From the publisher:

An astounding look at how America’s founders—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Adams—regarded the issue of slavery as they drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. A daring and important work that ultimately reckons with the two great failures of America’s founding: the failure to end slavery and the failure to avoid Indian removal.

On the eve of the American Revolution, half a million enslaved African Americans were embedded in the North American population. The slave trade was flourishing, even as the thirteen colonies armed themselves to defend against the idea of being governed without consent. This paradox gave birth to what one of our most admired historians, Joseph J. Ellis, calls the “great contradiction”: How could a government that had been justified and founded on the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence institutionalize slavery? How could it permit a tidal wave of western migration by settlers who understood the phrase “pursuit of happiness” to mean the pursuit of Indian lands?

Joseph J. Ellis' website can be found at https://www.josephellishistorian.com/

Information on his book can be found at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/740318/the-great-contradiction-by-joseph-j-ellis/

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From the publisher: As the US struggles to provide affordable housing, millions of Americans live in deteriorating public housing projects, enduring the mistakes of past housing policy. In The Projects, Howard A. Husock explains how we got here, detailing the tragic rise and fall of public housing and the pitfalls of other subsidy programs. He takes us inside a progressive movement led by a group of New York City philanthropists, politicians, and business magnates who first championed public housing as a solution to urban blight. From First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to the controversial city planner Robert Moses, many well-known historical figures made a convincing case for affordable housing in America.

Despite the movement’s lofty ideals, the creation of the Projects led to the destruction of low-income communities across the country. From the Hill District in Pittsburgh to Black Bottom in Detroit, predominantly Black neighborhoods were judged only by the quality of their housing. Husock looks beyond these neighborhoods’ physical conditions to their uncounted riches, from local artists like August Wilson to vital community institutions. As he shares residents’ stories, he honors what they crafted through their own plans, rather than those of city planners.

Husock traces the history of public housing to contemporary debates on the government’s role in the housing market. Through interviews with residents, he reveals how public housing transformed the lives of Americans and the physical faces of cities and towns. He ultimately critiques "repair and reform" efforts, making policy recommendations that address the core failings of public housing for the people it was once designed to help. Mapping out a better path for policy-makers, he lays a new foundation for upward mobility in America.

For information on his book from NYU Press, check out: https://nyupress.org/9781479828432/the-projects/

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From the publisher: The quarterback: the American equivalent of royalty, long glamorized, mythologized, and worshipped. Still, long before the Super Bowl trophies, massive contracts, brand deals, and millions of social media followers comes the dream. From the backyard to Pop Warner, from high school to college, from the NFL to the Hall of Fame, becoming the country’s ultimate idol requires single-minded focus while navigating a maze of bad breaks, insecurities, jealousy, pressure, and fame.

Long known as the outsider’s guide into this elite world, Seth Wickersham’s fresh reporting goes deep into the quarterback journey, measuring the distance between what the men who have traveled it expected and what they found at the end of the road. Through unprecedented access into the lives of dozens of quarterbacks and generational greats such as Johnny Unitas, John Elway, Peyton Manning, Warren Moon, Steve Young, and others, as well as those figures striving to be remembered, like Caleb Williams and Arch Manning, Wickersham reveals how this one position has become emblematic of success in American life.

As an inside look into a uniquely American job and a uniquely American obsession with football, American Kings is a must-read for sports fans and anyone who wants to understand what the price of ambition tells us about the quest for achievement and status.

Information on his book can be found at: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/789617/american-kings-by-seth-wickersham/

He is on Twitter at https://x.com/sethwickersham?lang=en

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From the publisher: "A compelling exploration of the broken American foster care system, told through the stories of six former foster youth. This powerful narrative nonfiction book delves into the systemic failures that lead many foster children into the criminal justice system, highlighting the urgent need for reform.

​This book is a must-read for anyone interested in child welfare, social justice, and the transformative power of the best narrative nonfiction.

In Wards of the State, award-winning journalist Claudia Rowe's storytelling is both vivid and unflinching, offering readers a deep understanding of the foster care-to-prison pipeline. Through interviews with psychologists, advocates, judges, and the former foster children themselves, Rowe paints a heartbreaking picture of the lives shaped by this broken system.

Rowe brings her extensive experience and investigative prowess to this eye-opening work. With a career spanning over 25 years, Rowe has written for publications such as The New York Times and Mother Jones, and her reporting has influenced policy changes in Washington State. Her previous book, The Spider and the Fly, was a gripping true-crime memoir that showcased her ability to blend personal narrative with broader social issues."

Claudia Rowe's website can be found at: https://www.claudiarowejournalist.com/

Information of her book can be found at: https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/wards-of-the-state

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From the publisher: New York entered 1986 as a city reborn. Record profits on Wall Street sent waves of money splashing across Manhattan, bringing a battered city roaring back to life.

