With the Bark Off: Conversations from the LBJ Presidential Library

New York Times bestselling author A.J. Baime joined us to discuss the famous outcome of the election of 1948. Baime is the author of The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months that Changed the World (2017), The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War (2014), Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans (2009), and Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America's Soul (2019).Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and numerous other publications.

Last month, Mark Updegrove moderated a discussion at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, at Rice University, entitled "A presidential election with legal issues like no other." There, he interviewed two legal experts about the legal challenges faced by the GOP's leading presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, one of the many unprecedented aspects of our presidential election later this year. Richard L. Hasen is Professor of Law and Political Science at UCLA and the Director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. And Joshua Sellers is Professor of Law at the University of Texas at Austin.

Robert Gates served in public life for over 50 years. He began his career as an entry-level CIA analyst and would rise the ranks to become director of the agency from 1991-93. In 2006, he was named Secretary of Defense by President George W. Bush as our nation waged war in Afghanistan and Iraq. He would retain the position for President Barack Obama until 2011, making him the only Secretary of Defense asked by a newly elected President to remain in the office.Secretary Gates is the author of a number of bestselling books, including A Passion for Leadership and his memoir, Duty, and has served as President of Texas A&M and currently holds the position of Chancellor of the College of William & Mary. Mark Updegrove talked to him recently before a full house at the LBJ Library, where he offered his reflections on an increasingly chaotic world, including the Israel-Hamas War, the War in Ukraine, the security threats posed by an increasingly aggressive China, and the struggles we face here at home

Heather Cox Richardson is professor of history at Boston College, and author of six major books about US history in the 19th Century. Among her best-known works are To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party, and How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America.In the past few years, Richardson has also become one of the most influential voices in American public life. Almost 2 million subscribers receive Letters From An American, a daily newsletter than delves into the historical context of the latest national and international news.Her new book, Democracy Awakening, similarly sets current political controversies within the long sweep of American history. She joined us at the LBJ Library for a discussion on the book, and how she views our current political moment.

Jake Tapper is the chief Washington anchor for CNN, whose shows “The Lead with Jake Tapper” and “State of the Union” are fixtures of broadcast news. Tapper has been covering politics in Washington for over 25 years--from the Clinton Administration through the Biden Administration. He's also a best-selling author of five books, three of which are works of fiction, including his latest, All the Demons Are Here. During a recent visit to the LBJ Library to promote the book, Jake talked to Mark Updegrove about his reflections on the state of our democracy, the media landscape, President Joe Biden, and Biden's presumptive Republican challenger in next year's presidential election: former President Donald Trump.

President Lincoln is perhaps the most analyzed and studied of all America's 46 presidents, the subject of numerous outstanding biographies. Yet some aspects of his life remain difficult to fathom, not least his religious views.In his new book, Lincoln's God, Josh Zeitz teases out Lincoln's complicated religious outlook, and makes clear just how important religion was to the course, and the outcome, of the Civil War.Josh Zeitz writes for Politico, and has also been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The New Republic. He is also the author of several books, including Building a Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson's White House; Lincoln's Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for Lincon's Image; and now, Lincoln's God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation.

Samuel Freedman is a Professor at Columbia University and the award-winning author of ten books. In Into the Bright Sunshine he looks at the life of Hubert Humphrey, who would become Senator from Minnesota, Vice President to Lyndon Johnson, and the Democratic presidential nominee in 1968, who lost his bid for the presidency to Richard Nixon by less than one percentage point.But it's Humphrey's early years that Samuel Freedman covers in his book, chronicling Humphrey's humble beginnings in smalltown South Dakota and his move to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Humphrey launched an activist political career that helped to change the trajectory of civil rights in America. 

C.W. Goodyear is a writer and historian based in Washington, D.C. Earlier this year, he published his first book, President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier, which has earned effusive praise for meticulous research and eloquent writing about a president who has often flow under the radar.Goodyear shines a light on James Garfield's presidency but also dwells on his earlier career as a teacher, Ohio politician, Union general during the Civil War, and ultimately powerful member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Garfield participated in many of the most contentious debates of the period after the Civil War.

Late last year we did a “best of” year-end podcast that focused on top moments from With the Bark Off. It was no easy task to choose those moments given the sheer volume of great material we had to draw from, but it was fun and proved to be very popular among our listeners. We decided to make this a biannual thing to reflect on those moments that stood out to us in the last six months. In this episode you will find vignettes on Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Edith Wilson, Jackie Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, and Joe Biden.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a giant of American history, a figure celebrated in classrooms and public discourse for his towering contributions to the struggle for civil rights. And yet Jonathan Eig's biography, King: A Life, rooted in abundant newly available sources, is the first full-fledged study of King to be published in decades.Eig joins us for an enlightening conversation about King's life and legacy. This is the second of a two-part conversation; the first conversation was released on July 20, 2023.

