History Ago Go

Before 1871, Germany was not yet a nation but simply an idea. Otto von Bismarck had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser, convincing proud Prussians, Bavarians and Rhinelanders to become Germans? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France – all without destroying itself in the process? In a unique study of five decades that changed the course of modern history, Katja Hoyer tells the story of the German Empire from its violent beginnings to its calamitous defeat in the First World War. This often-startling narrative is a dramatic tale of national self-discovery, social upheaval and realpolitik that ended, as it started, in blood and iron. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Copper Legend Octoberfest, Jack's Abby Craft Lagers, Framingham, Massachusetts BOOK: Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918 https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Iron-German-Empire-1871-1918/dp/0750998598/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2W28Z4OL447V6&keywords=blood+and+iron+katja+hoyer&qid=1665249853&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjk3IiwicXNhIjoiMS43NyIsInFzcCI6IjEuODAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=blood+and+iron%2Caps%2C597&sr=8-1 MUSIC: BoneS Fork https://bonesfork.com/

As Adolph Hitler rose to power in 1930s Germany, a growing wave of fascism began to take root on American soil. Nazi activists started to gather in major American cities, and by 1933, there were more than one-hundred anti-Semitic groups operating openly in the United States. Few Americans dared to speak out or fight back—until an organized resistance of notorious mobsters waged their own personal war against the Nazis in their midst. Gangland-style. . . . Packed with surprising, little-known facts, graphic details, and unforgettable personalities, Gangsters vs. Nazis chronicles the mob’s most ruthless tactics in taking down fascism—inspiring ordinary Americans to join them in their fight. The book culminates in one of the most infamous events of the pre-war era—the 1939 Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden—in which law-abiding citizens stood alongside hardened criminals to fight for the soul of a nation. This is the story of the mob that’s rarely told—one of the most fascinating chapters in American history and American organized crime. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Almost Famous New England IPA, Torch and Crown Brewing Company, New York, New York BOOK: Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in WW2 Era America https://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-vs-Nazis-Mobsters-Battled/dp/0806541792/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2LJYOXW8FOQYF&keywords=gangsters+vs+nazis+michael+benson&qid=1664750956&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjI3IiwicXNhIjoiMS4wMiIsInFzcCI6IjEuMjMifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=gangsters+vs+%2Caps%2C158&sr=8-1 MUSIC: BoneS Fork https://bonesfork.com/

Dr. Patrick Hotle discusses the ill-fated and disastrous Fourth Crusade. Starting with a lively medieval tournament to the Crusader army working with the Venetians to the palace intrigue of the Byzantine Empire. The story includes interesting characters, twists and turns, fights against other Christians, and spoiler alert the journey never made it to the Holy Land - if that was ever the target to begin with. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Lost Lager, BrewDog Brewery, Columbus, Ohio MUSIC: BoneS Fork https://bonesfork.com/

On the morning of November 4, 2019, an unassuming caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen on a desolate stretch of road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Firing semi-automatic weapons, the attackers killed nine people and gravely injured five more. The victims were members of the LeBaron and La Mora communities―fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears broke from the LDS Church and settled in Mexico when their religion outlawed polygamy in the late nineteenth century. The massacre produced international headlines for weeks, and prompted President Donald Trump to threaten to send in the US Army. In The Colony, bestselling investigative journalist Sally Denton picks up where the initial, incomplete reporting on the attacks ended, and delves into the complex story of the LeBaron clan. Their homestead―Colonia LeBaron―is a portal into the past, a place that offers a glimpse of life within a polygamous community on an arid and dangerous frontier in the mid-1800s, though with smartphones and machine guns. Rooting her narrative in written sources as well as interviews with anonymous women from LeBaron itself, Denton unfolds an epic, disturbing tale that spans the first polygamist emigrations to Mexico through the LeBarons’ internal blood feud in the 1970s―started by Ervil LeBaron, known as the “Mormon Manson”―and up to the family’s recent alliance with the NXIVM sex cult, whose now-imprisoned leader, Keith Raniere, may have based his practices on the society he witnessed in Colonia LeBaron. A mesmerizing feat of investigative journalism, The Colony doubles as an unforgettable account of sisterhood that can flourish in polygamist communities, against the odds. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Sucker Punch Watermelon Sour, Three Nations Brewing Company, Carrollton, Texas BOOK: The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land https://www.amazon.com/Colony-Faith-Blood-Promised-Land/dp/163149807X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=sally+denton&qid=1663638544&s=books&sr=1-1 MUSIC: BoneS Fork https://bonesfork.com/