But it also entered 1986 as a city whose foundation was beginning to crack. Thousands of New Yorkers were sleeping in the streets, addicted to drugs, dying of AIDS, or suffering from mental illnesses. Nearly one-third of the city’s Black and Hispanic residents were living below the federal poverty line. Long-simmering racial tensions threatened to boil over.

The events of the next four years would split the city open. Howard Beach. Black Monday. Tawana Brawley. The crack epidemic. The birth of ACT UP. The Central Park jogger. The release of Do the Right Thing. And a cast of outsized characters—Ed Koch, Donald Trump, Al Sharpton, Spike Lee, Rudy Giuliani, Larry Kramer—would compete to shape the city’s future while building their own mythologies.

The Gods of New York is a kaleidoscopic and deeply immersive portrait of a city whose identity was suddenly up for grabs: Could it be both the great working-class city that lifted up immigrants from around the world and the money-soaked capital of global finance? Could it retain a civic culture—a common idea of what it meant to be a New Yorker—when the rich were building a city of their own and vast swaths of its citizens were losing faith in the systems meant to protect them? New York City was one thing at the dawn of 1986; it would be something very different as 1989 came to a close. This is the story of how that happened.

Information on Jonathan Mahler's book can be found athttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/568081/the-gods-of-new-york-by-jonathan-mahler/

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From the publisher:

"An epic, riveting history based on new interviews and research that elucidates the approval, construction, and fateful decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the Japanese port city of Hiroshima was struck by the world’s first atomic bomb. Built in the US by the top-secret Manhattan Project and delivered by a B-29 Superfortress, a revolutionary long-range bomber, the weapon destroyed large swaths of the city, instantly killing tens of thousands. The world would never be the same.

The Hiroshima Men’s vivid narrative recounts the decade-long journey toward this first atomic attack. It charts the race for the bomb during World War II, as the Allies fought the Axis powers, and is told through several key characters: General Leslie Groves, leader of the Manhattan Project alongside Robert Oppenheimer; pioneering Army Air Force pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets Jr.; the mayor of Hiroshima, Senkichi Awaya, who would die alongside eighty thousand fellow citizens; and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer John Hersey, who traveled to Japan for the New Yorker to expose the devastation the bomb inflicted on the city and to describe in unflinching detail the dangers posed by radiation poisoning.

This thrilling account takes the reader from the corridors of power in the White House and the Pentagon to the test sites of New Mexico; from the air war above Germany to the Potsdam Conference of Truman, Churchill, and Stalin; from the savage reconquest of the Pacific to the deadly firebombing air raids across Japan. The Hiroshima Men also includes Japanese perspectives—a vital aspect often missing from Western narratives—to complete Iain MacGregor’s nuanced, deeply human account of the bombing’s meaning and aftermath."

Ian MacGregor's website can be found at: https://iainmacgregor.com/

Information on his book from Simon & Schuster can be found at https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Hiroshima-Men/Iain-MacGregor/9781668038048

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American politics has been dominated by two major political parties for large swaths of time. They raise money, put forward candidates at every level of government, get them elected, and - for better or worse - keep them there. It's a system that was spearheaded by Martin Van Buren, the eighth president. Though his administration was a bust, he has influenced public life since he left office in 1841. James Bradley is an editor of the Van Buren Papers, and argues on this episode that Van Buren may not belong in the proverbial presidential hall of fame, but that he must be studied and remembered.

Information on James Bradley's book from Oxford University Press can be found here

The website for the Van Buren Papers can be found at https://vanburenpapers.org/

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From the publisher:

"In this definitive portrait of John Fitzgerald Kennedy—one of America’s most consequential and enigmatic presidents—J. Randy Taraborrelli delivers a deeply researched and authoritative biography. More than the story of a presidency, this is an intimate study of a man whose public triumphs were shaped—and at times overshadowed—by the complex realities of his private life, from his legendary family to his marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy.

Drawing from hundreds of interviews conducted over twenty-five years—as well as candid, first-hand oral histories from the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Presidential Library, rare internal reports from the Secret Service, detailed files from the National Archives, and intelligence documents from both the CIA and FBI. This is JFK as never before captured by history: brilliant yet fallible, revered yet human—a figure whose legacy continues to shape America and the world."

His previous appearance on our show (episode #136) in which he discussed, "Jackie: Public, Private, Secret" can be found here https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/axelbank-reports-history-and-today/id1521053272?i=1000627555636

J. Randy Taraborrelli's website is https://jrandytaraborrelli.com/home/

Information on his book can be found at https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250346384/jfkpublicprivatesecret/

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