Category Archives: US History

S9E22 Podcast: The Imperial Presidency

As part of GHS’s ongoing US250 commemoration, Stan and GHS President & CEO Todd Groce discuss Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s historical classic, The Imperial Presidency, first published in 1973. Writing In the shadow of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, Schlesinger ominously argued that the presidency had become uncontrollable, king-like, and unaccountable to Congress or the people, exceeding its Constitutional authority in war-making and foreign policy, governing instead through executive orders and secrecy, ultimately threatening American democracy.

S9E21 Podcast: George Washington, Slavery, and American Memory

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Stan’s guest this week is historian John Garrison Marks, discussing his new book, Thy Will Be Done: George Washington’s Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory (University of North Carolina Press, 2026), which tells the story of Americans’ long struggle to come to terms with Washington’s legacy of slavery. He traces how politicians, abolitionists, educators, activists, Washington’s former slaves and their descendants, and others have remembered, forgotten, and manipulated slavery’s place in Washington’s story, and how they have wielded versions of that story in the political and cultural fights of their time. Marks shows how generational struggles over our collective memory of Washington and slavery have always been part of a bigger conversation about defining the United States and its people.

S9E18 Podcast: In the Shadow of the Great House: The Plantation in America

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Stan’s guest this week is UGA professor Daniel Rood, talking about his new book, In the Shadow of the Great House: A History of the Plantation in America (W.W. Norton, 2026), a new history of American slavery and American capitalism. The plantation traces its roots to the Portuguese conquest of an island in the Atlantic in the 1500s and reached its most powerful manifestation in the United States. But Rood argues in this provocative new history that plantations did not end with the Civil War but metastasized across space and time and can still be found today, touching nearly every aspect of our lives.

S9E17 Podcast: The Fear of a Standing Army: Were the Founders Wrong?

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How is it that a country founded in fear of a standing army would come to think of its military as a bulwark of democracy? Why has there never been a military coup in the United States? As part of GHS’s ongoing US250 commemoration, Stan’s guest this week is Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute, talking about her new book, The State and the Soldier: A History of Civil-Military Relations in the United States (Polity, 2025).

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S9E16 Podcast: The Last Adieu: Lafayette’s Triumphant Return

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As part of GHS’s ongoing commemoration of the US250, Stan’s guest this week is author and historian Ryan L. Cole, discussing his new book, The Last Adieu: Lafayette’s Triumphant Return, the Echoes of Revolution, and the Gratitude of the Republic (Harper Horizon, 2025). The Marquis de Lafayette arrived in America in 1777 to fight in Washington’s army, becoming a major general at age 19. In 1824, the “Hero of Two Worlds” returned on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the American Revolution, one of the last living links to that momentous event. Lafayette traveled more than 6,000 miles across all 24 states, reminding Americans of their Revolutionary heritage just in time for the country’s Golden Jubilee.