When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, his papers were sealed in the Vatican Secret Archives, leaving unanswered questions about what he knew and did during World War II. Those questions have only grown and festered, making Pius XII one of the most controversial popes in Church history, especially now as the Vatican prepares to canonize him. In 2020, Pius XII’s archives were finally opened, and David I. Kertzer—widely recognized as one of the world’s leading Vatican scholars—has been mining this new material ever since, revealing how the pope came to set aside moral leadership in order to preserve his church’s power. Based on thousands of never-before-seen documents not only from the Vatican, but from archives in Italy, Germany, France, Britain, and the United States, The Pope at War paints a new, dramatic portrait of what the pope did and did not do as war enveloped the continent and as the Nazis began their systematic mass murder of Europe’s Jews. The book clears away the myths and sheer falsehoods surrounding the pope’s actions from 1939 to 1945, showing why the pope repeatedly bent to the wills of Hitler and Mussolini. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Pope's Imperial Pumpkin Ale, Millersburg Brewing Company, Millersburg, Ohio BOOK: The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler https://www.amazon.com/Pope-War-Secret-History-Mussolini/dp/0812989945/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=david+kertzer&qid=1663123186&s=books&sr=1-2 MUSIC: BoneS Fork https://bonesfork.com/

Every president has had a unique and complicated relationship with the intelligence community. While some have been coolly distant, even adversarial, others have found their intelligence agencies to be among the most valuable instruments of policy and power. The details of most PDBs are highly classified, and will remain so for many years. But the process by which the intelligence community develops and presents the Book is a fascinating look into the operation of power at the highest levels. David Priess, a former intelligence officer and daily briefer, has interviewed every living president and vice president as well as more than one hundred others intimately involved with the production and delivery of the president's book of secrets. He offers an unprecedented window into the decision making of every president from Kennedy to Obama, with many character-rich stories revealed here for the first time. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Singel Belgian-style Blonde Ale, Hardywood Park Craft Brewery, Richmond, Virginia BOOK: The President's Book of Secrets: The Untold Story of Intelligence Briefings to American Presidents https://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Book-Secrets-Intelligence-Briefings/dp/161039769X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= MUSIC: Bones Fork https://bonesfork.com/

The outlandish, hilarious, terrifying, and almost impossible-to-believe story of the legendary, dangerous amusement park where millions were entertained and almost as many bruises were sustained, told through the eyes of the founder's son. Often called "Accident Park," "Class Action Park," or "Traction Park," Action Park was an American icon. Entertaining more than a million people a year in the 1980s, the New Jersey-based amusement playland placed no limits on danger or fun, a monument to the anything-goes spirit of the era that left guests in control of their own adventures--sometimes with tragic results. Though it closed its doors in 1996 after nearly twenty years, it has remained a subject of constant fascination ever since, an establishment completely anathema to our modern culture of rules and safety. Action Park is the first-ever unvarnished look at the history of this DIY Disneyland, as seen through the eyes of Andy Mulvihill, the son of the park's idiosyncratic founder, Gene Mulvihill. From his early days testing precarious rides to working his way up to chief lifeguard of the infamous Wave Pool to later helping run the whole park, Andy's story is equal parts hilarious and moving, chronicling the life and death of a uniquely American attraction, a wet and wild 1980s adolescence, and a son's struggle to understand his father's quixotic quest to become the Walt Disney of New Jersey. Packing in all of the excitement of a day at Action Park, this is destined to be one of the most unforgettable memoirs of the year. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: A Sunny Day American IPA, Five Dimes Brewery, Westwood, New Jersey BOOK: Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park https://www.amazon.com/Action-Park-Andy-Mulvihill/dp/0143134515/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3U2KWYLUVD7SQ&keywords=action+park&qid=1661136252&sprefix=action+park%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-2 MUSIC: BoneS Fork https://bonesfork.com/