Jonathan Eig is a highly accomplished journalist and author. His bestselling biography of the boxer Muhammad Ali, entitled Ali: A Life, won the PEN America Literary Award and was the basis for a PBS series about Ali's life and times. Eig is also author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig. Eig joins us for an enlightening conversation about Martin Luther King Jr's life and legacy. This is the first of a two-part conversation; the second conversation will be released on August 3, 2023.

Melvyn Leffler is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Virginia and one of the world's leading scholars of U.S. foreign relations. His many award-winning books include For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, The Soviet Union, and the Cold War and A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. His most recent book is Confronting Saddam Hussein, about the decisions that led America to war in Iraq in 2003.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy remains one of the most fascinating figures of the 20th century - an iconic First Lady who brought elegance, sophistication, and a cultivated cultural sensibility to the White House. But her formative early adult years provide a glimpse into a headstrong, confident young woman of great intelligence and ambition trying to find her way in the world.Carl Sferrazza Anthony, author of a new book, Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, offers a compelling look at the future First Lady in her years as an adventurous college student, as the Washington Times-Herald's inquiring camera girl, and as a vibrant single woman who had come to date and eventually marry the dashing U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy.Anthony is the author of a dozen books about presidents' wives and families, including As We Remember Her: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the Words of Her Friends and Family, The Kennedy White House: Family Life & Pictures, 1961-1963 and the two-volume First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents' Wives and Their Power, 1789-1990.

Dr. Lien-Hang Nguyen is the Dorothy Borg Associate Professor of History at Columbia University. Besides Hanoi's War, Dr. Nguyen is co-editor of The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War. She's now writing a definitive history of the Tet Offensive, the communist attacks in 1968 that changed the course of the war for the United States.

Rebecca Boggs Roberts is an award-winning educator and historian who has written extensively about women's history and the women's suffrage movement. Her books include The Suffragist Playbook: Your Guide to Changing the World and Suffragists in Washington, DC: The 1913 Parade and the Fight for the Vote.She recently published Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson, a richly detailed biography of a woman who has eluded careful study despite the fact that she played a vital role in one of the most consequential presidencies of the 20th century.

Dr. William Inboden is a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Executive Director of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. His new biography of Reagan, The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan in the White House and the World, was published in November 2022 and named as one of the top political books of the year by The Wall Street Journal.Inboden was a policymaker in the George W. Bush administration before coming to UT Austin to teach U.S. national security policy and global affairs. His essays and op-eds have appeared in publications such as Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, and CNN.

Richard Norton Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian and the author of numerous books, including On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller, and Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation.  Throughout his career, he has been the director of five presidential libraries, those of Abraham Lincoln, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and, in keeping with today's subject, Gerald Ford.Richard joined Mark Updegrove to discuss his newest book, An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford.

Marc J. Selverstone is Associate Professor in Presidential Studies at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at The University of Virginia and Chair of the Center's renowned Presidential Recordings Program, which has made available thousands of hours of audio from presidents stretching from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon.Selverstone is the award-winning author of The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam and Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945-1950.

Lindsay Chervinsky is a presidential historian and author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. Matthew Costello is the Vice President of the David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History and author of The Property of the Nation: George Washington's Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First PresidentDr. Lindsay Chervinsky and Dr. Matthew Costello co-authored Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture, a new book which examines the way we observe the passing of our chief executives as a means of reflection, reckoning, and reevaluation of presidential legacies and eras in our nation's past

Elizabeth Varon is the Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia and Associate Director of the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. Among her many books are Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War, Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, and Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War.More than 150 years after the Civil War ended, the United States is still battling over the meaning of the war. Liz Varon shows how those debates got started even as the smoke was clearing from the final battles.

Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is also a contributor to CNN, and the author of numerous books including “The Fierce Urgency of Now,” and “Burning Down the House.” His new bestselling book, which he edited with Kevin Kruse, is entitled “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past,” and is comprised of essays that take aim at many of the distortions and manipulations of our history that have led many Americans to believe fiction over fact.We talked to Julian about the myths and legends that have shaped American consciousness, how they arose, and why they need to be dispelled in order for us to get a truer sense of who we are as a nation.

Professor Laderman is a prolific historian of international affairs based in the War Studies Department at King's College London. His books include Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order as well as Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany's March to Global War. Laderman has also written for the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Post and has worked as a commentator for the BBC.

