Stan talks to historian Jacqueline Jones about her book, No Right to An Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era, winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in History.
Join Stan as he launches a new season of Off the Deaton Path with a recap of one of the most momentous weeks in American political history, plus a deep dive into Fun Facts Known By Few (a tunnel behind Lincoln’s head on Mt. Rushmore? Are you living in a nuclear sponge? What is the mysterious Greek fire? Why was the flow of the Chicago River reversed in 1900?) Also, a sneak peek at upcoming podcast author interviews, and the 45th anniversary of the death of the King.
Stan interviews author Jason Friedman about his new book, Liberty Street. Jason and his husband bought a townhouse on Liberty Street in his hometown of Savannah. But that was just the beginning of a remarkable journey: “It’s a house that came with a story: the rise and fall of a Southern Jewish family and a ghost story whose long-dead characters still haunt the present. Liberty Street chronicles my journey to understand the Solomon Cohen family and the way their lives intersected with their enslaved workers, Savannah’s Jewish community, and their Christian neighbors. I became interested in the way we talk about the Civil War, its origins, and aftermath. What do we remember? Or choose to forget? I came to know the denizens of Liberty Street 150 years before I moved there, and to understand my own story as a Jew, a Southerner, and an American.”
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.
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.
