Do we study the deep past only to justify our present actions toward those we deem less “civilized”? Are humans fundamentally good and altruistic or mean and self-serving? Is “human nature” warlike or peaceful? Stan’s guest this week is author and historian Stefanos Geroulanos of New York University, discussing all of these issues from his new book, The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins, published in 2024 by Liveright.
Do people prefer texting to face-to-face encounters? Will handwriting become obsolete? Have we lost the mental capacity for patience and boredom? And if we have, does it matter? Stan’s guest this week is author and historian Christine Rosen of the American Enterprise Institute, who tackles the impact of technology on what it means to be human in her new book, The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World (published in 2024 by WW Norton).
Stan’s guest this week is historian Bennett Parten, talking about his new book, Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation, published by Simon & Schuster on January 21, 2025. Sherman’s March has remained controversial to this day, and this book is a major new interpretation of the March and its legacy in American history. Parten focuses on how the March played a significant role in ending the Civil War, due in no small part to the efforts of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who became a part of it as the US Army marched across Georgia towards Savannah.
This week Stan talks to Christopher Cox, Senior Scholar in Residence at the University of California, Irvine, about his new book, Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn, published in 2024 by Simon & Schuster. Cox’s focus is on Wilson’s role in the movements for women’s suffrage and racial equality, and his open hostility to both. This is a riveting, beautifully written reassessment of the heroes who fought so hard for decades to pass the Susan B. Anthony Amendment more than a century ago—and Wilson’s legacy in our own day.
This week Stan reviews his reading in 2024: how many books and pages, fiction and non-fiction, and offers tips on age-old reading problems, including: how to get more reading into your life, should you write in your books, reading in a distracted age, suffering from book guilt and how to conquer it, and more. Plus you’ll get an earful about the upcoming College Football Playoffs (Go Dawgs) and what the heck is Baseball’s Golden At-Bat?
