American Purpose's Bookstack
The books and ideas podcast from American Purpose.
About the show
Weekly conversations with authors of new and recent books.
Host Richard Aldous is a historian and professor at Bard College, New York, and the author of several books, including Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian; Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship; The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs. Disraeli.
For more about American Purpose, visit www.americanpurpose.com.
Episodes
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Episode 147: Louise Story and Ebony Reed on the Black-White Wealth Gap in America
July 5th, 2024 | 26 mins 40 secs
books, history, politics
The typical Black American family has fifteen cents of wealth for every comparable dollar that a White American family holds. Exploring the historical expansion of the wealth gap, journalists Louise Story and Ebony Reed join Richard Aldous to reveal how their investigation into the U.S. financial system uncovered scores of setbacks that continue to perpetuate that gap. The result of their careful efforts, Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap, offers valuable perspectives on the interrelated status of education, finance, and societal equity today.
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Episode 146: Peter S. Goodman on How We Ran Out of Everything
June 28th, 2024 | 33 mins 27 secs
books, history, politics
The global pandemic unmasked not just the many vulnerabilities in the world’s supply chain, but also its hidden innerworkings. Reporting on the world from an economic lens for over twenty-five years, award-winning New York Times journalist Peter S. Goodman joins Richard Aldous to share insights from his latest book, How the World Ran Out of Everything. While the vulnerabilities abound, Goodman offers hope on how to reorient the supply chain to maintain innovation and efficiencies, while working toward the social good.
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Episode 145: Michel Paradis on Eisenhower’s Enduring Legacy
June 21st, 2024 | 31 mins 47 secs
books, history, politics
How did Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man of simple Kansas-bred beginnings, inspire implicit trust by his historical peers, from FDR and Churchill, to Stalin and DeGaulle? And how did he become a shaper of a new world order, asserting America’s post-war dominance? Michel Paradis, author of The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower, joins Richard Aldous for this week’s episode to offer up profound insights into Eisenhower’s enduring global influence and timeless lessons in leadership.
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Episode 144: James Davison Hunter on Democracy, Solidarity, and the Future of America
June 14th, 2024 | 29 mins 13 secs
books, history, politics
Is there hope to be found amidst the current political climate? How to generate solidarity in an atmosphere of growing difference? Renowned sociologist James Davison Hunter tackles these questions in his new book, Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis. Hunter joins Richard Aldous in this week's Bookstack, for a conversation about the cultural contradictions that underpin American history and the ongoing struggle to achieve unity in divisive times.
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Episode 143: Sulmaan Wasif Khan on the Taiwan Standoff
May 24th, 2024 | 28 mins 56 secs
books, history, politics
When President Joe Biden stated in 2022 that the United States would defend Taiwan military in the event of a Chinese invasion, he crossed a line of ambiguity that had been purposefully danced around for decades. And yet, even though such a scenario would pit two nuclear powers against each another, “The United States does not know why Taiwan is important to it,” argues Sulmaan Wasif Khan. He joins host Richard Aldous to discuss the history of the standoff and the dangers lurking ahead as relayed in his new book, The Struggle for Taiwan: A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between.
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Episode 142: Diana McLain Smith on Bringing Americans Together
May 17th, 2024 | 29 mins 2 secs
books, history, politics
In divided times, many Americans are sealing themselves off from those who think differently. Diana McLain Smith tells a different story in her new book, Remaking the Space Between Us: How Citizens Can Work Together to Build a Better Future for All, focusing on the tens of thousands reaching out to fellow Americans across the divides to promote understanding. She joins host Richard Aldous to discuss why the path to a better polity must begin with We the People: “We’re waiting for someone to save us, and nobody is coming.”
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Episode 141: Adriana Carranca on the New Wave of Latin American Missionaries
May 9th, 2024 | 28 mins 58 secs
books, history, politics
Thanks to American missionaries’ successes around the globe, the face of evangelicalism is no longer White America. In Soul by Soul: The Evangelical Mission to Spread the Gospel to Muslims, Adriana Carranca reveals an extraordinary tale that has been under the radar: Missionaries from Latin America are leading the way in spreading the Gospel to Muslim countries, including in former U.S. war zones. She joins host Richard Aldous to discuss the dangerous work being undertaken by a new wave of evangelicals.
