to discuss his book Isolationism: A History of America's Efforts to Shield Itself from the World ( https://global.oup.com/academic/product/isolationism-9780199393022?cc=us&lang=en&# ), published by Oxford University Press in October 2020. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get acces...
Oct 16, 2020•34 min
