Though best remembered today for his brief tenure as the ninth president of the United States, William Henry Harrison’s most significant contribution to American history was his service as a general in the War of 1812. In William Henry Harrison and the Conquest of the Ohio Country: Frontier Fighting in the War of 1812 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), ... Show More
Today
Gerald F. Goodwin, "Race in the Crucible of War: African American Servicemen and the War in Vietnam" (U Massachusetts Press, 2023)
When African American servicemen went to fight in the Vietnam War, discrimination and prejudice followed them. Even in a faraway country, their military experiences were shaped by the racial environment of the home front. War is often viewed as a crucible that can transform socie ... Show More
52m 33s
Today
Duncan Kelly, "Worlds of Wartime: The First World War and the Reconstruction of Modern Politics" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Worlds of Wartime: The First World War and the Reconstruction of Modern Politics (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Duncan Kelly is a new intellectual history of the many and varied ideas about politics and economics that were made, and remade, through wartime and revolution, by ... Show More
1h 25m
Today
John M. Findlay, "The Mobilized American West, 1940-2000" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
At the end of the 1930s, the West was in peril. A cultural and economic backwater, the Great Depression had all-but wiped out the extractive industries which had fueled the region's economy for decades. What catapulted the West into the global twentieth century was mobilization f ... Show More
1h 11m
May 2024
446. Custer vs. Crazy Horse: Civil War (Part 1)
“Come on, you Wolverines!”
The story of the American Indian Wars of 1862-68 is an enthralling tale of hubris, politics, recklessness, and the merciless assault of industrialisation and modernity on an old world, nearly extinguished. An immense tragedy, it is also a story of great ... Show More
58m 33s
May 2024
151. The Founding Fathers: George Washington (Ep 1)
Everybody knows Washington as the strapping, powerful general and then president who helped to overthrow the British and forge America, but how did he get there? He was born into a respectable Virginian planter family, had an ordinary education and, with the exception of his tort ... Show More
57m 22s
May 2024
447. Custer vs. Crazy Horse: The Winning of the West (Part 2)
With the American Civil War coming to a close in April 1865, George Custer, cavalry commander in the Union army, and a man of dubious political leanings for a unionist officer, was sent to Texas. Reckless, daring and bloodthirsty, the conclusion of the war came as a disappointmen ... Show More
1h 6m
May 2017
The Battle of Lincoln 1217
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Battle of Lincoln on 20th May 1217, when two armies fought to keep, or to win, the English crown. This was a struggle between the Angevin and Capetian dynasties, one that followed Capetian successes over the Angevins in France. The forces of th ... Show More
53m 10s
May 2023
The Forage War of 1777 Saw George Washington Launch Numerous Hit-and-Run Assaults on the British that Crippled the Army
In late December 1776, the American War of Independence appeared to<br>be on its last legs. General George Washington’s continental forces had<br>been reduced to a shadow of their former strength, the British Army<br>had chased them across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania, an ... Show More
33m 49s
May 2019
President Ulysses S Grant
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of Grant's presidency on Americans in the years after the Civil War in which he, with Lincoln, had led the Union Army to victory. His predecessor, Andrew Johnson, was prepared to let the Southern States decide for themselves which rights ... Show More
55m 12s
Jul 2023
347: The American Revolution (Part 1)
“America, late the strength, now the foe to Britain, dismembered, torn, I fear forever lost to England, whence she sprung.”
The American Revolution came about due to growing tensions between the American colonies and Great Britain, primarily over issues of taxation and representa ... Show More
57m 45s