Category Archives: Books

Podcast S7E13: Georgia’s Big Cat: The Life of Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Mize

Stan’s guest this week is Jerry Grillo, author of Big Cat: The Life of Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Mize. Mize was born in Demorest, Georgia, and played 15 seasons in Major League Baseball and won 5 World Series.

Podcast S7E11: David Blight on Yale and Slavery, History and Memory

How do we hold institutions accountable for the sins of the past? In this podcast, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Blight of Yale University talks with Stan about his latest book, Yale and Slavery: A History, and how he and a team of researchers uncovered Yale’s historical involvement with slavery, the slave trade, abolition, and Jim Crow—and the important role that slavery played in the creation of one of America’s most renowned institutions of higher learning.

Podcast S7E9: Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta—and How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports

Stan’s guest this week is Clayton Trutor, talking about his recent book Loserville, the winner of the Georgia Historical Society’s 2023 Bell Award for the best book in Georgia history published in 2022. Clayton discusses how Atlanta’s quest for professional sports franchises—the Braves, Falcons, Hawks, and Flames—re-shaped Atlanta and Georgia in the second half of the 20th century.

Podcast S7E8: Elizabeth Varon on General James Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South

This week Stan’s guest is historian and author Elizabeth Varon from the University of Virginia discussing her latest book, Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied The South. She talks about the life and career of this most controversial Georgian, from whether “Longstreet was late” at Gettysburg, and how his post-war decision to support Radical Reconstruction, Black office-holding and voting, and his post-war criticisms of Robert E. Lee all combined to nearly destroy his reputation and his life.