The Way of Improvement Leads Home: American History, Religion, Politics, and Academic life.

Have you visited the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C.? How about the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina? In this episode, historian Devin Manzullo-Thomas, author of Exhibiting Evangelicalism: Commemoration and Religion's Presence of the Past, helps us make sense of these sites of evangelical heritage.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, our 100th, host John Fea delivers his 2022 Conference on Faith and History presidential address. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Do you do genealogical research? In this episode, historian Francesca Morgan talks about her new book A Nation of Descendants: Politics and the Practice of Genealogy in U.S. History. She discusses Americans' fascination with tracking family lineage through three centuries and how the practice has intersected with race, class, religion, and commercialism.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What do Sammy Davis Jr., Muhammad Ali, Clare Booth Luce, Whitaker Chambers, and Charles Colson all have in common? They all had very public religious conversions. In this episode, historian Rebecca Davis joins us to talk about her new book Public Confessions: The Religious Conversions That Changed Politics.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Using America's obsession with Washington's hair as his window, historian Keith Beutler examines how "physicality," or the use of the material objects, was the most important way early Americans (1790-1840)--museum founders, African Amerians, evangelicals, and school teachers-- remembered the nation's founding. Beutler is the author of George Washington's Hair: How Early Americans Remembered the Founders (University of Virginia Press, 2021). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode we talk with historian Bruce Berglund about Vladmir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Our conversation focuses on Putin's use of history to justify the invasion, the insufficiency of the Russian military, the international ban on Russian athletics, and the role that race has played in the invasion.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

American universities entered the 1960s with the hope of bringing a high-quality system of universal higher education to all comers. But by the early 1970s hope turned to despair as universities gave way to neoliberalism, corporatism, and a powerful conservative backlash. In this episode we talk with historian Ellen Schrecker about her new book The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our guest in this episode is Gettysburg College historian Jill Ogline Titus. Her new book, Gettysburg 1963, tells the story of the centennial celebration of the Civil War in the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. Through an examination of the experiences of political leaders, civil rights activists, preservation-minded Civil War enthusiasts, and residents, Titus shows how this town continues to serve as a place where Americans work-out their understanding of national identity.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Less than a year after the American Revolution, a group of North Carolina farmers hatched a plot to assassinate the colony's leading patriots, including the governor. In this episode, Boston University historian Brendan McConville talks about the Gourd Patch Conspiracy. The catalysts of this movement were "The Brethren," a group of Protestants who were angry about Catholic and deists influences in the revolutionary North Carolina government. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our guest in this episode is historian Robert Tracy McKenzie, author of We the Fallen the People: The Founders and the Future of American Democracy. In the spirit of the 20th-century theologian and ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr, McKenzie places the Christian doctrine of original sin at the center of early American political history. He believes that we must come to grips with the fact that America has not always been great or even good. His work forces us to rethink just about everything we thought we knew about democratic life in the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did Marcus Whitman "save" Oregon? In this episode we talk with Sarah Koenig, author ofProvidence and the Invention of American History. She tells the story of a Protestant missionary to the Pacific Northwest and how his story provides a window into debates over the meaning of the past in both the 19th-century and today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Charles Lindbergh was a celebrated aviator, the father of the baby abducted in the "crime of the century," a Nazi sympathizer, and a believer in eugenics. He also carried a small New Testament with him as he entered the South Pacific theatre of World War II and offered a spiritual critique of technological progress. Our guest in this episode is Christopher Gehrz, author of Charles Lindbergh: A Religious Biography of America's Most Infamous Pilot. Gerhz helps us make sense of these contradictory impulses in the life of one of the 20th-centuries most famous men. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American political history. In this episode we talk with Robert Elder, author of Calhoun: American Heretic. Elder shows that Calhoun's story is crucial for understanding the political climate in which we find ourselves today. If we excise him from the mainstream of American history, he argues, we are left with a distorted understanding of our past and no way to explain our present. