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 11: Satia on Progress and Colonialism
January 15th, 2021 | 34 mins 29 secs
books, history, philosophy, politics
How does writing history influence the future? How did Enlightenment thinkers help prepare the ground for Empire? And how can we rescue the Enlightenment project to build a better future?
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Episode 10: Ikenberry on Democracy
January 8th, 2021 | 34 mins 10 secs
america, books, diplomacy, foreign policy, politics, us
Is liberal democracy the foundation of a lasting world order, or should we be constructing a world order to help fragile democracies thrive? And after a rough few years for liberal democracy around the globe, what are the chances that such an order can be built?
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Episode 9: Teasel Muir-Harmony on the Power of the Moon Landing
December 18th, 2020 | 30 mins 58 secs
america, books, diplomacy, foreign policy, history, politics, us
Project Apollo captured the world’s imagination, and as a feat of “soft power” public diplomacy, it has few peers in the history of mankind, and has not been matched since.
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Episode 8: Thomas E. Ricks on First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country
December 11th, 2020 | 28 mins 9 secs
america, books, history, politics, us
Is the America we have today, the America that elected Donald Trump and is still struggling to move on from his term in office, the country our Founding Fathers envisioned? And just what is it that this illustrious group really thought they were building?
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Episode 7: Susan Glasser and Peter Baker on James A. Baker
December 4th, 2020 | 35 mins 31 secs
america, biography, books, history, politics, uk, us
Susan Glasser and Peter Baker join our host Richard Aldous to discuss their new book, The Man Who Ran Washington, a biography of George H. W. Bush's legendary White House chief of staff and Secretary of State, and a rumination about a Washington that perhaps no longer exists.
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Episode 6: Ian Buruma on America's Special Relationship with the UK
November 20th, 2020 | 31 mins 55 secs
books, history, politics
Ian Buruma, author, historian, and a professor at Bard College, joins our host Richard Aldous to discuss all this, as well as his new book, The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, from Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit.
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Episode 5: Edmund Fawcett on "Conservatism"
November 13th, 2020 | 32 mins 29 secs
american thought, conservatism, ideas, intellectual history, political philosophy
Edmund Fawcett, a correspondent for The Economist for more than three decades, joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book, Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition, a companion volume to his earlier volume on liberalism.
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Episode 4: Bookstack: Mark Salter on Senator John McCain’s Legacy
November 6th, 2020 | 36 mins 23 secs
biography, books, elections, history, politics
As we await the final vote tally from the 2020 presidential election, some reflections on political leadership.
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Episode 3: Francis Fukuyama on the End of History and the Last Man
October 30th, 2020 | 29 mins 17 secs
books, history, libralism, politics
Francis Fukuyama joins host Richard Aldous to discuss how his seminal work has aged, the challenges liberalism is facing today from both the left and the right, and why now is the perfect time to start a new magazine.
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Episode 2: Lindsay M. Chervinsky on the Origins of the Presidential Cabinet
October 23rd, 2020 | 28 mins 29 secs
books, founding, history
Lindsay M. Chervinsky joins Bookstack host Richard Aldous to discuss her new book 'The Cabinet.'
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Charles A. Kupchan on 'Isolationism'
October 16th, 2020 | 34 mins 7 secs
books, foreign policy, history
Author Charles A. Kupchan joins Bookstack host Richard Aldous to discuss his new book 'Isolationism.'