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Episode 140: David L. Roll on President Harry Truman
May 3rd, 2024 | 25 mins 6 secs
books, history, politics
Harry Truman was educated in Missouri public schools, never went to college, and spent a number of his adult years as a dirt farmer. Yet eleven years after first being elected to the Senate he became President of the most powerful nation on earth in the midst of momentous world events. In his new book Ascent to Power: How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt's Shadow and Remade the World, David Roll suggests that from these humble beginnings Truman undertook “the most consequential transition” in American history. He joins host Richard Aldous to discuss Truman’s unlikely rise and his long string of achievements, from the Marshall Plan to the Berlin Airlift to the enduring Truman Doctrine.
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Episode 139: Nicholas Shakespeare on Ian Fleming
April 26th, 2024 | 27 mins 40 secs
books, history, politics
Ian Fleming heroicized for all the world the British intelligence agent in James Bond. In his new book Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, renowned biographer Nicholas Shakespeare digs into the legend of Fleming himself. Like his most famous character, Fleming’s life was colorfully marked by high-stakes intelligence, alcohol, and dalliances with women. Yet Fleming was tormented rather than buoyed by his literary success. Shakespeare joins host Richard Aldous to discuss the turbulent life of the man who gave the world 007.
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Episode 138: Seth D. Kaplan on America’s Fragile Neighborhoods
April 19th, 2024 | 31 mins 35 secs
books, history, politics
In surveying dysfunction across America, the question arises: Is the source of the trouble at the local or the national level? Seth D. Kaplan has shifted his analytical gaze from fragile nations abroad to examine the fragility of his home country. He believes America’s problems from health to politics are downstream of individuals becoming increasingly disconnected, neighborhood by neighborhood. He joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time.
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Episode 137: Leah Hunt-Hendrix on the Power of Solidarity
April 17th, 2024 | 27 mins 3 secs
books, history, politics
Solidarity has been at the root of social change throughout history, bringing people together across their differences to challenge injustice within societies. In their new book, Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea, Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor examine the sociological concept that is at the heart of social transformation. Hunt-Hendrix joins host Richard Aldous to share her thoughts on both the concept and the social movements with which it is intimately linked.
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Episode 136: Paul Starobin on the Russian Exiles
March 22nd, 2024 | 29 mins 13 secs
books, history, politics
There are now over a million Russians living in exile, spurred on by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Unable to safely oppose their own government at home, they often find themselves subject to harassment and disdain as immigrants. In his new book, Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia, Paul Starobin joins host Richard Aldous for a look at the hopes and dreams of those Russians living abroad, and to explain why he thinks more and more of them will “take up the gun.”
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Episode 135: Ian Buruma on the Relevance of Spinoza
March 14th, 2024 | 26 mins 33 secs
books, history, politics
Rejected in official circles in his day and embraced in modern times by a motley array of admirers, Spinoza was in many ways ahead of his time. His commitment to truth, universal principles, and freedom lie at the heart of Western liberal thinking. As those ideas come under attack on both the left and the right, Spinoza’s philosophical thinking is as relevant as ever. Ian Buruma joins Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah.
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Episode 134: Maria Popova on Ukraine and Russia’s Diverging Paths
February 29th, 2024 | 27 mins 48 secs
books, history, politics
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine and Russia not only embarked on very different political paths at home, but they viewed the future of their relationship in starkly divergent terms. In Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States, authors Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel show how Russia’s determination to control an independent Ukraine only pushed it further away. Popova joins host Richard Aldous to discuss how the varying cultural and political realities in the two countries ultimately led to today’s geopolitical clash.
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Episode 133: Lorraine Daston on the History of Scientific Collaboration
February 23rd, 2024 | 28 mins 40 secs
books, history, politics
Large threats to the well-being of humankind such as the pandemic and climate change have cemented the notion that scientists across the globe naturally work together to solve the world’s most pressing problems. In Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate, historian of science Lorraine Daston traces the trajectory of such cooperation, noting that along the way scientists have as often been competitors as collaborators. She joins host Richard Aldous to discuss the history of “the scientific community.”
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Episode 132: David Reynolds on Winston Churchill
February 15th, 2024 | 34 mins 55 secs
books, history, politics
Amidst all the positive and negative ink dedicated to Winston Churchill, Cambridge emeritus professor of international history David Reynolds offers a new dimension. He places the leader for whom history was determined by “great men” among the other greats who both inspired and enervated him. Reynolds joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his latest book, Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him.