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode we talk with Nathan McAlister, Humanities Program Manager at the Kansas State Department of Education in Topeka. When it comes to history education, Kansas is doing it the right way. Join us for a wide-ranging discussion on civics, historical thinking, social studies standards, and the controversial debates over race in the American history classroom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In her new book Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History, historian Katherine Carte offers a major reassessment of the relationship between Christianity and the American Revolution. She argues that religion helped set the terms by which Anglo-Americans encountered the imperial crisis and the war and how Protestants on both sides of the Atlantic imagined the possibilities of a post-revolutionary world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode we introduce Current, a new online platform of commentary and opinion that provides daily reflection on contemporary culture, politics, and ideas. Editor Eric Miller talks aboutCurrent's vision, some of his favorite articles, and the history of the "little magazine" in American literary culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Historian Karen Cox argues that "when it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground." In this episode, we talk with Cox about the history of Confederate monuments and how the recent racial unrest in the United States have made these monuments a subject of national conversation. Her book is titled No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What can a medieval historian teach us about the role of women in twenty-first century evangelicalism? A lot! In this episode we talk to historian Beth Allison Barr about her book The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. Join us for a wide-ranging conversation on historical thinking, biblical interpretation, the Protestant Reformation, the Southern Baptist Church, and the English Standard Version of the Bible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode we talk with Carolyn Eastman, author of The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States' First Forgotten Celebrity. Eastman chronicles the life of James Ogilvie, an itinerant orator who became one of the most famous men in America in the years between 1809 and 1817. Ogilvie's career features many of the hallmarks of celebrity we recognize from later eras: glamorous friends, eccentric clothing, scandalous religious views, narcissism, and even an alarming drug habit. Yet he captivated audiences with his eloquence and inaugurated a golden age of American oratory.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ice hockey is now a global sport. Even Brazil, Mexico, Jamaica, and Australia have national teams. The National Hockey League has teams in Miami, Tampa Bay, Dallas, Nashville, and Phoenix. Junior league hockey is played in Shreveport and Amarillo. Anyone who wants to understand hockey today must not only tell a story about skates, rinks, sticks and goals, but must also tell a story about television, marketing, suburbia, social welfare, politics, class, climate change, and youth culture. Our guest in this episode, Bruce Berglund, helps us make sense of it all. He is the author of The Fastest Game in the World: Hockey and the Globalization of Sports (University of California Press, 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On June 1, 2020, Donald Trump declared himself a "law and order" president and marched to historic St. John's Church for a photo-op with a Bible. Our guest in this episode, historian Aaron Griffith, helps us understand why evangelicals cheered this moment. Join us for a conversation on evangelicalism, crime, and mass incarceration with the author of the fascinating new book, God's Law and Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our guest in this episode is historian and public intellectual Claire Potter, author of Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy. She helps us make sense of the current state of alternative media and how it has hooked Americans on politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode we talk about the connections between liberal Protestantism, American foreign policy, and the Cold War in mid-20th-century America. We discuss these themes through an examination of the life of former U.S. Secretary of State (1953-1959) John Foster Dulles. Our guest is John Wilsey, author of God' Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our guest in this episode is Abram Van Engen, author of City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism. He helps us make sense of the phrase "city on a hill" in John Winthrop's famous 1630 sermon, both in its 17th-century context and today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How shall we live? Where do we find the resources for living well? In this episode, historian Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn examines the reappearance of ancient philosophical thought in contemporary American culture. She argues that we need to take back philosophy as part of our everyday lives as a means for piecing together a coherent moral framework for democratic life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Howard Thurman was a mid-20th century theologian, writer, activist, and mystic who had a profound influence on the leaders of the Civil Rights movement. Thurman's writings--especially his 1949 work Jesus and the Disinherited--provided an intellectual and spiritual guide to those trying to make sense of an era of racial and social unrest. Our guest in this episode is historian Paul Harvey, the author of Howard Thurman & The Disinherited: A Religious Biography (Eerdmans, 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did you know that Thomas Jefferson edited a copy of the Christian gospels? In this episode, Smithsonian curator and author Peter Manseau joins us to talk about the so-called "Jefferson Bible" or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. We explore Jefferson's religious beliefs and how his "Bible" was appropriated by later generations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode we talk with historian Lorri Glover about Eliza Lucas Pinckney, a South Carolina woman who lived through the American Revolution in South Carolina. Pinckney's story sheds light on gender, agriculture, politics, and slavery in this era and unsettles many common assumptions regarding the place and power of women in the eighteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does