Beverly Gage is a professor of History at Yale University. She is also the author of The Day Wall Street Exploded and has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post.  In G-Man, Gage covers the full sweep of Hoover's life, from his birth in 1895 to his death in 1972, offering a nuanced portrait of a complicated man who took the helm of the FBI before the age of 30, and would go on to become a confidante, and often a nemesis, to 8 presidents—from Warren Harding to Richard Nixon.

Chris Whipple is an author and Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. He appears frequently as a political analyst on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR, and his previous books include The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency and The Spymasters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future.

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, a political analyst for MSNBC, and the author of several books on the presidency, including Days of Fire and The Breach. Susan Glasser is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a CNN global affairs analyst. Their first assignment as a married couple was as Moscow bureau chiefs for The Washington Post, after which they wrote Kremlin Rising. They also co-authored The Man Who Ran Washington, a New York Times bestseller.The Divider is, at least for the moment, the definitive account of the Trump presidency. Sweeping across four years of nearly constant crisis and controversy, the book examines one of America's most enigmatic presidencies, which included two impeachments, dramatic international events, a constantly shifting array of advisers, and the insurrection of January 6, 2021.This conversation took place on December 13, 2022, at the LBJ Presidential Library.

Hosts Mark Lawrence and Mark Updegrove look back on 10 of their favorite "With the Bark Off" moments from an incredible year.Featured guests:Amity Shlaes on Calvin CoolidgeJohn Farrell on Richard NixonPaul Gregory on Lee Harvey OswaldNicole Hemmer on Ronald ReaganJonathan Martin on Donald TrumpPete Souza on Barack ObamaGabriel Debenedetti on the legacies of Obama and BidenAnthony Fauci on his own legacyAli Vitali on Queen Elizabeth II and female leadershipDarlene Superville and Julie Pace on Jill Biden's influence on Joe Biden's decision whether to run for reelection

John Farrell is a former White House correspondent and Washington editor for the Boston Globe and a former Washington Bureau Chief and columnist for the Denver Post. He is also a best-selling and award-winning author whose works include Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century; Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned; and Richard Nixon: The Life, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize that he discussed in an earlier episode of this program.His latest book, Ted Kennedy: A Life, explores Senator Kennedy's remarkable 77 years, rife with inconceivable triumph and unimaginable tragedy.

Grover Cleveland hardly ranks among the most celebrated or accomplished of American presidents. Like Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, and other presidents of the late 19th century, Cleveland held office at a time when Congress dominated national political life and few Americans expected much of their chief executive. And yet closer inspection reveals a most remarkable president -- and not only because he is the only one to hold two non-consecutive terms.Troy Senik is a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and a co-founder of the digital media company Kite & Key. Troy is also author of A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbably Presidency of Grover Cleveland (September 2022).

Pete Souza is one of our nation's leading photojournalists—and few have risen to greater prominence. He has worked as an official White House photographer for Ronald Reagan and the chief official White House photographer for Barack Obama. Among many other distinctions, he won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 along with colleagues at the Chicago Tribune, and last year he was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame. His books include Obama: An Intimate Portrait, one of the bestselling photography books of all time; Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents; and his latest, The West Wing and Beyond: What I Saw Inside the Presidency.Mark Updegrove and Mark Lawrence talk to Pete about his unique vantage point on the presidency and the presidents he has worked with and captured for history. 

Paul Gregory is an expert on Russia and is currently a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. A pioneer in the study of Soviet and Russian economics, his textbook on the Russian economy was used to teach more than two generations of students. But Gregory's latest book is on a subject that he has been reluctant to address for nearly six decades: his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald and his young wife Marina. Gregory was one of the few people who actually knew them. His inside account of the Oswalds's marriage offers a disturbing portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald, whom Gregory believes acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy.We talked to Gregory about the Lee Harvey Oswald he came to know, someone who possessed the motive, cunning, and killer instinct of a murderer who was desperately vying for a place in history. 

Journalist Ali Vitali is a familiar face on America's TV screens, having covered politics first for MSNBC and then for NBC News for nearly a decade. She reported on the 2016 race won by President Trump and then returned to the presidential campaign trail in 2020 to cover several Democratic candidates, including the record-setting four women who competed strongly for the nomination.Ali talked with us about the obstacles that female contenders have faced in running for the presidency over the years, how those challenges might be overcome, and the prospects for election of the nation's first female president. 