His comrades called him “Killer.” Of the elite paratroopers who served in the venerated “Band of Brothers” during the Second World War, none were more enigmatic than Ronald Speirs. Rumored to have gunned down enemy prisoners and even one of his own disobedient sergeants, Speirs became a foxhole legend among his troops. But who was the real Lieutenant Speirs? In Fierce Valor, historians Jared Frederick and Erik Dorr unveil the fuller story of Easy Company’s longest-serving commander. Tested by trials of extreme training, military rivalry, and lost love, Speirs’s international odyssey begins as an immigrant child in Prohibition-era Boston and continues through the bloody campaigns of France, Holland, and Germany. But 1945 did not mark an end to Speirs’s military adventures. Uncovered by sharp scholarship, his lesser-known exploits in Korea, the Cold War, and embattled Laos also come to light for the first time. Packed with groundbreaking research, Fierce Valor unveils a compelling portrait of an officer defined by boldness on the battlefield and the inherent costs of war. His story serves as a telling reminder that few soldiers escape the power of their own pasts. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Paratrooper Porter, Veterans United Craft Brewery, Jacksonville, Florida BOOK: Fierce Valor: The True Story of Ronald Speirs and his Band of Brothers https://www.amazon.com/Fierce-Valor-Ronald-Speirs-Brothers/dp/1684511992/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DOBN07CXN24B&keywords=jared+frederick&qid=1660187675&sprefix=jared+freder%2Caps%2C449&sr=8-1 MUSIC: https://bonesfork.com/

The heroic story of the founding of the U.S. Navy during the Revolution has been told many times, yet largely missing from maritime histories of America’s first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels that truly revealed the new nation’s character―above all, its ambition and entrepreneurial ethos. In Rebels at Sea, best-selling historian Eric Jay Dolin corrects that significant omission, and contends that privateers, as they were called, were in fact critical to the American victory. Privateers were privately owned vessels, mostly refitted merchant ships, that were granted permission by the new government to seize British merchantmen and men of war. As Dolin stirringly demonstrates, at a time when the young Continental Navy numbered no more than about sixty vessels all told, privateers rushed to fill the gaps. Nearly 2,000 set sail over the course of the war, with tens of thousands of Americans serving on them and capturing some 1,800 British ships. Privateers came in all shapes and sizes, from twenty-five foot long whaleboats to full-rigged ships more than 100 feet long. Bristling with cannons, swivel guns, muskets, and pikes, they tormented their foes on the broad Atlantic and in bays and harbors on both sides of the ocean. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: SeaQuench Ale, Dogfish Head Brewery, Milton, Delaware BOOK: Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution https://www.amazon.com/Rebels-Sea-Privateering-American-Revolution/dp/1631498258/ref=sr_1_1?crid=OCQS2IIHBF3J&keywords=rebels+at+sea&qid=1658348628&sprefix=rebels+at%2Caps%2C96&sr=8-1 MUSIC: boneS Fork https://bonesfork.com/