it mean to be a man in white evangelical Christianity? In this episode we talk with historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. We discuss definitions of masculinity, the Gospel Coalition, Beth Moore, Donald Trump, the 2016 election, the differences between White and Black views of Christian manhood, and how the thesis of her book might be applied to American evangelical culture during the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode we talk with Daniel Feller, the editor of The Papers of Andrew Jackson at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. We discuss his work as a documentary editor, the uses of Andrew Jackson in the age of Trump, and a controversial paper he recently delivered at the annual meeting of the Society for the Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Have you ever wanted to write a children's, middle-grade, or young adult history book? How do you get started? What is the process like? Do I need an agent? In this episode, we talk about writing history for young readers with former Smithsonian educator and author Tim Grove. Tim is the author, most recently, of Star Spangled: The Story of a Flag, a Battle, and the American Anthem. Learn more about his work at TimGrove.Net Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If our mailbox in the wake of the death of George Floyd is any indication, many listeners of this podcast and readers of The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog are making honest efforts to understand the meaning of phrases like “systemic racism” and “white privilege.” Can racism in America be solved by a simple change of individual character? Or does it require much deeper shifts in the ways we order our collective lives? In this episode, we will think through these issues with Dr. Scott Hancock, a professor of African-American history and Africana Studies at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did you watch "The Last Dance," the ESPN documentary on Michael Jordan and the 1990s Chicago Bulls? In this episode of the podcast, Baylor University sports historian Paul Putz helps us make sense of it. Join us for a conversation about Jordan's place in NBA history, the role of the black athlete in American culture, and some thoughts on how the stories of athletes like Jordan provide a window into our own identities as human beings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The members of Donald Trump's controversial cabinet are regular features of the 24-hour news cycle. He has fired members of his cabinet who challenge his thinking on a host of foreign and domestic issues. Just ask Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, and Jeff Sessions. But how did our first president, George Washington, imagine the role of the cabinet? In this episode, we think historically about this important part of the executive branch with historian Lindsay Chervinsky, author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We are back! COVID-19 forced us to make some changes to our production, but the podcast is ready to forge ahead into the Summer. Since many Americans are still stuck at home playing games with their families to bide the time, we thought it would be fun to devote an entire episode to your favorite childhood toys and playthings. Public historian Susan Fletcher, author of the recently released Exploring the History of Childhood and Play Through 50 Historic Treasures, joins us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happened when British soldiers and their families arrived in Boston in 1768? In Episode 66, we talk with Carleton College history professor Serena Zabin about her new book, The Boston Massacre: A Family History. Zabin's close reading of everyday life in revolutionary Boston will forever shape how we understand this important moment in our shared past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The American historian and cultural critic Christopher Lasch (1932-1994) had a powerful influence on the world of ideas. What would the author of the best-selling Culture of Narcissism (1979) have to say about Donald Trump and his particular brand of populism? In this episode we talk about Lasch, Trump, populism, progress, and "evangelical elitism" with intellectual historian Eric Miller, author of the award-winning Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch (2010). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is the Christian Right conservative? In this episode we talk with Grove City College history professor Gillis Harp about the relationship between Protestantism and American conservatism. Harp puts conservatism in the context of American history from the colonial period to the present and offers a sympathetic, if sharply critical, view of religious conservatives. Harp is the author of Protestants and American Conservatism: A Short History (Oxford University Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In August 2019, The New York Times Magazine published The 1619 Project, an attempt to reframe American history by "placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative." American historians have praised and criticized the project. In this episode we talk with Thomas Mackaman, a history professor at Kings University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and a writer for World Socialist Web Site. Mackaman has not only criticized The 1619 Project, but has interviewed other critics of the project, including several award-winning historians. Why are socialists so upset about this project? What is the backstory behind Mackaman's interviews with Gordon Wood, James McPherson, Clayborne Carson, and other 1619 Project critics? Anyone interested in debates over how historians do history and connect the past to present political and social issues will learn something from this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For four years Drew Dyrli Hermeling has been the heart and soul of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast. We are saddened that he has decided to step away from his work here, but excited that he will have more time to devote to