Nicole Hemmer is a political historian and Founding Director of the Rogers Center for the Study of the Presidency at Vanderbilt University. She's also Cofounder of Made by History, a section of the Washington Post that offers historical context and analysis, and writes regularly for the New York Times, CNN and Politico.Hemmer talked to us about the partisan politicians, personalities and pundits who began remaking the Republican Party 30 years ago, forging a modern conservative movement that trumped the conservative coalition of Republican icon Ronald Reagan and led to the far right Trumpism of today's GOP.

Journalist Gabriel Debenedetti is the national correspondent for New York magazine, where he writes about politics and national affairs. He's also written for Politico, Reuters, the New York Times Book Review, the Economist, and the New Republic, among other publications. Just this month, he published his remarkable first book, The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama.The Long Alliance delves into one of the most consequential political partnerships of recent times – the sometimes contentious, often close relationship between America's forty-fourth and forty-sixth presidents. Gabe joined us to talk about how two men from different generations, with contrasting political styles, led the Democratic party through challenging moments of recent history, and continue to shape the nation today.

Tim Naftali, who teaches history at New York University, is one of the nation's most accomplished scholars of American foreign policy and the Cold War. His numerous books include studies of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet foreign policy, and U.S. counterterrorism policy. He's held teaching positions over the years at Yale University, the University of Hawaii and the University of Virginia.But Tim Naftali is also one of the nation's leading experts on the Watergate scandal, which erupted in 1972 with the attempted burglary of the Democratic National Committee Office in Washington's Watergate complex. As Director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum from 2007 to 2011, Tim was responsible for conducting numerous interviews with key players in the Watergate affair, redesigning the Library's exhibit on the topic, and opening new archival materials connected to the scandal. Tim joined us to talk about Watergate and its meanings half a century later.

Kate Andersen Brower began her career as a journalist, working as a producer for CBS News and Fox News before moving on to cover the White House for Bloomberg during the first term of Barack Obama. She's currently a contributor to CNN and has written for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post. A bestselling author, she has explored various aspects of life in, around, and out of the White House. In this episode Mark Updegrove talks with Kate about three of her books: The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House, Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump, and First in Line: Presidents, Vice Presidents and the Pursuit of Power. 

When it comes to writing about American politics, few authors are as accomplished or as versatile as Jeffrey Frank. Jeffrey is an eminent journalist, having served as senior editor at The New Yorker and deputy editor of the New York Post's Outlook section. His work has also appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian.Jeffrey has published four novels that dissect the social world of elite Washington. In 2013, he turned to presidential history, publishing Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage, a bestselling account of the partnership between President Eisenhower and his Vice President, Richard Nixon.Jeffrey joins Mark Lawrence to talk about his latest book, The Trials of Harry S. Truman, the first study in many years to tell the story of the Truman presidency.  

When we think of how our presidents make decisions, we often imagine them sitting around conference tables with their cabinet secretaries, engaging in detailed deliberation and weighing competing points of view. But where did this practice come from? When did the cabinet originate, and why does it function as it does?Lindsay Chervinsky, a scholar of 18th century America and the U.S. presidency, is among the first historians to delve deeply into these questions. A senior fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, Lindsay has published in the Wall Street Journal, Ms. Magazine, CNN, The Washington Post, and USA Today. She joins Dr. Mark Lawrence to talk about her writing on the early American presidency.

Dr. Jill Biden has been called President Biden's greatest political asset and, in the course of their 45-year marriage, has been her husband's closest and most trusted advisor.

Craig McNamara is the son of Robert S. McNamara, who served as U.S. Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson during the 1960s. From his childhood, Craig cherished his father. But he also struggled for years to understand the elder McNamara's role in the decisions that led to the war in Vietnam – an experience that forever distanced father from son.Now a businessman and walnut farmer, Craig McNamara is founder of the Center for Land-Based Learning, an organization devoted to educating young farmers in the business of sustainable agriculture. Craig joins Mark Lawrence to talk about his remarkable life and especially his complicated relationship with the man he called ‘Dad.'

On today's episode, we go slightly beyond the presidency as we talk to George Steven's Jr. about his new memoir, My Place in the Sun: Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington.The son of famed film director George Stevens, George Stevens Jr. grew up in the highest reaches of Hollywood, on the sets of classic films like Giant, Shane, The Diary of Anne Frank, and A Place in the Sun. But yearning for his own place in the sun, he ventured to Washington to work with legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow at the United States Information Agency, producing films for John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, before going on to work for other presidents in other capacities.The founding director of the American Film Institute and the creator of the Kennedy Center Honors, Stevens describes his remarkable life and unimaginable brushes with history.

Since its publication in May, This Will Not Pass, written by Jonathan Martin and his New York Times colleague Alexander Burns, has received thunderous attention. Martin and Burns dive deep into the corridors of Washington power to provide insight into the end of the Trump administration, the big lie around the presidential election of 2020, the insurrection attempt on January 6, and the dawn of the Biden administration. Mark Updegrove talks to Martin about the explosive revelations in the book and, more broadly, the political polarization and party dysfunction that have become the hallmarks of today's Washington.

My guest today is Kai Bird, author of the new biography, The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter. This extraordinary book examines the 39th president with unprecedented depth as well as balance, highlighting President Carter's great achievements as well as the shortcomings that made him a one-term president.  Kai Bird is the Executive Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center and a highly acclaimed author with several biographies to his credit. These include The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy and The American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which Bird co-authored with Martin Sherwin and won the Pulitzer Prize.

Coe's first book, Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis, appeared in 2014. More recently, she published the book that we'll be discussing today, You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington, which appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. Coe has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and TheNew Republic. She has also hosted the podcast No Man's Land and Presidents are People Too! and worked as consulting producer for the forthcoming History Channel program on Washington.

Our special guest today is Professor Christopher Leahy, a leading expert on the U.S. presidency and American politics in the 18th and 19th centuries. His book, President Without a Party: The Life of John Tyler, published by LSU Press in 2020, is the first full-scale biography of America's 10th president published in more than 80 years. Dr. Leahy has appeared on numerous podcasts discussing his work and he's also the author of numerous journal articles and reviews in scholarly publications.

Fredrik Logevall is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs and Professor of History at Harvard University. Dr. Logevall is the author or editor of ten books including Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History. Most recently, he's published JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956, the first volume of what will be a monumental two-part biography of John F. Kennedy.

Barack Obama made history in 2008, becoming the first African American to be elected to our nation's highest office, as our 44th President. When he took office in January 2009, he brought a small coterie of close and loyal friends from his home state of Illinois to join him at the White House. Among them was Tina Tchen, who would become a White House insider and a close aide to Barack and Michelle Obama.  Tchen began her White House tenure in 2009 as the Director of Public Engagement before serving as Assistant to President Obama and Chief of Staff to the First Lady from 2011 to 2017. She talks about what it was like to be behind the scenes in the West and East Wings during the Obama administration working closely with President and Mrs. Obama, and what their legacies will mean to history.

My guest today is Amity Shlaes, a well-known columnist for the Financial Times and Forbes magazine and a former member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board. She's also one of America's premier economic historians. Shlaes has published six books to date, including Great Society: A New History and The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.She joins us to talk about her biography of America's 30th President, Calvin Coolidge.

Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. She's the author of six books, including The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Peter Onuf is the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Virginia. He's also author of numerous books, including most recently Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance.  In 2017, these two giants in the history of the early American republic teamed up to publish the book at the heart of our discussion today, “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination. This book ranks among the most original and engaging studies of Thomas Jefferson and his times to appear in recent years. They join us today to discuss our third President, his life and times.

There have been countless books written about Abraham Lincoln, but John Avlon's new book, Lincoln and the Fight for Peace, takes a different tact. Chronicling the last days of Lincoln's life after the most bloody war in our history, Avlon looks at the plans for peace that he calls Lincoln's “unfinished symphony.” John Avlon is a senior political analyst and anchor at CNN and the author of Independent Nation, Wingnuts, and Washington's Farewell, which covers George Washington's farewell address and its seminal mark on our nation. Previously Avlon served as editor-in-chief and managing director of The Daily Beast and as chief speechwriter for the Mayor of New York after the attacks of 9/11.

John A. Farrell joins us for a conversation about America's 37th president, Richard Nixon. John is author of Richard Nixon: The Life, which won the PEN America Award for biography and the New York Historical Society's prize for American History. The book was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.  John worked for many years as a journalist for major American dailies and covered the White House for TheBoston Globe. His books include biographies, not just of President Nixon, but also of the famed lawyer Clarence Darrow and House Speaker Tip O'Neill.

This week we address the history of the presidency writ large with Jeremi Suri, the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair in Global Affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and a professor in the Department of History at The University of Texas. He is a frequent commentator on current affairs and writes for op-ed pages and book reviews all over the country. He hosts his own podcast, This is Democracy, and he is author of several books in American history and the international history of the 20th century. In his book The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office, Dr. Suri sweeps across the history of the American presidency and paints a rather gloomy picture of the institution in the early 21st century. In this episode, he explains why we haven't had a great president since Franklin Roosevelt, in his opinion.