Known as the “Father of the Nuclear Navy,” Admiral Hyman George Rickover (1899–1986) remains an almost mythical figure in the United States Navy. A brilliant engineer with a ferocious will and combative personality, he oversaw the invention of the world’s first practical nuclear power reactor. As important as the transition from sail to steam, his development of nuclear-propelled submarines and ships transformed naval power and Cold War strategy. They still influence world affairs today. His disdain for naval regulations, indifference to the chain of command, and harsh, insulting language earned him enemies in the navy, but his achievements won him powerful friends in Congress and the White House. A Jew born in a Polish shtetl, Rickover ultimately became the longest-serving U.S. military officer in history. In this exciting new biography, historian Marc Wortman explores the constant conflict Rickover faced and provoked, tracing how he revolutionized the navy and Cold War strategy. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Sea Hag IPA, New England Brewing Company, Woodbridge, Connecticut BOOK: Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power https://www.amazon.com/Admiral-Hyman-Rickover-Engineer-Jewish/dp/0300243103/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2K5836S72R4IB&keywords=marc+wortman+rickover&qid=1657245199&sprefix=marc+wort%2Caps%2C204&sr=8-1 MUSIC: BoneS Fork https://bonesfork.com/

When Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the 48 percent who wanted to stay and the 52 percent who wanted to go each accused the other of stupidity, fraud, and treason. In reality, the Brexit debate merely reran a script written ten thousand years earlier, when the rising seas physically separated the British Isles from the European continent. Ever since, geography has been destiny―yet it is humans who get to decide what that destiny means. Ian Morris, the critically acclaimed author of Why the West Rules―for Now, describes how technology and organization have steadily enlarged Britain’s arena, and how its people have tried to turn this to their advantage. For the first seventy-five hundred years, the British were never more than bit players at the western edge of a European stage, struggling to find a role among bigger, richer, and more sophisticated continental rivals. By 1500 CE, however, new kinds of ships and governments had turned the European stage into an Atlantic one; with the English Channel now functioning as a barrier, England transformed the British Isles into a United Kingdom that created a worldwide empire. Since 1900, thanks to rapid globalization, Britain has been overshadowed by American, European, and―increasingly―Chinese actors. In trying to find its place in a global economy, Britain has been looking in all the wrong places. The ten-thousand-year story bracingly chronicled by Geography Is Destiny shows that the great question for the current century is not what to do about Brussels; it’s what to do about Beijing. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Laughing Monk Holy Ghost Pilsner, Rose and Crown Pub, Palo Alto, California BOOK: Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Destiny-Britains-000-Year-History/dp/0374157278/ref=sr_1_1?crid=R24C7TCGUGOM&keywords=ian+morris+geography+is+destiny&qid=1655264272&sprefix=ian+morris+geo%2Caps%2C433&sr=8-1 MUSIC: BoneS Fork https://bonesfork.com/

What would Willa Cather's widely read and cherished novels have looked like if she had never met magazine editor and copywriter Edith Lewis? In this groundbreaking book on Cather's relationship with her life partner, author Melissa J. Homestead counters the established portrayal of Cather as a solitary genius and reassesses the role that Lewis, who has so far been rendered largely invisible by scholars, played in shaping Cather's work. Inviting Lewis to share the spotlight alongside this pivotal American writer, Homestead argues that Lewis was not just Cather's companion but also her close literary collaborator and editor. Drawing on an array of previously unpublished sources, Homestead skillfully reconstructs Cather and Lewis's life together, from their time in New York City to their travels in the American Southwest that formed the basis of the novels The Professor's House and Death Comes for the Archbishop. After Cather's death and in the midst of the Cold War panic over homosexuality, the story of her life with Edith Lewis could not be told, but by telling it now, Homestead offers a refreshing take on lesbian life in early twentieth-century America. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Transcendental Cloudscape, Boiler Brewing Company, Lincoln, Nebraska BOOK: The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather & Edith Lewis https://www.amazon.com/Only-Wonderful-Things-Creative-Partnership/dp/019065287X/ref=sr_1_6?crid=XANO588EXJF1&keywords=willa+cather+homestead&qid=1654314701&sprefix=willa+cather+homestead%2Caps%2C97&sr=8-6 MUSIC: Bones Fork https://bonesfork.com/