his history students at The Stone School, an independent college-prep school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Drew joins us for one final episode to reminisce with John about their work together on this project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are you watching Donald Trump's Senate impeachment trial? Are you trying to make sense of it all? We want to help. In this episode we talk with CNN presidential historian and Southern Methodist University professor Jeffrey Engel on the history of impeachment. Engel sheds light on the debates over impeachment in the Constitutional Convention, the historic meaning of "bribery" and "high crimes and misdemeanors," and the inevitable political and partisan nature of American impeachments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you know anything about John Fea, it's that when it comes to rock and roll, his tastes begin and end with the Boss. So when he heard that a new Springsteen exhibit was opening in his hometown of Freehold, New Jersey, John couldn't help but give himself a Christmas present and dedicate an episode to the exhibit. He is joined by the museum's curator and Monmouth University historian, Melissa Ziobro. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout the history of the Miss America Pageant, there has been a complicated relationship between sexuality and religion. The goal of the pageant is to crown the ideal American woman, but judge these women simultaneously based on their so-called purity as well as their sex appeal. Host John Fea explores his own relationship with the pageant and its roots in the New Jersey boardwalk culture. He is joined by Baylor's Mandy McMichael (@mandyemcmichael), author of Miss America's God: Faith and Identity in America's Oldest Pageant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Americans are undoubtedly familiar with the harrowing journey made by freedom seekers escaping enslavement that we have termed the "Underground Railroad." Sadly, historians are only now becoming equally aware of a "Reverse Underground Railroad," in which free black people from the North were kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. Historian Richard Bell tells the story of one such kidnapping in his new book Stolen, and joins John Fea to talk about it on this week's podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Military history is changing. While Father's Day gifts still tend to focus on troop movements and great generals, military historians in the academy are instead turning to subjects like the lives of veterans, the effects of war on the home front, and minorities in the military. One such military historian is John Fea's newest colleague at Messiah College, Dr. Sarah Myers (@DrSarahMyers), who researches the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Who knew that evangelical Christianity and the emergence of the American oil industry were so intimately linked? In this episode, host John Fea explores what it means to be an evangelical and whether scholarly debates over the term help us to better understand the role played by evangelicals throughout American history. He is joined by Notre Dame historian Darren Dochuk, who discusses his new book, Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In conservative political circles, the idea of "free enterprise" is revered with a religious zeal. This is especially interesting as these political ideals are often held by Evangelical Christians. Host John Fea explores what historians of termed the "business turn" of American Chrisitan history. They are joined by Cornell historian Lawrence Glickman (@LarryGlickman), the author of Free Enterprise: An American History.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Increasingly, college campuses have transformed from places of rigorous scholarly pursuits into glorified centers for job training. But is this what college is really for? Host John Fea and producer Drew Dyrli Hermeling sit down and discuss the need for aspirational hope in an increasingly pessimistic world. They are joined by Dr. Johann Neem (@JohannNeem), author of the recent book, What's the Point of College?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Here at the podcast, we have often engaged with our collective love of popular music and the history embedded within that love. Host John Fea regularly cites New Jersey state treasure Bruce Springsteen and producer Drew Dyrli Hermeling channels his experience in garage bands every time he produces an episode. It is therefore fitting that they close out the season with guest Bob Crawford (@BobCrawfordBass) of the wildly popular The Avett Brothers (@TheAvettBros). Sponsored by the Lyndhurst Group (lyndhurstgroup.org) and Jennings College Consulting (drj4college.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now that most everyone carries a search engine in their pocket, why do we still need to study history? Our present age demonstrates just how deceiving the internet can truly be. Host John Fea and producer Drew Dyrli Hermeling make the case that historical thinking is a critical tool for surviving this "post-truth" era while also warning against the dangers of leaning too heavily into presentism. They are joined by Sam Wineburg (@samwineburg), the author of Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone). Sponsored by the Lyndhurst Group (lyndhurstgroup.org) and Jennings College Consulting (drj4college.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When people think of the melding of faith and business, companies like Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A usually come to mind. However, like all things, the history of this type of partnership has a deeper history. Host John Fea reaches into early America to discuss the complicated integration of faith and business among Philadelphia's Quakers. They are joined by historian Nicole Kirk, author of Wanamaker's Temple: The Business of Religion in an Iconic Department Store. Sponsored by the Lyndhurst Group (lyndhurstgroup.org) and Jennings College Consulting (drj4college.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices