Sean P. Cunningham is Associate Professor of History at Texas Tech University. This interview is based on his new book, Bootstrap Liberalism: Texas Political Culture in the Age of FDR (University Press of Kansas, 2022). JF: What led you to...
FDR
The Author’s Corner with G. Kurt Piehler
G. Kurt Piehler is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Institute on World War II and the Human Experience at Florida State University. This interview is based on his new book, A Religious History of the American GI...
The C-SPAN presidential rankings are here!
C-SPAN asked scholars to rank the presidents in terms of public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision, the pursuit of justice, and “performance within the context of the times.” The list...
If American democracy is in crisis, expect calls for Supreme Court reform
Joe Biden wants to reform the Supreme Court. This kind of judicial reform also happened in the 1790s, 1850s, 1890s, 1930s, 1970s, and 2010s. Here is a taste of Syracuse University political scientist Thomas Keck‘s piece at The Washington Post:...
San Francisco school board will not rename schools
Some of you may remember our posts earlier this year about the San Francisco school board’s decision to rename forty-four schools that honor historical figures such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It now appears the board...
Joe Biden meets with American historians at the White House
The court historians? Those in attendance included Jon Meacham, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Beschloss, Michael Eric Dyson, Joanne Freeman, Eddie Glaude Jr, Annette Gordon Reed, and Walter Isaacson. Mike Allen at Axios reports that everyone wore masks. The topics discussed...
What did Joe Biden learn from FDR?
He learned that in a time of crisis Americans need direct relief from their national government. Here is historian Suzanne Kahn at The Washington Post: The United States has surpassed an ignominious milestone: 500,000 deaths from covid-19. President Biden has...
In today’s court evangelical roundup we learn “the Left has always hated Thanksgiving”
It’s November 17, 2020. Election Day was two weeks ago. Let’s see how the court evangelicals are coping today with the Trump loss. Eric Metaxas is still pushing the conspiracy theory about Dominion voting machines and is complaining about losing...
Presidential historian: when Trump attacks, Biden should stay quiet
Today, The Washington Post published another interesting piece from Jeffrey Engel, director of Southern Methodist University’s Center for Presidential History. (Some of you will recall that we talked with Engel about Trump’s impeachment in Episode 61 of The Way of Improvement Leads...
What Can We Learn From the Great Depression?
Here is Harvard historian Lizabeth Cohen at The Atlantic: Americans are out of work. More than 20 million lost their jobs in April alone. Lines at food banks stretch for miles. Businesses across the country are foundering. Headlines scream that the coronavirus...
The Trump Administration is Reading American History
It looks the Trump administration now thinks American history might be important. Here is Gabby Orr at Politico: When the avian flu first spread to pockets of Southeast Asia in 2005, President George W. Bush reassured Americans he would be...
David Blight: “And the many need government”
One of our finest American historians, Yale’s David Blight, reminds us that Americans have always relied on the government in times of crisis. Here is a taste of his piece at The Atlantic: In August 1861, several months after the secession...
What Should a President Say to Americans Who are Scared?
Today an NBC reporter asked Donald Trump this very question. Watch: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPuNw3dJYUY&w=560&h=315] The reporter, Peter Alexander, later said that he was “pitching Trump a softball question.” Watch: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5hJQ2ubohg&w=560&h=315] If my memory serves, there was also a president who...
The Faith of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Over at Religion & Politics, Eric C. Miller interviews James Bratt about John Woolverton’s A Christian and a Democrat: A Religious Biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt. When Woolverton died in 2014, Bratt finished the book. Here is a taste of the interview: Religion &...
Moral Capitalism
Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin points us toward a better way: What kind of economy do Democrats believe in? Joe Biden calls for “stronger labor laws and a tax code that rewards [the] middle class.” Bernie Sanders wants to raise taxes...
Patriotic Socialism?
As Duke Univeristy law professor Jedidiah Purdy reminds us, socialism is as American as baseball, apple-pie, and Chevrolet. “Much of today’s socialism,” he argues, “was once the bread and butter of the Democratic Party.” Here is a taste of his...
Call Me a Christian Nationalist: A Response to Darryl Hart
Over at his blog Old Life: Reformed Faith and Practice, Hillsdale College historian Darryl Hart is once again criticizing me. Several folks who read this blog and Hart’s blog asked me if I would respond to his most recent post. I...
"Bernie Sanders’s socialism is Eisenhower’s and F.D.R.’s world if Reagan had never happened"
Jeremiah Purdy of The New Yorker shows how Bernie Sanders’s definition of “Democratic Socialism” looks a lot like the policies of F.D.R. and Ike. A taste:We finally know what Bernie Sanders means by “democratic socialism.” Speaking on his political philosophy at Georgetown yesterday, the Vermont senator...
The Mayor of Roanoke Could Use a History Lesson
Here is what the mayor of Roanoke, Virginia said yesterday: And here is Elizabeth Breunig at The New Republic: A few points for Bowers’s consideration: 1.) It’s ISIS, not Isis, the Egyptian goddess of health, wisdom, family, and so forth....
The Author’s Corner with Andrew Burstein
Andrew Burstein is Charles Phelps Manship Professor at Louisiana State University. This interview is based on his new book, Democracy’s Muse: How Thomas Jefferson Became an FDR Liberal, a Reagan Republican, and a Tea Party Fanatic, All the While Being Dead (University of Virginia...