From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind’s military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. Bodies were battered, gouged, hacked, and gassed. The First World War claimed millions of lives and left millions more wounded and disfigured. In the midst of this brutality, however, there were also those who strove to alleviate suffering. The Facemaker tells the extraordinary story of such an individual: the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who dedicated himself to reconstructing the burned and broken faces of the injured soldiers under his care. Gillies, a Cambridge-educated New Zealander, became interested in the nascent field of plastic surgery after encountering the human wreckage on the front. Returning to Britain, he established one of the world’s first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction. There, Gillies assembled a unique group of practitioners whose task was to rebuild what had been torn apart, to re-create what had been destroyed. At a time when losing a limb made a soldier a hero, but losing a face made him a monster to a society largely intolerant of disfigurement, Gillies restored not just the faces of the wounded but also their spirits. The Facemaker places Gillies’s ingenious surgical innovations alongside the dramatic stories of soldiers whose lives were wrecked and repaired. The result is a vivid account of how medicine can be an art, and of what courage and imagination can accomplish in the presence of relentless horror. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Dark Matter, Hoyne Brewing Company, Victoria, British Columbia BOOK: The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I https://www.amazon.com/Facemaker-Visionary-Surgeons-Disfigured-Soldiers/dp/0374282307/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1TJ250O6VH0FZ&keywords=the+facemaker&qid=1653953986&sprefix=the+facemaker%2Caps%2C116&sr=8-1 MUSIC: Bones Fork https://bonesfork.com/

The Supreme Court is usually seen as protector of our liberties: it ended segregation, was a guarantor of fair trials, and safeguarded free speech and the vote. But this narrative derives mostly from a short period, from the 1930s to the early 1970s. Before then, the Court spent a century largely ignoring or suppressing basic rights, while the fifty years since 1970 have witnessed a mostly accelerating retreat from racial justice. From the Cherokee Trail of Tears to Brown v. Board of Education to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, historian Orville Vernon Burton and civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the Court’s race record―a legacy at times uplifting, but more often distressing and sometimes disgraceful. For nearly a century, the Court ensured that the nineteenth-century Reconstruction Amendments would not truly free and enfranchise African Americans. And the twenty-first century has seen a steady erosion of commitments to enforcing hard-won rights. Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the Court’s race jurisprudence. Addressing nearly two hundred cases involving America’s racial minorities, the authors probe the parties involved, the justices’ reasoning, and the impact of individual rulings. We learn of heroes such as Thurgood Marshall; villains, including Roger Taney; and enigmas like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Hugo Black. Much of the fragility of civil rights in America is due to the Supreme Court, but as this sweeping history also reminds us, the justices still have the power to make good on the country’s promise of equal rights for all. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Lowcountry Lager, Palmetto Brewing Company, Charleston, South Carolina BOOK: Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court https://www.amazon.com/Justice-Deferred-Race-Supreme-Court/dp/0674975642/ref=sr_1_1?crid=30T9ZFZCXRMRL&keywords=vernon+burton+justice&qid=1653778788&sprefix=vernon+burton+justic%2Caps%2C185&sr=8-1 MUSIC: Bones Fork https://bonesfork.com/

The past few years have seen relations between China and the United States shift, from enthusiastic economic partners, to wary frenemies, to open rivals. Americans have been slow to wake up to the challenges posed by the Chinese Communist Party. Why did this happen? And what can we do about it? In America Second, Isaac Stone Fish traces the evolution of the Party’s influence in America. He shows how America’s leaders initially welcomed China’s entry into the U.S. economy, believing that trade and engagement would lead to a more democratic China. And he explains how—although this belief has proved misguided--many of our businesspeople and politicians have become too dependent on China to challenge it. America Second exposes a deep network of Beijing’s influence in America, built quietly over the years through prominent figures like former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, Disney chairman Bob Iger, and members of the Bush family. And it shows how to fight that influence–without being paranoid, xenophobic, or racist. This is an authoritative and important story of corruption and good intentions gone wrong, with serious implications not only for the future of the United States, but for the world at large. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Golden Dragon Asian-style Golden Ale, Asian Brothers Brewing Company, Isleton, California BOOK: America Second: How America's Elites Are Making China Stronger https://www.amazon.com/America-Second-Americas-Elites-Stronger/dp/0525657703/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1AYG8EKNNIK8D&keywords=america+second&qid=1652841634&sprefix=america+se%2Caps%2C785&sr=8-1 MUSIC: Bones Fork https://bonesfork.com/

Detailed profiles of ten amazing women who lived in the Old West. They dared to step outside the traditional roles of wife and mother, and left society’s conventions behind them. These women engaged in a wide range of interests and professions, and their stories will inspire and entertain. They overcame incredible odds to make a place for themselves in their chosen world, despite the sometimes strong objections of both men and women. Each blazed new trails for women who would come after them. We all owe them a debt of gratitude for their strong will and perseverance. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Freestyle Pilsner, Santa Fe Brewing Company, Santa Fe, New Mexico BOOK: Scandalous Women Of The Old West: Women Who Dared To Be Different https://www.amazon.com/Scandalous-Women-Old-West-Different/dp/B08JRP1TLH/ref=sr_1_2?crid=6NHKH1X5COAK&keywords=pedace&qid=1651453268&sprefix=ped%2Caps%2C1071&sr=8-2 MUSIC: Bones Fork https://bonesfork.com/

Mostly hidden from public view, like an embarrassing family secret, scores of putative locks of George Washington’s hair are held, more than two centuries after his death, in the collections of America’s historical societies, public and academic archives, and museums. Excavating the origins of these bodily artifacts, Keith Beutler uncovers a forgotten strand of early American memory practices and emerging patriotic identity. Between 1790 and 1840, popular memory took a turn toward the physical, as exemplified by the craze for collecting locks of Washington’s hair. These new, sensory views of memory enabled African American Revolutionary War veterans, women, evangelicals, and other politically marginalized groups to enter the public square as both conveyors of these material relics of the Revolution and living relics themselves. George Washington’s Hair introduces us to a taxidermist who sought to stuff Benjamin Franklin’s body, an African American storyteller brandishing a lock of Washington’s hair, an evangelical preacher burned in effigy, and a schoolmistress who politicized patriotic memory by privileging women as its primary bearers. As Beutler recounts in vivid prose, these and other ordinary Americans successfully enlisted memory practices rooted in the physical to demand a place in the body politic, powerfully contributing to antebellum political democratization. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Elusive Memory New England Style IPA, Good City Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin BOOK: George Washington's Hair: How Early Americans Remembered the Founders https://www.amazon.com/George-Washingtons-Hair-Americans-Remembered/dp/0813946506/ref=sr_1_1?crid=10OH3SXX5E0X3&keywords=washington%27s+hair&qid=1650320153&sprefix=washington%27s+hair%2Caps%2C106&sr=8-1 MUSIC: Bones Fork https://bonesfork.com/

Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins to recast the way in which we view the Second World War and its origins and aftermath. As one of Britain’s most decorated and respected World War II historians, he argues that this was the “last imperial war,” with almost a century-long lead-up of global imperial expansion, which reached its peak in the territorial ambitions of Italy, Germany and Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s, before descending into the largest and costliest war in human history and the end, after 1945, of all territorial empires. Overy also argues for a more global perspective on the war, one that looks broader than the typical focus on military conflict between the Allied and Axis states. Above all, Overy explains the bitter cost for those involved in fighting, and the exceptional level of crime and atrocity that marked the war and its protracted aftermath—which extended far beyond 1945. Blood and Ruins is a masterpiece, a new and definitive look at the ultimate struggle over the future of the global order, which will compel us to view the war in novel and unfamiliar ways. Thought-provoking, original and challenging, Blood and Ruins sets out to understand the war anew. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Spitfire English Brown Ale, Tailspin Brewing Company, Coldwater, Ohio BOOK: Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945 https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Ruins-Last-Imperial-1931-1945/dp/067002516X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3GXUJI9NJ8P5F&keywords=blood+and+ruins+the+great+imperial+war%2C+1931-1945&qid=1650139198&sprefix=blood+and+%2Caps%2C129&sr=8-1 MUSIC: Bones Fork https://bonesfork.com/

What causes people to forsake their country and take arms against it? What prompts their neighbors, hardly distinguishable in station or success, to defend that country against the rebels? That is the question H. W. Brands answers in his powerful new history of the American Revolution. George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were the unlikeliest of rebels. Washington in the 1770s stood at the apex of Virginia society. Franklin was more successful still, having risen from humble origins to world fame. John Adams might have seemed a more obvious candidate for rebellion, being of cantankerous temperament. Even so, he revered the law. Yet all three men became rebels against the British Empire that fostered their success. Others in the same circle of family and friends chose differently. William Franklin might have been expected to join his father, Benjamin, in rebellion but remained loyal to the British. So did Thomas Hutchinson, a royal governor and friend of the Franklins, and Joseph Galloway, an early challenger to the Crown. They soon heard themselves denounced as traitors--for not having betrayed the country where they grew up. Native Americans and the enslaved were also forced to choose sides as civil war broke out around them. After the Revolution, the Patriots were cast as heroes and founding fathers while the Loyalists were relegated to bit parts best forgotten. Our First Civil War reminds us that before America could win its revolution against Britain, the Patriots had to win a bitter civil war against family, neighbors, and friends. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Washington's Porter, Yards Brewing Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania BOOK: Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution https://www.amazon.com/Our-First-Civil-War-Revolution/dp/0385546513/ref=sr_1_1?crid=14MCBU3L483L9&keywords=our+first+civil+war+hw+brands&qid=1649163061&sprefix=our+first+civil+%2Caps%2C120&sr=8-1 MUSIC: Bones Fork https://bonesfork.com/

In this sweeping saga that spans empires, peoples, and nations, M. Scott Heerman chronicles the long history of slavery in the heart of the continent and traces its many iterations through law and social practice. Arguing that slavery had no fixed institutional form, Heerman traces practices of slavery through indigenous, French, and finally U.S. systems of captivity, inheritable slavery, lifelong indentureship, and the kidnapping of free people. By connecting the history of indigenous bondage to that of slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic world, Heerman shows how French, Spanish, and Native North American practices shaped the history of slavery in the United States. The Alchemy of Slavery foregrounds the diverse and adaptable slaving practices that masters deployed to build a slave economy in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, attempting to outmaneuver their antislavery opponents. In time, a formidable cast of lawyers and antislavery activists set their sights on ending slavery in Illinois. Abraham Lincoln, Lyman Trumbull, Richard Yates, and many other future leaders of the Republican party partnered with African Americans to wage an extended campaign against slavery in the region. Across a century and a half, slavery's nearly perpetual reinvention takes center stage: masters turning Indian captives into slaves, slaves into servants, former slaves into kidnapping victims; and enslaved people turning themselves into free men and women. HOST: Rob Mellon FEATURED BREW: Freedom Tower American Amber Ale, Tank Brewing Company, Miami, Florida BOOK: The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, 1730-1865 https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Slavery-Emancipation-1730-1865-Nineteenth/dp/0812225171/ref=sr_1_1?crid=33YTB0LB0FVI5&keywords=the+alchemy+of+slavery&qid=1649022104&sprefix=the+alchemy+of+slave%2Caps%2C656&sr=8-1 MUSIC: Bones Fork https://bonesfork.com/