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In the Gilded Age, the coinage of gold and silver had real implications for the economy. Mike Moran joins the show to discuss his latest book When Coins Were King and how the bonanza in mines had a reaction in the Treasury.

Essential Reading:

Michael Moran, When Coins Were King (2025).

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Have you ever hated a bird? Pigeons might come to mind, but America's most hated bird is the European Starling and they got their start on the continent in the 1880s. The environmental history of the Starling is a story about hubris and the unintended consequences of human meddling with non-native species. Author Mike Stark joins me to discuss his latest book on the topic.

Essential Reading:

Mike Stark: Starlings: The Curious Odyssey of a Most Hated Bird (2025).

Recommended Reading:

Joel Greenberg, A Feathered River across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction (2014).

Andrea L. Smalley and Henry M. Reeves, The Market in Birds: Commercial Hunting, Conservation, and the Origins of Wildlife Consumerism, 1850–1920 (2022).

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Construction history is entirely unfamiliar to most scholars, and yet it is a crucial part of urban history. Alexander Wood joins the show to discuss how New York City was built from blueprints to scaffolding to demolition.

Essential Reading:

Alexander Wood, Building the Metropolis: Architecture, Construction, and Labor in New York City, 1880–1935 (2025).

Recommended Reading:

Joanne Abel Goldman, Building New York's Sewers: Developing Mechanisms of Urban Management (1997).

Gerard Koeppel, City on a Grid: How New York Became New York (2015).

Mike Wallace, Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919 (2017).

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Context is crucial and perspective is everything. Dr. Tommy Jamison's debut book about the growth of naval power in the Pacific is a wonderful addition to our understanding of Gilded Age security. We discuss the impact of Chile, Peru, China, and Japan on geopolitics and the US Navy.

Essential Reading:

Thomas Jamison, The Pacific's New Navies: An Ocean, its Wars, and the Making of US Sea Power (2024).

Recommended Reading:

William D. Riddell, On the Waves of Empire: U.S. Imperialism and Merchant Sailors, 1872-1924 (2023).

Marilyn Lake, Progressive New World: How Settler Colonialism and Transpacific Exchange Shaped American Reform (2019),

Rolf Hobson, Imperialism at Sea: Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875-1914 (2002).

Elting Morison, Admiral Sims and the Modern American Navy (1968).

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Who are the people who unearthed Egyptian antiquities and brought them to Western museums? Besides the countless male archaeologists we've heard about, several important women dug in the sands and their stories are an intersectional revelation. Kathleen Sheppard joins the show to talk about her book Women in the Valley of Kings.

Essential Reading:

Kathleen Sheppard, Women in the Valley of Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age (2024).

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The Spanish-American War has a central place in the history of American empire; it also launched the careers of Theodore Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst, and Richard Harding Davis. It propelled the Lost Cause mythology and set American ambitions for the century to come. Matthew Bernstein joins the show to discuss his latest book on the subject, Team of Giants.

Essential Reading:

Matthew Bernstein, Team of Giants: The Making of the Spanish American War (2024).

Recommended Reading:

Evan Thomas, The War Lovers (2010).

John Offner, An Unwanted War (1992).

Warren Zimmerman, First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made their Country a World Power (2002).

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